The polarized state of American politics is so pervasive that it’s manages to worm hostility into the most sacred of freedoms, like the Constitutionally-protected right to a bipartisan Wi-Fi password. At tonight’s Republican debate held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, all members of the media must use the password “StopHillary,” according to a tweet sent out yesterday by candidate Ted Cruz’s spokesman and later corroborated by several other images posed by journalists on social media.
The Republican debate’s Wi-Fi password is ‘StopHillary’
Won’t somebody please think of the Wi-Fi passwords?
Won’t somebody please think of the Wi-Fi passwords?
is a Senior Producer on Decoder. Previously, he reported on the technology and gaming industries for more than a decade.
Some are calling it a “brilliant troll.“ And to be fair, it is. Asking members of the Liberal Media™ to type the phrase is the Republican National Committee’s way of putting its middle fingers up to the sky. And it’s also childish in a way partisan political jabs are rarely allowed to be, as if debate organizers teamed up to pull off a high school assembly prank and high fived under the bleachers afterwards.
— RNC (@GOP) November 10, 2015 The real victim, of course, is not the media’s sensibilities, but the sanctity of the Wi-Fi password. When we’re weaponizing the WPAA-2 security protocol, what’s next? Stop Hillary-branded watermarks? A “Make America ____ Again” CAPTCHA? The list of technology trolls is near-endless, and it’s only a matter of time before they before they come for our network names too.
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