Bryan Cantrill on the contagion of fear: a college prank that mirrors AI panic
Sethwinterroth · x · 2026-09-14
Oxide co-founder Bryan Cantrill published a blog post, "The contagion of fear," confessing a college prank: he and classmates falsely announced a computer virus spreading in a humanities lab, triggering chaos — students ejecting floppies, yanking cables, fleeing the room. Even after admitting the prank, some refused to believe them and others lost term-paper work. His point: once fear takes root, reason can't eradicate it — an analogy for today's AI panic. The post was shared with the remark "level headed."
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