As you may have noticed, the Stanford community has experienced an influx of crimes and alerts. But, if you have not been getting the excessive emails and text messages, in the past few days there have been stolen cars, suspicious backpacks, and even a kidnapping.
Coincidence? Perhaps.
Upon opening the “suspicious” backpack which terrorized Tresidder Union early last week, Stanford police discovered a ransom note, which contained the message below:
“If you want to see your precious Hondas or kidnapped child again, I recommend you create and release a new version of Flappy Bird.”
Targeted for their infamous coding abilities, Stanford students have been threatened by this unknown criminal to program a replica of Flappy Bird -the newest craze in addicting cell phone games which was recently taken off the market by its original creator. Unfortunately, his decision has had dire consequences worldwide. Driven by extreme withdrawal, many people have resorted to drastic measures, such as purchasing the phones with the app already downloaded for up to ,000.
Some people have taken even more desperate measures. The Stanford Police Department released the following statement after the original news surrounding the backpack’s contents surfaced:
“We are not at liberty to say whether or not we have a suspect in custody, but if we did have a suspect, we would be absolutely unprepared to meet their demands. Still, we encourage all Stanford students who have taken CS 106A to consider coding a new Flappy Bird, or to code it as their final project.
It is not that we will be compromising with terrorists, but the revival of Flappy Bird may not be the worst thing to happen to human civilization, considering the repercussions we have already seen. We highly doubt that this is the last criminal incident we will be seeing due to the untimely removal of the app.
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The parents of the kidnapped child and the owners of the automobiles have also released public pleas for the assistance of Stanford techies in reclaiming their losses. In the public service spirit of The Flipside, we ask you, our readers, to do your part in this cause. Text FLAPPYBIRD to 1-800-FLIPSID and donate $10 to Stanford’s grossly underfunded Computer Science department in their pursuit of justice.
