“‘What do you read, my lord?’ ‘Words, words, words.

”
— Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Sticks and stones may break your bones but words will
never hurt you.”
— unsatisfying parental advice

In no time in history have words been as powerful, as

fearful, or as numerous as they are at this very moment. We
live in the era of words.

The tale of Weev's life, even before this particular chapter

begins, is bound up with the terrible power of words. Weev,
worse known as Andrew Auernheimer, is a notorious
internet troll serving 41 months for hacking and identity
theft, despite having done neither of these. I don't mean that
he is innocent —Weev is in no way innocent — but that the
things he did were neither hacking nor identity theft.

I must say at once that this man is someone I count as a

friend. I have written him and sent him a book, which I
doubt he has received. He has spent much of his recent time
in solitary, and is being punished with various forms of
isolation available to his captors. I can't write about my
friend's incarceration with detached journalistic distance. I
won't pretend to, nor even that the laws he is convicted of
breaking are neutrally distant things. They are laws that
have dogged my life and my community for years,
incoherently and violently striking down computer experts
like car accidents or cancer. They are a hated and random
fate.