The Legend of YouAreAnIdiot.org

In 2004, a website known as youareanidiot(dot)org rose to prominence across the internet, where it was home to what is now recognized as the You Are An Idiot computer virus (mostly known as "YouAreAnIdiot" or "Offiz"). However, many people first visiting the site had no idea what they were getting themselves into, and the story goes even deeper than that. The YouAreAnIdiot trojan horse, also known by its official name “Offiz” infected as many as 100,000 people, and it was now making its way around the internet as a topic of heated discussion. A subject people immediately regretted becoming acquainted with, its presence just continuing to grow. It wasn’t long until people were claiming that their entire hard drives were being permanently erased and damaged beyond repair. What exactly was going on? How did the story of YouAreAnIdiot go from exhausting tech support threads within online forums into becoming an internet legend? Well, properly answering that question requires a bit of historical context. We need to go all the way back to the year 2002. The internet is still in its fledgling phase, with the vestiges of the 90s, but it is growing at an alarming rate, as well as getting smarter and more sophisticated every day. This goes for both the technological aspects of the internet, as well as human behavior. The internet is becoming more because people are demanding more, for better and for worse. Not only was it improving on user convenience, it was learning to solve...