Beginner’s Guide To The Darknet: Part 1

Gonzo World
Aug 31, 2018 · 8 min read

So I just got scammed on the darknet for the second time in a row. Now I know this is not a very inviting line, but this is really quite rare now. For a long time, it was the case that one every ten or twenty deals was some evil little rat-bastard, stealing from others. I think I summarise it best in the response I wrote to the guy who scammed me just now out of 3 grams of hash:

“Ahh you scum bag, you’re a fucking scammer. Seriously dude, you should burn in hell. You aren’t just stealing money from mostly honest hard-working people, you’re also putting distrust into this beautiful free system, and trying to destroy it. You are the worst type of parasite. How do you seriously sleep at night? Your money will never buy back your soul. I hope you die soon, thanks”

The fucker has now been banned, but not before he escaped with my precious coins

There is a horrible sinking realisation you have when you realised that you have been scammed. It’s a wretched feeling, knowing that you will never get that money back and you have lost it without any gain. This loss was bearable, but the other recent one was less so; two grams of cocaine. At least £130, ouch. For some reason, after a long period of no scammers getting to me, I’ve now had a couple on the new site I’ve been using happily now for some time; Alpha Bay. I can’t explain why, but I realise the scammer technique that this guy just used is the same as the greatest initial scam on the original dark-net site; Pirate Bay.

I got onto that one day after having grown disillusioned and dissatisfied with the quantity of weed that I got for my buck in London. Quantity, mind you, not quality. There was nothing wrong with the quality of weed; that was if anything too strong. The new stain of London super-skunk polluting the streets, peddled by your friendly local black guy you’d meet on a street corner at 11 at night. He’d always be late too of course, which would also piss me off. It also means you need to feel like a criminal for just wanting to get stoned, crouching in the shadows, waiting for a dark stranger who you had nothing in common with besides the enjoyment of weed. And after going to University and finding quite good quantities, particularly weed in Bournemouth which was usually brought round to your house by a mate who knew a mate, I hated the crappy little dime bags that dealers distributed here. I considered it an insult, and felt that I was being fucked by the system, albeit a system that has been created by lack of legalisation.

The Dream Market interface

I needed some form of escape from this horrible entrapment. I used to take a fairly miserable journey from Brixton all the way to the end of the line to fucking Walthamstow which would take a good 40 minutes, to meet a guy for 30 seconds, exchange to freshly drawn £20 notes and receive a fairly good sized bag of weed, which would last me a week back then. I think I was less miserable about the journey time, or even the cost of such a habit; it was more the lack of power that gave me such a bummer. I was at their will, and freedom has always been very important to me, so something had to be done to change this joyless cycle of pot reliance. Giving up drugs was not an option obviously, because I liked them too much. I was smoking way too much weed back then, starting with four small joints a day after University, then graduating to four bongs a day to be economical. Like many kids after Uni, I had a comfortable addiction to marijuana, no direction or idea what the hell to do, and no chance of affording a real life in modern London. The Darknet provided a ray of hope into my dreary young life, offering me the freedom with drugs that I had not experienced before, and what even inspired me in other aspects of my life. I definitely remember the discovery of the Darknet and me getting my shit together correlating in close proximity. When I saw someone using it at their house, I made a promise to myself that I was going to learn how to use it and do that, so I did. “If you will it, it is so”

A listing for weed

If you have enough determination and focus in life, you can do pretty much anything. It’s about really believing you can and making it happen, not just talking about it. My use of the Darknet was one of my first examples of my power to achieve things I wanted. After reading about how and purchasing the necessary online items; a scrambler to hide my IP address, and a key coder/decoder to scramble my physical address, I downloaded the .tor browser and created an account with Pirate Bay. I then cautiously made my first order, unsure if I was doing it right or that it would really work. I waited anxiously for two days and finally on the third, a simple package arrived, addressed to me. I opened it and saw inside a paper wrapping a baggie with two grams of weed in it. What a beautiful moment that was. From that point on, I never had to be at the will of a drug dealer again, well not those bums on the streets anyway; I was in league with international vendors now. I had upgraded from local pot addict, to international vendor of all drugs from all corners of the earth. You choose where in the world you want to ship from and to. Then there are sections, each with a different variety of drug:

Yup, everything you need. It’s like an Amazon Marketplace for drugs. Not only that, but the quantities are real amounts here, which is what really does it for me. In London, on that street corner, I was lucky if the £20 bag of weed I bought would weigh 1.7 grams with the bag, which weighed 0.1 or 2. However, the weight listed on the Darknet product would always be what you receive in the mail, full on point grams, as it should be. This was huge for me. Another thing is the quality: In London, cocaine averages around 20% purity, with it being cut with all sorts of crap like rat poison and paracetamol. “Hey, you may not be high, but hasn’t that headache gone right away?” Not what we pay good money for. On the Darknet, cocaine is around 70–90% pure, and instead of a small wrap weighing often as low as 0.5/6 on the street, it will be a big bag of powder, with small un-crushed rocks in. The difference really is so far apart. I remember one time at Wilderness festival, I was with some friends and someone had a testing kit on them. This would test the purity of drugs, tings like coke, MDMA, speed, ket etc and could do so with the majority of what we had. The drops would turn a dark colour of black/red/purple when mixed with the drug in question if it was real and high purity, and yellow/orange/green if the drug in question was nothing but bath salts and paracetamol. After the testing was complete, all of my friends sat with disappointed faces due to all of their drugs having come up as fake, all bought from the street. My drugs however, all bought from the Darknet, all tested positive for drugs, and all with high potency. I was everyone’s best friend after that. But it shouldn’t have to be this way; we should all have access to this glorious kingdom.

The original listing from the hash scammer. He had been a vendor for many years before doing an ‘exit scam’

Though the prices are often quite similar, you can find some real bargains if you search through the Darknet, which I love to do, scouring for deals. The real thing though is that it puts the control in the hands of the buyer, empowering them. The dealer is therefore serving the buyer correctly, with discipline and fairness, as things should be, as they are in many legal arenas. If not, they get showered with negative reviews and their listings fall from the first pages. It’s digital capitalism at it’s finest hour. This sort of organisation and co-operation by supposed outcasts of society is amazing, and what keeps it working. The system that has been built is so empowering for both parties, so daring, original and unique, that people believed in it, and that gave it power. They closed Pirate Bay, but it was barely a ripple; people were still going to use the Darknet, and two new sites popped up in it’s place like a Hydra, which it is, because of us. This sort of resilience against the forces that be is literally the only thing that can stop them; Us uniting for a cause. The law says its wrong and illegal, but we say we like this system, and we want it to stay. And there’s not much they can do; strength in numbers, there’s too many of us to arrest. Even their relentless sting operations against the head of the beast, the owners of the Darknet sites has proved similar to the cops operations against offline drug dealers, doing nothing. They arrest one, someone else takes their place to fulfil the never-ceasing demand by the consumer. We all know their struggles are futile now, that the war on drugs cannot be won, and this recent piece of technology was the straw on their camel backs. It’s now online, nearly impossible to trace and find, harder than ever for them, and easier than ever for us to hide behind a mask and quietly get high. Believe in the power of an idea because with enough belief it will change the world.

“Beneath this mask there is more than flesh or blood, there is an idea. And you can’t kill an idea” V

Your home of insanity and biting social commentary

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade