It’s a thing people often forget, you give everyone in the office a cheap crap PC, and those PC’s suffer failure at a rate 10x what you’d expect, because in this case the Hidden Actor is the users deliberately sabotaging them.
I’ve seen all sorts from electronics deliberately fried with high voltage all the way up and down the scale, and all of it had in common that fact that someone forgot that Hidden Actors can be their own agents of change with their own agenda, not just cyphers that can be called “users” or “clients” or “customers” or “drivers” etc.
Every time you go out on the roads you see it, people with their own agenda that won’t keep to a lane or follow traffic signs or signals and end up buggering up the traffic flow for everyone.
Many many many years ago as a young man I worked at a filling station, this was the old days where the driver stayed in the car and we pumped the gas for them, and then took cash and made the change from a leather bag on a shoulder strap.
The boss was looking for people that sold gas and pocketed the money, there was one full time gas jockey and I was the third new boy in a row, the other two having been sacked for stealing gas money… a couple of weeks later I was sacked for stealing gas money.
I didn’t steal a penny, it was the full time gas jockey that was on the fiddle, but he wasn’t stealing the gas money, he was stealing the gas, (giving away “free” gas then collecting the cash offsite) but the end result was the same, the pump readings and the amount of money in the till didn’t match up, since this guy was known for never carrying any cash or a wallet while at work (he lived about 100 yards away and walked in and home for lunch etc) and since he has been there years he was excluded for suspicion of stealing cash… easy to do because he wasn’t stealing cash.
Easy to fake *taking* cash and making change with your back to the office too, and in those days, no ways to reconcile anything until the pump readings at the end of the day.
Of course by the time it all came out, having sacked (by then) four local lads for stealing, when none of them had stolen a penny, word spread and his gas sales were down 75% and never recovered, he ended up selling up.
The Hidden Actor in this story was someone giving away “free” gas, when all anyone was looking for was someone (an Actor or Agent) pocketing cash.
You can’t find what isn’t there to be found, and you can’t find something you aren’t even looking for.
I’ve never exploited people but I don’t mind screwing a system now and again, and every time I’ve done it it has worked, because whatever I was doing was basically “Hidden Actor” stuff that nobody was looking for.
Years and years ago I had a flat from september to april all through winter that was above a supermarket, you could climb out the window and use the supermarket roof as a patio, provided you were restrained about it, no parties, just you and your one table one umbrella and two chairs, nobody in the supermarket, who was the landlord, gave a shit.
The flat was all electric and had a coin meter, and they always used to comment about how little was in the meter, and I’d just point at the electric heaters (a mixture of bar radiant and night storage) that were all turned off all the time, nobody ever twigged to the big canvas bag in the corner by the window to my “patio”.. it was basically a canvas tunnel that I’d put up every night at around 9 pm and take down every morning at 7 am that funneled all the hot air from the exhaust side of the chillers for the cold store straight into that window.. from 10 pm until 7 am it could be below freezing outside and I could walk around naked inside, and it was all free… provided I left the bathroom window on the other side of the flat open it didn’t even effect the air flow through the chiller radiator, so it wasn’t hurting them either.
Yet it was the monthly coin meter emptying that was always met with some sort of suspicion, even though the coins in the meter always matched the meter reading for electric used, and the heaters were always off and stone cold.
So, by definition, the Hidden Actor is someone who has is own agenda, and also, his hidden aganda might well be “jeez, that’s so obvious, how did I miss that?” in hindsight, but at the time you never suspect it.
I remember one guy at a place of work who was as suspicious as fuck and as workshy as fuck, but, he did always get the job done, and you couldn’t fault him on anything or catch him on anything, turned out later he’d been starting his rounds with a 90 minute visit to the boss’s house where he porked the boss’s wife monday to friday, regular as clockwork.
Technically he didn’t get caught, the boss got rid of him because even though he couldn’t pin anything on the guy, he was convinced he was up to something and screwing the company somehow… he wasn’t.. he was just screwing the boss’s wife, and it only came out after he was sacked and the wife wanted to know where Jesse was…
But Hidden Actors cut both ways, when I was doing my gig as the Cisco Kid I had a certain pride in my work, so quite often while I was on site doing one thing I’d notice something else that was on the way out, and I’d rectify it before it died or caused a problem, I quit, they hired a replacement, and I hear from lots of former customers that shit started dying, of course the assumed reason is around the time I left a lot of this stuff reached end of life, complete bollocks, but there you go.
The best examples I know of the Hidden Actor working for good are the glass foundry and the ship propeller shaft lathe stories, both of which i’ve mentioned here before, both of which involved hugely experienced old guys being let go to be replaced by young guys and new machinery, none of which had any idea at all about some of the learned skills and tricks the old guys had employed.
Old fashioned white western society as a whole worked because there was a whole lot of hidden actors working for the common good, and avoiding exploiting the tragedy of the commons, because, well, that’s the way things were back then.
As a child you didn’t have to worry about how far away from home you were or anything else, you could ask anyone for the time, or knock on any door and ask for a glass of water or to wash your hands etc, the idea of being refused or chastised was unthinkable, so for parents they didn’t worry much, because wherever their child was, they were near an adult, and so they could ask that adult for assistance or help or directions or anything else.
That hidden actor is gone, now if a kid walks up you shoo it away and look around guiltily in case someone thinks you’re a paedo, there was a case around here not so long ago where a guy was outside a primary school photographing it and the police were called, he was just an ex pupil who had long since emigrated to australia and was back in blighty for a holiday and fancied the idea of photographing his old school, especially as he has heard it was about to be pulled down and replaced with some modern PPI financed monstrosity…. what’s more he was in a public place on a public street and breaking no laws of any kind, not even trespassing to take a better pic.
There are quite a few Hidden Actors at work in that little scenario, and once you are wise to them you’re reaction to the story is no longer “WTF!”, it’s “well, duh.. what did he expect??”
For the first time in my life (in previous times I was too young and inexperienced to be asked such questions) I now find myself regularly being asked what is going on, what I think is going to happen, how should they prepare for whatever is going to happen, by people who are starting to see all sorts of signs and portents, from the military gray cargo planes flying in and out of our local airport all week, to yellowstone to quatar to brexit to high rise building cladding to anything you like.
Suddenly the great unwashed are becoming aware of the existence of Hidden Actors everywhere, and they are uneasy.
All I can say is welcome to the party, you’re 20 years late so we started without you.
If you have a cunt you better be offering it to me for free as well as loyalty and obedience and all that good stuff.
If you have a cock you better have tools and the ability to use them, and a willingness to exchange your services for mine etc.
If you fall into neither of these categories then you’re a hidden actor, and not to be trusted or relied on or back turned to etc.
Wannacrypt / petya / notpetya / etc, hell, more hidden actors than you can shake a stick at, and fuck all else.