(Photo: Imdb.com)

Hackers do a lot for epic lulz, including trolling a credulous public in love with stories about improbable, Mission Impossible-worthy hacks. So we are skeptical of The Daily Dot's article about anonymous (we don't yet know if that word should be capitalized) Pastebin posts claiming GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney's infamously withheld tax returns have been snagged by hackers and are being held for ransom.

The authors of the Pastebin missives say Mr. Romney's returns will be released to the public on September 28 unless the hackers are given a Bitcoin ransom equal to $1 million in U.S. dollars.

In case you think the Mission Impossible allusion is hyperbole, just read how the Romney tax return kidnappers claim they snagged the documents:

Romney's 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied. A package was sent to the PWC on suite 260 with a flash drive containing a copy of the 1040 files, plus copies were sent to the Democratic office in the county and copies were sent to the GOP office in the county at the beginning of the week also containing flash drives with copies of Romney's tax returns before 2010. A scanned signature image for Mitt Romney from the 1040 forms were scanned and included with the packages, taken from earlier 1040 tax forms gathered and stored on the flash drives.

One can almost see Tom Cruise doing his patented karate-chop run away from the accountant's office.

However, it might be a little premature to call bullshit on these claims--as this article published today in The Tennessean makes clear, the hackers aren't lying about distributing packages to PricewaterhouseCoopers's office in upscale Franklin, Tenn.:

The Williamson County Republican Party this morning notified police about a package received last week that claims to include copies of Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s tax returns hacked from an accounting office in Franklin.

A letter in the package corresponds to an incredible claim posted anonymously on a website popular among computer hackers that boasts of having downloaded copies of the tax returns obtained by hacking into systems via PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Franklin office.

The meatspace effort in Franklin lacked some of the imagined elegance of the alleged operation to steal the tax returns. For example, the manila package came with a handwritten note "For Rep Learders" (sic) written on it. As Williamson County (TN) Republican Party director Jean Barwick told The Tennessean:

 "A million dollars seemed kind of low [...] If you’re going to go for a million, why not go for $100 million."

We'll wait for the other shoe to drop, which it probably won't. But it's fun to imagine PricewaterhouseCooper staffers asking, "What the hell is a Bitcoin?"

UPDATE: BuzzFeed reports that PricewaterhouseCooper (PWC) is taking the hackers' claims seriously enough to consult with the feds. BuzzFeed's John Herrmann--clearly as big a fan of Mission Impossible comparisons as we are--quotes PWC's communications director Chris Atkins, who told BuzzFeed that the firm is "aware of the allegations that have been made regarding improper access to our systems." PWC is "working closely with the United States Secret Service," said Mr. Atkins, but at the moment "there is no evidence that our systems have been compromised." BuzzFeed tried to press Mr. Atkins on how seriously the firm takes the hackers' assertions but he wouldn't elaborate.

(Photo: Mamapop.com)

It's a question that has plagued us during many sleepless nights: What is a brony, really? We already know that fans of the rainbow-ridden My Little Pony series enjoy attending conventions and having public cybersex on Twitter, but little else has been scientifically revealed about the psychology behind the mystical brony culture...until now. (Cue Law and Order cut music.)

The Daily Dot pointed us to a study done by two researchers named Dr. Patrick Edwards and Dr. Marsha Redden, who conducted a survey in an attempt to classify the personality traits of bronies. Their findings may shock you.

Just kidding, they're pretty much exactly what you'd expect.

According to the study, the average profile of a brony is a 21-year-old male student who is heterosexual and single. Compared to non-bronies, bronies are more introverted, agreeable and tend to get "lost" in experiences--like a My Little Pony subculture, for instance!

"Given the MLP theme of “Love and Tolerance” it is not surprising that the Bronies scored significantly higher on the measure of Agreeableness," notes the study.

The study also broke down bronies into several different types:

• The Social Brony (29 percent): "Are dedicated and engaged fans and are publically open about their “Bronyhood."
• Secret Brony (28 percent): "Are dedicated and engaged fans, however, they do not share their “Bronyhood” with family."
• Independent Brony (7 percent): "Do not display dedicated and engaged fan behaviors (not seeking positive social interactions with other Bronies)."
• Hidden Brony (8 percent): "Do not display dedicated and engaged fan behaviors (few outward signs). They are unable or unwilling to share their “Bronyhood” with family and friends and tend to discovered MLP by accident."
• Mixed Brony (28 percent): "The hardest to pin point, they represents a blend or mixture of two or more of the other types."

