As weird as this story is, I was surprised that it was the first time it happened.
Here's the deal: some nasty pranksters used computer code to put up posts containing numerous animated gifs (you know, those annoying flashing things). The thing is, they did this on the Epilepsy Foundation's message board, the idea being to, you know, cause visitors to the site to have seizures. The next day the same group of "Internet griefers" used another coding trick to redirect people who clicked on certain posts to a page with an image "designed to trigger seizures in both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epileptics," according to Wired.
RyAnne Fultz, 33, saw the page and then, "couldn't move and couldn't speak." Her 11-year-old son saw her, figured out what was happening, moved her eyes away from the screen and "killed the browser process" (translation: closed the offending window).
I am slightly surprised that this is the first time someone tried this, since, for a sick mind, it would seem obvious. If this sort of thing that happened in a novel it might be funny. In real life, not so much. Props to the kid who helped his mom, though.
Aside: Something similar happened in 1997, when an episode of Pokemon caused seizures in several hundred Japanese children. Unlike the Epilepsy Foundation prank, this was an accident. You can read about that here; if you are not seizure-prone and want to see the offending video clip, search YouTube for "Electric Soldier Porygon" (which, sadly, is not a typo). I'm not linking to it so no one sees it inadvertently. I, however, just watched it and now have a headache.
image: Living With Epilepsy
