Mr. Robot

Elliot, a young programmer who works as a cyber-security engineer by day and a vigilante hacker by night. Elliot finds himself at a crossroads when the mysterious leader of an underground hacker group recruits him to destroy the corporation he is paid to protect.

Source: Mr. Robot on Trakt.tv

About

Mr. Robot is an American drama thriller television series created by Sam Esmail. The series premiered on USA Network on June 2015. It currently has three seasons with a fourth one coming on the fourth quarter of this year.

Thoughts

What drove me to watch Mr. Robot was all the hack hack hack concept. As someone who used to work for an anti-virus company, I had a little knowledge in cyber-security. I was intrigued how the show would handle this hacking thing and wondered if it would be one of those hacking shows where all the hacker does is press Enter and voila! He now owns their system. Luckily, Mr. Robot is as realistic as it gets when it comes to the art of hacking.

The story follows Elliot Anderson, who by day is a young anti-social cyber security expert and a vigilante hacker by night. He uses his genius hacking abilities to take down people who have done misdeeds in society by sending an anonymous tip about peoples illegal and immoral acts to the corresponding authorities.

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Things start to get interesting when the cyber security firm Elliot was working at suffered from a DDOS attack. Elliot manage to save the day but is surprised when a mysterious man who introduced himself as the leader of an underground hacker group approached him after. Mr. Robot, the leader of the said group tries to recruit Elliot to be a member of their organization. The goal is to take down corporate America by targeting E.corp, one of the largest multi-national conglomerate in the world and happens to own 70% of the global consumer credit industry.Elliot is faced with a dilemma. Do nothing and be contented with what he have been doing, that is taking down minor fishes or do something that will make a huge impact on society by taking down the very root of the problem, E-corp.

Mr. Robot tells us in an interesting manner what's wrong in today's society. How big businesses controls and dictates how we live. How we are somehow living under the illusion of freedom. It is great to see a series where the show doesn't treat its audience as idiots. The show makes an effort to make it as realistic as possible by doing some very well done research.

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And to justify how the show makes an extra effort: Did You Know that most if not all urls, IP addresses, binaries, hex strings, addresses that we see on the show are real and can be accessed by us? It is somewhat a hidden puzzle or riddle created by the showrunners for 'very curious people'. In fact there is a subreddit community dedicated in finding and solving all these hidden puzzles found all over the series, to which you can join here : r/ARGsociety