ROBINA, Australia – Interrupting a presentation on internet security, the detonation of a massive irony bomb inside a schoolroom in Robina, Australia, claimed the reputations of former NFL player Jarryd Hayne, several teachers, a couple of school administrators and various representatives of the security software vendor Norton Security.
According to media reports, Hayne was in the middle of a presentation about a “man in the middle attack” (a situation perhaps more commonly referred to as a “Lucky Pierre”) when a well-known adult tube site appeared on screen. At that point the students in the audience erupted into a conflagration of attention-destroying laughter.
While Australian counter-irony investigators quickly found evidence suggesting someone else was to blame, it’s hard to undo the immediate damage caused by the assumption what the students saw on screen came from Hayne’s browser cache.
“During our wifi demo we had an open network that was available for anyone to connect to and someone had connected to the network and browsed to a site where the images were displayed,” Paul Savvides of Norton told ABC News. “I’ve just checked, and the device that did that was not Jarryd’s phone.”
Despite the evidence, however, neither the students in attendance nor observers who watched the presentation from afar appear to be persuaded concerning Hayne’s innocence — or Norton’s.
“I always thought Jarryd Hayne was an accomplished athlete who can get laid any time he wants,” said Hugh Hemsworth, a sophomore who was in attendance. “But now I know he’s just a filthy little wanker like our history teacher, Mr. Gibson. They even seem to have bookmarked the same interracial gangbang videos.”
Others put the blame squarely on Norton, even when they appeared to be confused about who or what Norton is.
“It stands to reason something like this would happen with Norton hanging around a bunch of high school lads,” said Liam Jackman, a local dingo wrangler who watched the presentation live on Facebook. “It was very poor judgment on the part of the school administrators to hire him to do this presentation. Don’t they know he’s hosted the AVN Awards more than once? What did they expect him to do, give an urbane and sophisticated presentation on the ins and outs of Twofish?”
Some parents, however, say responsibility for the incident rests entirely on the shoulders of Christopher Urban-Leger, a junior and current president of the school’s audio-visual club.
“When you’re entrusted with dangerous devices like overhead projectors, slide machines and pull-down viewing screens, you must demonstrate good judgment and make sound decisions,” said a parent who requested anonymity so as not to embarrass his daughter who attends the school, sophomore Naomi Ward. “I hate to say it, but Christopher has been an utter failure in that regard — but please don’t tell him I said so, because his father is my boss over at Gold Coast Acupuncture and he’s a vindictive little cunt if ever there was one.”
Asked how it all happened, school administrators seemed perplexed to the point of despondence.
“I can’t make those dang things work at all,” said Vice Principal Eric Bana-Fisher in apparent reference to anything involving circuitry. “I just call in Jai, our IT guy, anytime something goes wrong. Or when I need to print something, or if my laptop needs to be turned on, or if I get a text from someone who might be a scam artist and not really my wife, or if I have any really, really simple questions about Windows the answers to which could easily be found via Google if I weren’t such an abject tit.”
Representatives from the porn tube site mistakenly displayed during the presentation declined to comment, other than to say there was “roughly a 100-percent chance” the company would issue an open letter to Hayne sometime in the next 48 hours in order to offer him a job.
