Nico was coming out of a lecture on Wednesday, August 2, when he was intercepted by an unknown woman who handed him an envelope without so much as a word. The woman was wearing a white puffer jacket and baseball cap that obscured her face. On the face of the envelope was a barely-legible note:
“Please protect your country and people (important). Tax payers and University students should know the truth and can protect your family, your safety, please don’t pass to Chinese.”
Despite being taught about stranger danger, Nico opened the envelope to find a flashdrive. Critic Te Ārohi would like to point out that if you receive a nondescript flashdrive from a suspicious person, it’s probably not the best idea to put it into your computer. But Nico wasn’t stupid, so he plugged it into one of the library computers. We later gave the drive a comprehensive screening and found no evidence of malware - but this was after Nico gave it a go at the library, so.
On the flashdrive were around 25 PowerPoint presentations on a plethora of topics including “New World Order”, “drugs”, “child pornography” and “torture”, meaning it probably came from a Commerce student. There was also a stock image of a cute puppy, meaning it definitely came from a Commerce student.
Despite the remedying qualities of puppy pics, the PowerPoints mostly contained rambling conspiracy theories, complete with paragraph long rants in size 8 font and disorganised images of the White House, bombings, US Government officials and the communist flag. Talk about sensory overload.
Nico said he was “mostly confused” by the whole situation. “[It was] surreal to be handed a mysterious envelope full of deranged propaganda [after] being told it was a matter of national importance,” said Nico. Nico was also confused over the woman’s methods of delivery: “There are so many online spaces to share and distribute your weird shit. Even if you wanted to do things manually, you can just drop stuff in mailboxes, which is surely much easier.”
Upon closer inspection, Critic Te Ārohi found that the oldest PowerPoint was from 2019, meaning that whoever was behind the operation had been doing it for a hot minute. The Otago Daily Times published an article on the “Mystery Woman”, after she had reportedly been trespassed from Invercargill Airport earlier in the year. She also stepped into various OUSA buildings and was seen giving the drives out to a number of people on campus.
And just in case anyone’s wondering: we did not “pass” the drive to the Chinese government.