Judging from these findings, it seems like bronies would make awesome boyfriends/friends, but terrible party hosts.

[shakes mane] [hooves you a bowl of guac and a beer]

Screengrab from Mr. Keller's OKCupid profile

Media outlets should have learned a lesson when Village Voice Media got caught spamming Reddit and basically had to grovel for the Mechagodzilla of link aggregation sites' forgiveness, but they didn't. We know this because the Daily Dot ferreted out a new spammer, no less than The Atlantic's social media editor, Jared Keller--a.k.a. "SlaterHearst" during his time pimping Atlantic articles to the Redditorati, a.k.a. "redditors." Mr. Keller's skullduggery was revealed to Daily Dot by finding him on OK Cupid, where he used the same screen name, describing himself as an "Attempted journalist" and "lover of new ideas."

As "SlaterHearst," Mr. Keller was a highly successful redditor until the site banned him last month:

In his year on the site, Keller became a fairly influential redditor, collecting more than 176,000 link karma and, at one time, ranking in the top 30 among all users on a site that sees 35 million unique visitors a month.

Keller relentlessly shared content from The Atlantic, frequently posting three or four articles in a single day, which, all told, added up to hundreds and probably thousands of links—so many, in fact, that clicking through 10 pages and 250 submissions worth of content takes you just three months deep into his submission history.

In a statement to the Daily Dot, Mr. Keller seemed equivocal about whether he might deserve the feared "reddit spammer" label:

As you know, one of the community rules says that self-promotion isn’t forbidden but may put you on ‘thin ice.’ I tried to adhere to those standards, but as language like ‘thin ice’ suggests, there’s a lot of leeway in how one might interpret them. Reddit recently contacted The Atlantic and told us that, based on the frequency of my Atlantic submissions, they would be deactivating my personal account. I never had any bad intentions, but I understand and accept reddit’s position and remain a loyal member of the reddit community.

The Daily Dot suggests Mr. Keller may have had help with spamming Reddit from Ian Miles Cheong, a one-time Reddit moderator who was also banned for spamming the site. Both Mr. Keller and Mr. Cheong have denied any kind of formal arrangement, Mr. Keller telling Daily Dot correspondent Kevin Morris that they "know each other casually via Twitter and that's the extent of it."

Checking out what's left of "SlaterHearst's" history on Reddit revealed a little-noted nugget of irony he submitted 3 months ago: "Can't tell if Business Insider spammer or just really into Business Insider."

Robot lyfe.

When it comes to focusing the internet's attention on a single page, Digg.com used to be king. But it's been about a year since Digg was upset by its smaller, more indie competitor: the highly-active forums of Conde Nast-owned Reddit, a generally happy place of kitten GIFs and funny memes and self-confessions and so on. But in the more divisive sub-forums, writes The Daily Dot, evil lurks. "Like any community, Reddit has its dark sides. It has neighborhoods rife with porn, racism, misogyny, and violence. And it’s also got gangs," The Daily Dot wrote ominously yesterday.

Gangs?! On Reddit?!

"Often referred to as downvote squads, these groups of users usually build up around shared ideologies. They launch attacks from their home subreddits—the topically themed sections of the social news site where they meet likeminded types and organize. Then they jump around the site and downvote en masse posts or comments with which they disagree."

The Daily Dot is referring specifically to threads like r/mensrights, r/feminisms, r/libertarian, and r/hockey. A post in r/mensrights last month received 10,023 up votes and 8,736 down votes. Evidence of a divisive issue? Or a gang conspiracy like the squads that once trolled Digg?

We haven't seen too many accusations of group downvoting on Reddit itself lately, so we were a bit surprised to see the Daily Dot raise the alarm. We did find one post that was a fake call-to-arms:

"Apparently our fellow redditors aren't that fond of us," writes user soupyhands in the Canucks hockey subreddit, in response to an accusation that the Canadians were forming downvote squads. "I guess Haters gonna Hate. I guess its too much for them that we have a team in the final and we are the largest hockey subreddit." Fighting words!