I'm really not looking at gay porno

May 11, 2008 1:13 PM

When checking out a gchat link from a friend to nbc.com, my firefox froze as "jew.wmv" tried to run (unsuccessfully) and a screaming chorus of "I'm looking at gay porno" came out of my computer. Does anybody know what the hell this is?

Being at home, alone, secure in my sexuality and the fact that I wasn't looking at porn of any type, it wasn't embarrassing, but I'm also on a mac, and not used to getting viruses any more as a result. I can't imagine that nbc.com would have caused this, even on their SNL Politics page, and when I tried again, it happened again. Anybody run into this or know why it might have happened? (I'm running Firefox on Leopard.)

posted by My Bloody Pony to computers & internet (10 comments total)

Does the link actually go to nbc.com or is it cleverly formatted to look like it goes to nbc.com? For instance, does it look like this: http://www.nbc.com/politics?
posted by proj at 1:24 PM on May 11, 2008

I'm assuming your friend is messing with you. Are you sure the URL was actually going to nbc.com and not one of the linked sites that Google seems to indicate that some people find hilarious?
posted by jessamyn at 1:24 PM on May 11, 2008

It's a troll trick along the lines of goatse, tubgirl, and lemonparty. He probably made it look like it was an NBC link when it actually was not. You can't do much, but don't worry--no lasting damage. Just be careful about clicking his links.
posted by nasreddin at 1:25 PM on May 11, 2008

Yeah, this happened to me this morning - I got rickrolled when trying to view last night's SNL monologue. I didn't look too much into it, but it appears to be more than just your link and your browser.
posted by deadmessenger at 1:32 PM on May 11, 2008

Perhaps also relevant: nbc.com was hacked this morning. When I tried to look at the intro to last night's episode of Saturday Night Live (which has diehard Clinton supporters spitting mad), instead of the video I expected I got a fullscreen rendering of the Badger Badger Badger flash video, with a couple of other annoying audio streams on top of it. I went directly to nbc.com by typing the address in my browser, not through a forwarded link.
posted by Prospero at 1:36 PM on May 11, 2008

Basically, a whole bunch of people from *chan used NBC's broken HTML filter for comments on their videos to embed frames and/or flash stuff. So it was a legit NBC link, but for now I wouldn't visit NBC til they get it cleaned up.
posted by Inspector.Gadget at 1:36 PM on May 11, 2008

Sounds like the noted trolling tool Last Measure (warning: external links from that ED page may play the sound, display disgusting images, and crash your browser).
posted by grouse at 1:45 PM on May 11, 2008

Thanks everybody. it was legitimately the nbc site, but this just installed itself on top of last night's monologue. Now I understand why.

Fucking 4chan...
posted by My Bloody Pony at 1:51 PM on May 11, 2008

The shit they're pullling against Scientology almost makes up for all the other crap. But only almost.
posted by dhartung at 10:12 PM on May 11, 2008

If it convinces NBC to start properly filtering HTML, kudos. overlaying badger videos is the LEAST of the scary things people can do with unescaped HTML.
posted by verb at 4:34 PM on May 12, 2008