Dealing With Headaches

Whenever I get a migraine or severe headache (I get several kinds — lucky me), I always try to remind myself that I could have it a lot worse. And here is one of those stories to remind all of us with migraines and chronic headaches that we could have it much worse, too.

So, what’s worse than migraines or cluster headaches?

How about going onto an Internet forum to find advice and solidarity from fellow sufferers and then have it hacked into by sadists who suddenly flash animated gifs at you to trigger migraines and eplieptic seizures?

Yipperdoodle, that might do it.

A lot of epileptics also have migraines, which is one reason I’m venting about this here. About 3% of epileptics can have migraines and severe seizures (even grand mal seizures) triggered by flashing lights.

I Wish I Was Making This Up

I found this story (appropriately entitled “Pure Concentrated Evil”) from Topix, which in turn found it from the blog Scribal Terror, who in turn found it from Wired, who got it from God, I guess. Or perhaps the Epilepsy Foundation, which ran the forum.

It is currently thought that the hackers were members of Anonymous, but that’s just a theory and nothing’s been proven yet. The Wired article went on to report this:

Circumstantial evidence suggests the attack was the work of members of Anonymous, an informal collective of griefers best known for their recent war on the Church of Scientology. The first flurry of posts on the epilepsy forum referenced the site EBaumsWorld, which is much hated by Anonymous. And forum members claim they found a message board thread — since deleted — planning the attack at 7chan.org, a group stronghold.

But you know how the Web is — we’ll probably never find out who did it and even if we did, we might not have enough evidence to prove it.

But Whoever It Turns Out To Be

There was no reason for the attack or to target eplieptics. It sounds as if, perhaps, somebody needs a part time job? Hanging’s too good for them. We should hang them, bury them, then unbury them and shoot them. And then pee on them, for good measure.

On that happy mental picture, have a pain free weekend.