Following up Monday's post about counteracting the use of cell phones in a modern Horror RPG setting, I'm going to talk about the Internet today. One of the major threats to supernatural entities is exposure, and the internet is the ultimate in exposure. Here are some ways to handle it.
1) Skepticism/Disbelief - The internet is filled with skepticism and disbelief, courtesy of constant hoaxes, leaks, or false rumors. Pictures are accused of being Photoshopped, video can be easily engineered to look real, and people can easily be discredited (as this impersonator of an Andy Kaufman child can attest). Similarly, organizations have been known to hire people to discredit legitimate posters or otherwise harass them. Your expose on werewolves in London quickly becomes relegated to creepypasta. And who in their right mind would believe that FBI agents of a secret department would post a revelation about alien life hidden on Earth?
2) Bury It - Internet users have the attention span of a gnat. Your exposure of a secret shapechanging snakeman suddenly gets drowned out by Miley Lohan-Spears showing a bit too much skin in public. Or, an organized and tech-savvy evil could incite skepticism by turning your picture of bat-boy into a saturated meme to the point where it becomes old news. Moderators or hackers may even delete the revealing information.
3) Site Takedown/Takeover - Even the most credible sites are vulnerable to DDOS attacks, or will disappear with a huge traffic flow. Similarly, a buyout of the hosting service, domain, or company running the site could delete a posting. Alternatively, a rumor that a site has been compromised or taken over could quickly discredit a community.
4) DMCA - The Digital Millenium Copyright Act is already frequently invoked to remove copyrighted images, videos, and music from the web, rightfully or not-so-rightfully. Most web hosts would rather take down every single suspected violation rather than risk actually battling it out in court, so a simple letter appearing to be from a legal team can quickly erase an image from distribution. Your picture of a supposed swamp monster is accused of being a leak from a movie set for "The Return of the Swampman," a Columbiuniversal Production. If the immediate site operator balks, sending one to the domain host, or content host/server, can quickly work.
5) Honeypot - If a "secure" site can be covertly compromised without users finding out, as the FBI makes a habit of doing, the characters can easily be tracked, identified, and suddenly find themselves playing on their back foot. Alternatively, the rumor that a site has been compromised would make users think twice before even accessing in it. A few years back, 4chan users noticed that their traffic was changed and shunted through a datacenter in Langley, VA, leading to paranoia (rightfully so) that the FBI was monitoring the users. A similar occurrence could leave players, and their online communities, exposed.
How would you handle players "outing" the supernatural on the internet?
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