About

Hunter2 refers to a password an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) user by the name of AzureDiamond was tricked into giving away. It is often used as a fake password or username, both by various users and in comics or other media.

Origin

In 2004, a portion of an IRC log was submitted to Bash, a website which records humorous or odd IM or IRC conversations.^[1] In it, a user by the name of AzureDiamond was tricked into giving away his password, which was hunter2.^[2] The exact date of upload is unknown, but the first recorded date in the Wayback Machine was June 4th, 2004.^[3]

A copy of the original bash.org chat transcript:

<Cthon98> hey, if you type in your pw, it will show as stars
<Cthon98> ********* see!
<AzureDiamond> hunter2
<AzureDiamond> doesnt look like stars to me
<Cthon98> <AzureDiamond> *******
<Cthon98> thats what I see
<AzureDiamond> oh, really?
<Cthon98> Absolutely
<AzureDiamond> you can go hunter2 my hunter2-ing hunter2
<AzureDiamond> haha, does that look funny to you?
<Cthon98> lol, yes. See, when YOU type hunter2, it shows to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> thats neat, I didnt know IRC did that
<Cthon98> yep, no matter how many times you type hunter2, it will show to us as *******
<AzureDiamond> awesome!
<AzureDiamond> wait, how do you know my pw?
<Cthon98> er, I just copy pasted YOUR ******'s and it appears to YOU as hunter2 cause its your pw
<AzureDiamond> oh, ok.

Spread

By September 2005, over a year after the quote was submitted to Bash, it began to gain attention.^[4] The earliest known reference in that time-frame was from the Flashback Forum, where user Nattskenet posted it.^[5] However, the earliest known reference outside of Bash.org itself is on b92^[6] on June 21st, 2004 by user Larko. From there it can be found on several other sites, such as an early reference on mamamusings^[7] on April 12th, 2005, and another early reference in the time-frame it became popular, where it was contained in a list of quotes from Bash.^[8] It is still used today, with multiple usages found within the last three years, on websites such as 4chan,^[9][10] Reddit,^[11] and MetaFilter.^[12]

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References