📸

check amexsux.com,’ his contact said, ‘it’ll make you feel better, if nothing else!’

Renu loved the new site (logo: DO leave home without it), where former clients of American Express poured out their anger at perceived wrongs. The animus felt towards this particular company is fairly extensive, as a Google search testifies: there are hundreds of sites dedicated to bitching about Amex, many of which post a fairly impres- sive set of links to negative news stories featuring the company.

One poster on the message board offered an original idea to those who felt they had grievances against the company. ‘Take your revenge! Go to CarderPlanet.com!’

As Renu set sail in search of CarderPlanet, he felt it was time to bid farewell to his own personality. He became JiLsi, whose avatar was the face of a mischievous cartoon pirate with a red hat and a black patch over his left eye. A veritable Captain Jack Sparrow amidst the cyber Caribbean, he soon felt at home among the scurrilous crew of hackers, crackers and fraudsters when at last he weighed anchor on Carder- Planet. Somewhere among this group of misfits wandered Matrix, and although it was a few months before they exchanged the vows of virtual friendship, the two became familiar figures floating between the myriad sites that sought to emulate CarderPlanet.

Where else might you find a drug-addicted refugee from Sri Lanka hanging out with a strait-laced middle-class German teenager, hosted by a charismatic Odessite with a vision for a new Ukraine? Only on the Web.

📸