Salon Arts & Entertainment | Hacking toward Bethlehem

Hacking toward Bethlehem | page 1, 2, 3, 4

Abe was the second-youngest of seven children -- six of them boys. Before he came along, his parents belonged to the Children of God, a roving religious cult that emerged from the Jesus People movement of the '60s. His parents deserted the sect after a few years but maintained an itinerant lifestyle. The Ingersoll clan was living in Twisp, Wash., in the basement of an Assemblies of God church, when Abe entered the world on March 19, 1980. Later, the family moved to a Mennonite commune in rural Illinois. On "Road Rules," Abe can be heard lamenting the rigors of growing up on welfare, mostly through the late '80s and early '90s.

Abe's father, Lewis Ingersoll, an affable man who laughs easily and revels in the family's lore, downplays the hardships. "These kids always emphasize things that, to me, are kind of a distortion," he says. "I had another son who went to Yale. He wrote a story that was published in the paper about him and his older brother getting in a dumpster." And yet, as Ingersoll admits: "We did have a period of time when we went through dumpsters. But hell, the kids had more fun! Every dumpster we passed by, they'd want to stop and go through it!"

The Ingersolls' marriage disintegrated in the late '80s. After bearing seven children, Abe's mother "switched teams," as Abe puts it. She and her partner got custody of the younger children, including Abe. He lived with his mother in De Kalb, Ill., but after a round of family counseling, he relocated to his father's home in Peoria, where he lived from 1994 to 1997. Abe was 12 when he first discovered computers, specifically a Toshiba laptop that his dad brought home, which was running an old version of DOS. Abe was a natural with computers. "I picked up the Toshiba, fired up Procomm Plus, and that was the end of it," he says. He started with dial-ups to local bulletin board systems. When a local ISP hooked up its T-1 line in late 1994, Abe discovered the Internet. "Of course I was their first customer," he says.

With no money to buy better computer equipment, and under the influence of older hacker buddies he met while noodling around online, Abe soon dived into deeper waters. Using discarded credit-card receipts, he started ordering computer equipment from pay phones, having the merchandise overnighted to vacant houses. Before the shippers discovered the scam, he was long gone with the booty. Eventually, his older brother Chase ratted Abe out to his father, who turned his son in to the police. Abe confessed all. He was slapped with 18 months of probation and several hundred dollars in fines.

After this incident, Abe's father was ready for him to move on. An uncle on his mother's side agreed to serve as Abe's new mentor and guardian. Abe relocated to Los Angeles, entered high school, dithered, dropped out by pulling what he calls "the Ferris Bueller trick" (back-dooring into the school's computers and wiping clean all records of himself).

Abe was free, but he felt like he was missing out on something. So he figured he should cap his adolescence with a lunge at TV stardom. He decided to tough out the arduous "Road Rules" casting process -- which begins with 5,000 applicants -- to try to land a spot on the show.

What Abe got into was, of course, a real-life variation on "EDtv," in which everyone's existence is quasi-scripted by unseen hands. "The big mindfuck of it all is that they control everything," Abe says of Bunim and Murray. "From how much money you have to where you're going to what you're doing. You have this set of parameters you have to work within to, like, 'have fun.' You're on 'The Truman Show.' You just happen to know it."

"Basically you saw how mundane and silly a lot of it was," says Abe. "These two burned-out soap opera producers are now doing a show for MTV. They take thousands of hours of tape and make it into -- whatever you call it. It's pretty much a joke." (For the record: Bunim is a former soap opera producer; Murray came out of news and documentary production.)

Next page | I get by with a little help from my Cult of the Dead Cow friends


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Before he came along, his parents belonged to the Children of God, a roving religious cult that emerged from the Jesus People movement of the '60s. His parents deserted the sect after a few years but maintained an itinerant lifestyle. The Ingersoll clan was living in Twisp, Wash., in the basement of an Assemblies of God church, when Abe entered the world on March 19, 1980. Later, the family moved to a Mennonite commune in rural Illinois. On "Road Rules," Abe can be heard lamenting the rigors of growing up on welfare, mostly through the late '80s and early '90s. Abe's father, Lewis Ingersoll, an affable man who laughs easily and revels in the family's lore, downplays the hardships. "These kids always emphasize things that, to me, are kind of a distortion," he says. "I had another son who went to Yale. He wrote a story that was published in the paper about him and his older brother getting in a dumpster." And yet, as Ingersoll admits: "We did have a period of time when we went through dumpsters. But hell, the kids had more fun! Every dumpster we passed by, they'd want to stop and go through it!" The Ingersolls' marriage disintegrated in the late '80s. After bearing seven children, Abe's mother "switched teams," as Abe puts it. She and her partner got custody of the younger children, including Abe. He lived with his mother in De Kalb, Ill., but after a round of family counseling, he relocated to his father's home in Peoria, where he lived from 1994 to 1997. Abe was 12 when he first discovered computers, specifically a Toshiba laptop that his dad brought home, which was running an old version of DOS. Abe was a natural with computers. "I picked up the Toshiba, fired up Procomm Plus, and that was the end of it," he says. He started with dial-ups to local bulletin board systems. When a local ISP hooked up its T-1 line in late 1994, Abe discovered the Internet. "Of course I was their first customer," he says. With no money to buy better computer equipment, and under the influence of older hacker buddies he met while noodling around online, Abe soon dived into deeper waters. Using discarded credit-card receipts, he started ordering computer equipment from pay phones, having the merchandise overnighted to vacant houses. Before the shippers discovered the scam, he was long gone with the booty. Eventually, his older brother Chase ratted Abe out to his father, who turned his son in to the police. Abe confessed all. He was slapped with 18 months of probation and several hundred dollars in fines. After this incident, Abe's father was ready for him to move on. An uncle on his mother's side agreed to serve as Abe's new mentor and guardian. Abe relocated to Los Angeles, entered high school, dithered, dropped out by pulling what he calls "the Ferris Bueller trick" (back-dooring into the school's computers and wiping clean all records of himself). Abe was free, but he felt like he was missing out on something. So he figured he should cap his adolescence with a lunge at TV stardom. He decided to tough out the arduous "Road Rules" casting process -- which begins with 5,000 applicants -- to try to land a spot on the show. What Abe got into was, of course, a real-life variation on "EDtv," in which everyone's existence is quasi-scripted by unseen hands. "The big mindfuck of it all is that they control everything," Abe says of Bunim and Murray. "From how much money you have to where you're going to what you're doing. You have this set of parameters you have to work within to, like, 'have fun.' You're on 'The Truman Show.' You just happen to know it." "Basically you saw how mundane and silly a lot of it was," says Abe. "These two burned-out soap opera producers are now doing a show for MTV. They take thousands of hours of tape and make it into -- whatever you call it. It's pretty much a joke." (For the record: Bunim is a former soap opera producer; Murray came out of news and documentary production.) Next page \| I get by with a little help from my Cult of the Dead Cow friends