It’s not every day that cybersecurity intersects with pop culture in such delightful ways, but check out this Sun headline: “Love Island football hunk ‘muggy’ Mike Thalassitis ‘hit by hackers’ as his Wikipedia page is changed to list his current team as ‘s**gging on Love Island FC”.
The “hunk” in question is a striker for Margate FC. His manager Steve Watt confessed to his “disappointment” that Thalassitis did not tell him about his plans to “enter the villa”- which is what you do apparently when you want to be a contestant on some trashy show about hooking up and bailing out.
Love Island, for those outside of the UK, takes the well-worn track of inviting a slew of celebrities and various telegenic citizens into a home-like situation (always a villa or a mansion or some such) where they live for a while, whilst exploring various opportunities to “find true love” (or hook up, more like). Think Bachelor/Bachelorette, Dating Naked, Are You the One, Date My Mom (ewwww) etc.
Fun fact: Even Jerry Hall had one back in the mid-aughts, where guys auditioned to be her live-in boy-toy. Fun reading on the winner can be found here.
The Sun has all the gossipy deets:
“His first encounter was a private date with Tyne-Lexy, who has since been given the boot, before he controversially coupled up with Olivia Attwood – earning him the nickname ‘Muggy Mike’. But the football player has now become embroiled in a love triangle, as Olivia has turned her attention right back to Chris Hughes.”
But his latest date was with an online prankster. In addition to changing the team name, the “bad actor” (and we use that term loosely) also switched up the name of his club to “S**gging On Love Island FC”. Clearly they were not going for clever here, but it’s nonetheless entertaining.
The Wikipedia page has been restored to its former staid true-facts state, but we’re betting this isn’t the last scrutiny that the Cypriot hunk will face. It’s all so far good for him though—raising the profile of a semi-professional feeder team as well as his own capital. No such thing as bad publicity, after all.