DATELINE–Suburban Virginia

A technology splinter group calling itself South to the Future has claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s blackout of America Online, the world’s largest commercial provider of online services.

The event, popularly billed as “The Day the Online World Stood Still,” took millions of subscribers “offline” for a period of approximately 16 hours. In an attempt to regain technological credibility and ostensible digital control, AOL engineers attributed the problem to a losing battle with the online giant’s system upgrade software.

Posturing itself as an Internet David to AOL’s Goliath, South to the Future has issued press releases claiming that the blackout was a “SCUD-style surgical strike” against what the organization derides as the “pasty white underbelly of the Internet’s bulging middle.”

“America Online may have lost the battle, but we will not lose the war!” was the rallying cry of the neo-utility’s commander-in-chief, Will C. Encourt.

But if you dismiss SttF as simply a loosely organized group of dissident hackers, think again. The sophisticated infiltration of the AOL’s “main brain” was not accomplished by the expected avenue of code-busting shenanigans, but by the installation of a unique, never-before encountered virus. The virus, SttF boasts, owes its origins not to a computer program, but to Santeria.

Although not explicitly stated by the techno-terrorists, industry insiders expect the blackout is a response to AOL’s recent policy of “whiting out” posts submitted to the service in Spanish and Portuguese. These media insiders point to a recent wire story the group published titled “America Online OnCrack? or, the Claim to Imminent Domain over the American Right of Way.”

What SttF will say is that the AOL “offlining” is not a freak occurrence. The group’s spokesperson asserts that the action is the opening salvo in a holy war waged by the technologically dispossessed against those who stand for the twin evils of enforced cultural colonialism and white digital supremacy.

“America Online should change its name to Americans Stand Inline. That’s why we had to tell them that we would not ‘git in line’ as they demand. In fact we issued a counter demand that AOL was out of line and that the company must consequently get offline. You see this obsession with lines is linked back to the Biblical invocation of the Mark of the Beast. Inordinate attention to lines is, of course, a textbook symptomatic of fascism. As you can see by our anti-fascist design aesthetic we have an aversion to lines. We go so far as to ban lions from our site. We even block access by people named Neil. Our business is destroying lines. Soup lines, inline skates, line art, the thin blue line. You name it. With our Santeria virus invoked against lines, we have the mystical powers to back these threats up. So there.”

Despite the rambling tone of the terrorists’ statement of responsibility, their message is clear. As the group claimed in a more lucid moment “AOL may be a juggernaut, but South to the Future is a zeitgeist.”

And indeed in the opinion of industry stylemakers and trendsetters, the buzz about SttF confirms that indeed they are the “Spirit of ‘96.”