A Crypto Project’s Weird Marketing ‘Hack’ Riffed on Infamous 1987 Chicago TV Hijacking

Who woulda thunk a mostly forgotten 1980s TV character could help a crypto hackathon attract developers?

That seems to be the gambit of NEAR Protocol, which this week staged a very weird takeover of its social media channels by a purportedly unknown “hacker.” The fake breach started with mocking tweets and crescendoed with a masked villain disrupting founder Illia Polosukhin to rip on the crypto “pipe dream” and telling viewers “there’s nothing waiting for you in Thailand” (where NEAR’s holding its hackathon in November).

Reverse psychology aside, the marketing stunt makes callbacks to a decades-old character of early digital culture: Max Headroom. He’s the purportedly AI-generated television host of a series of 1980’s TV movie and subsequent shows that aired in the U.S. and the U.K., and also the chief marketer of New Coke (a famous flop).

What really makes Max memorable today, and notable for the purposes of NEAR’s rather cringey gambit, is the broadcast that wasn’t supposed to be: the Max Headroom incident. In 1987, an unknown signal pirate hijacked a “Dr. Who” broadcast in Chicago and went on a 90-second nonsensical ramble, all while wearing a Max Headroom mask.

A good deal matches up between the Max Headroom incident (an unsolved crime that sparked a decades-long federal investigation) and NEAR’s video takeover. Both star a masked, suited, sunglass’d, voice-altered man making fun of his viewers.

Of course, the content of the two characters’ criticisms differ. Chicago’s signal pirate dropped blasts of gibberish during his unsanctioned broadcast, occasionally calling out people as “nerds.” He ended his broadcast by getting his bare bottom slapped with a fly swatter.

While the Max Headroom incident was a genuine hijacking of the airwaves, the NEAR takeover is a marketing stunt admitted to by the company’s own spokespeople. An inauthentic hack.

CoinDesk learned a bit of this NEAR-Max’s lore: his name is “HiJack” and he’s “the antithesis of Web3 values – a sleazy, corporate, desk-jockey who is satisfied with the current state of the world (because he and his cronies are on top).”

“His aim is to sow dissent and doubt (literally FUD) because Web3, and particularly the intersection of AI x Web3 in which the user (us) comes first, is a tangible alternative to the current way the world, digital and otherwise, works” a representative told CoinDesk.

Compared to Max, HiJack displayed a serious agenda. For nearly a minute he drop-kicked crypto fan boys including those following NEAR, telling them to “get a real job” and to give up on this “web3 trash.”

“You’re gonna trust Solana or Ethereum over household names like Apple and Amazon,” he asked. “Gimme a break, dude!”

But HiJack has a point. People really don’t trust any crypto network over Apple and Amazon. Not yet, anyway. The number of people who actually live on crypto – entirely separate from the traditional financial and technological system – is vanishingly small.

Is it too early for crypto to make fun of its own struggles for relevance? NEAR seems to at least think it can help drive attendance at the Thailand hackathon, called REDACTED. A representative declined to comment for this story.

At the very least, the fake hack caught people’s attention. Emily Lai, an executive at crypto marketing agency Hype, tweeted the gambit increased NEAR’s mindshare to its highest levels in three months. But the sentiment was resoundingly negative, she wrote, expressing doubt it would actually help REDACTED. NEAR’s price was down around 2% over the past 24 hours as of press time.

Commenters on NEAR’s social channels were less diplomatic. Some praised the creative edge. But others chastised the gimmick for its potential to damage NEAR’s reputation while delivering little brand upside. Messari pushed a real warning to its markets-intelligence software users warning them that NEAR had actually suffered a hack.

“There is nothing waiting for you in Thailand,” wrote one commenter.