About Evil Russian Hackers and the Sherlock Leak
I’m guessing this goes without asking, but does anybody know the BBC series Sherlock? If you don’t, have you been living under a rock? It’s an extremely popular show with fans all over the world — deservedly so, find the BAFTAs, the Emmys, and the Golden Globes, who have each given the show several awards. Its fourth season has been broadcast in the last few weeks, but there is a problem: the final episode (titled “The Final Problem”) has had the lowest-ever audience for a Sherlock episode. But why is that?
Well, for one, the episode was shit! And people knew that before it was aired on Sunday, because in fact, the episode had been leaked on the internet on Saturday. That is probably the other reason for why so little people tuned in.
The leaked copy of The Final Episode was dubbed in Russian, and according to this BBC News segment, had been widely spread. As a bit of a Sherlock fan myself (okay, I admit it, I’m a huge Sherlock nerd), I was made aware of the leak too, though I decided not to watch it straight away. I was afraid it’d ruin the fun, since, you see, I don’t speak Russian. (I was so naïve… it’d probably have been more fun to watch the episode in Russian. It’s really, really bad!
Anyway, so the question now is: who leaked it?
Aforementioned BBC News segment has an answer in store: evil Russians did it. As of now, they cannot yet decide whether those evil Russians are common criminals who wanted to make money with the leak, or whether it was an act of revenge by Russia Channel 1, who are waging a feud against the BBC (according to the BBC, at least).
A bit tongue-in-cheek, the News presenter says that this case would have baffled Sherlock Holmes himself (I doubt he’d have found it super interesting, to be honest) and that the situation presents a lot of fun for conspiracy theorists. Which is true, by the way. If you want to go down that rabbit hole, you could, for example, wonder, why the creators of the series alerted viewers that the episode had been leaked. Surely, if you didn’t want people to watch it, you’d have done your best to keep the leak secret?
There is, however, another feature of interest in this case; I want to talk about Russian hackers.
Lately, they are everywhere, aren’t they? A quick search on Google Trends confirms that 2016, truly, has been the year of the Russian Hacker. Especially in the last quarter of the year, interest in the topic spiked dramatically.
I guess, that is understandable. Like I said, they’re everywhere, we don’t understand them (who speaks Russian, anyway?) and they are powerful. Powerful enough, even to change the outcome of the American presidential election.
Also, they’re old enemies, combining two primal fears of your average western citizen.
1) Hackers.
Hackers never really had a good reputation in the media. Similar to the stereotype of a gamer, hackers are unwashed, unkempt social outcasts who eat junk food and live in stuffed basements. They wear masks and can cause mischief or rob you of your savings.
2) Russians.
Russians, on the other hand, have been presented as the western world’s nemesis for ages. They were the enemy during the cold war, they are corrupt communists, anti-democratic, and they wear Adidas jumpsuits.
It’s easy to mistrust them, to fear them.
And for the News Media in general, it’s very easy to present them as evil. To me, it feels like you only have to blame Russian hackers and people don’t ask questions. It’s like “of course Russian hackers did this”.
And maybe they did, who knows? I certainly don’t. Maybe I should simply put on a tin foil hat and join hands with all the other conspiracy theorists on the net.
