Virgil is, without a doubt, a hacker rock star.

Girls hang on Virgil Griffith. This is no exaggeration. At parties, they cling to the arms of the 25-year-old hacker whose reason for being, he says, is to “make the Internet a better and more interesting place.” The founder of a data-mining tool called WikiScanner, Griffith is also a visiting researcher at the mysterious Santa Fe Institute, where “complex systems” are studied. He was once charged, wide-eyed rumor has it, with sedition. No wonder girls whisper secrets in his ear and laugh merrily at his arcane jokes.

From the archive:

"I never thought I'd see the day when a laptop was better at picking up girls than a Ferrari. That's it, I'm ditching Windows."

Virgil Griffith, Internet Man of Mystery