Back in the heyday of indie music blogs in the late aughts and early 2010s, one anonymous writer kept everyone entertained with his meme-speak criticism of the era's indie greats: the mononymous Carles, head of the now-defunct Hipster Runoff.
In 2012, the website briefly went offline from an apparent hacking — and now, none other than Miss Claire Boucher a.k.a. Grimes has claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a video interview with Vanity Fair released earlier this month, Boucher admits to getting her video game techie pal to launch a DDoS attack on Carles and HRO for posting a "Grimes Gone Wild" photo on the website.
"Back in the day, like before the woke era, I actually got cancelled for this," Grimes says in the clip, referencing a photo of her kissing an unnamed person.
She continued: "I was trying to be like, all integrity, and start my career, and it was like 'Grimes Gone Wild' or something, and it was just this like, super wack, mean story, and it was like this meme which was going all over the internet."
She goes on to explain how she enlisted her friend to launch the attack:
But my friend who worked for — I will not say which video game — had access to … OK, well I don't wanna get him in trouble, but, anyway, we were actually able to DDoS Hipster Runoff and basically blackmail them. We were like, like, we're not gonna let you run your — put your site back up until you take the story down. And he did, in fact, take the story down. And it was like my coolest hacker moment. So, yeah, that's the story of this photo.
As Pitchfork points out, Carles refrained from posting about Grimes for another year following the attack. The website later sold in 2015, after which Vice ran a retrospective dedicated to Carles and HRO titled "The Last Relevant Blogger."
R.I.P. Hipster Runoff! We hardly knew ye.
Skip ahead to the two-minute, 20-second mark to hear Grimes talk about the alleged hack below.
In 2012, the website briefly went offline from an apparent hacking — and now, none other than Miss Claire Boucher a.k.a. Grimes has claimed responsibility for the attack.
In a video interview with Vanity Fair released earlier this month, Boucher admits to getting her video game techie pal to launch a DDoS attack on Carles and HRO for posting a "Grimes Gone Wild" photo on the website.
"Back in the day, like before the woke era, I actually got cancelled for this," Grimes says in the clip, referencing a photo of her kissing an unnamed person.
She continued: "I was trying to be like, all integrity, and start my career, and it was like 'Grimes Gone Wild' or something, and it was just this like, super wack, mean story, and it was like this meme which was going all over the internet."
She goes on to explain how she enlisted her friend to launch the attack:
But my friend who worked for — I will not say which video game — had access to … OK, well I don't wanna get him in trouble, but, anyway, we were actually able to DDoS Hipster Runoff and basically blackmail them. We were like, like, we're not gonna let you run your — put your site back up until you take the story down. And he did, in fact, take the story down. And it was like my coolest hacker moment. So, yeah, that's the story of this photo.
As Pitchfork points out, Carles refrained from posting about Grimes for another year following the attack. The website later sold in 2015, after which Vice ran a retrospective dedicated to Carles and HRO titled "The Last Relevant Blogger."
R.I.P. Hipster Runoff! We hardly knew ye.
Skip ahead to the two-minute, 20-second mark to hear Grimes talk about the alleged hack below.
