hollywood
Display colorful, simulated hacking scenes
TLDR
Fill the console
Exit hollywood
Display help
SYNOPSIS
hollywood
DESCRIPTION
The `hollywood` command is a humorous and theatrical utility designed to simulate intense, rapid-fire terminal activity, often resembling a 'hacking' scenario. It generates a continuous stream of seemingly complex output, including fake compilation messages, data transfers, network pings, and system logs, all scrolling at a high speed. Its primary purpose is amusement, providing an amusing visual effect for users who want to appear busy, engaged in deep technical work, or simply to prank onlookers. It does not perform any actual system operations, security breaches, or data manipulation; it merely outputs random, pre-canned, or dynamically generated text to the console to create a dramatic and visually impressive 'busy' effect.
CAVEATS
The `hollywood` command is purely for amusement and visual effect; it performs no actual system operations or security tasks.
While generally light, continuous high-speed output can consume CPU and terminal buffer resources.
It is not a standard Linux utility and must often be installed separately.
It can quickly fill your terminal scrollback buffer with meaningless data.
INSTALLATION
On many Debian/Ubuntu-based systems, `hollywood` can be installed via the `bsdgames` package:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install bsdgames
Alternatively, similar scripts can be found and manually installed from various online repositories or GitHub projects.
USAGE EXAMPLE
To start the simulation, simply type:
hollywood
To stop the simulation, press Ctrl+C.
HISTORY
The `hollywood` command, or similar scripts achieving the same effect, emerged from the desire to mimic the fast-paced, visually engaging terminal activity often depicted in movies as 'hacking.' It gained significant popularity through viral videos and online demonstrations where individuals would run it to create an impression of intense computer work or 'cybersecurity' operations. While not a part of core Unix utilities, it has become a well-known novelty in the Linux community, often implemented as simple shell scripts or small C programs, and sometimes packaged within collections like `bsdgames`.
