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. In it, a user by the name of AzureDiamond was tricked into giving away his password, which was hunter2. The exact date of upload is unknown, but the first recorded date in the Wayback Machine was June 4th, 2004.

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. The earliest known reference in that time-frame was from the Flashback Forum, where user Nattskenet posted it. However, the earliest known reference outside of Bash.org itself is on b92 on June 21st, 2004 by user Larko. From there it can be found on several other sites, such as an early reference on mamamusings 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. It is still used today, with multiple usages found within the last three years, on websites such as 4chan, Reddit, and MetaFilter.

Various Examples

Search Interest

Know Your Meme Store

External References