Hacker Post

Message Guidelines

This is what counts as a valid Hacker Post message: what it can physically be, the fields it needs, what you can write on it, and the one privacy rule that matters. If you prefer your rules in dry standards-ese, the Protocol Spec says all of this with more capital letters.

1. Physical requirements

It is a postcard. One card, lightweight, open, the kind of thing a stranger can carry in a jacket pocket without a second thought. Nothing sealed, nothing hidden inside, nothing anyone has to explain at a border.

2. Field reference

A card carries a few fields. Recipient, Date, and Location are the routing header; Message is the payload; Route notes get scribbled on in transit by whoever carries it.

3. Privacy model

There is none. That is not an oversight—it is the design. A postcard is readable by everyone who touches it, and a lot of people will touch it. Expect cards to be read, delayed, misrouted, photographed, archived, and occasionally returned to sender by a stranger who found it funny.

So: no secrets on postcards. If leaking it would ruin someone’s week, it does not go on a card. That rules out:

• Passwords or private keys
• Home addresses or phone numbers
• Legal names without consent
• Sensitive personal information or doxxing material
• Threats, harassment, or instructions for harm
• Anything that would endanger the sender, recipient, courier, or postmaster

4. Content policy

Keep it kind, keep it weird, keep it deliverable. The whole system runs on goodwill, so do not be the reason someone stops carrying mail.

5. Addressing

Handles and rough locations, please. Counterintuitively, the vaguer and more social the address, the better it routes—a handle plus a scene gives a courier something to ask around about. A legal name and a street address just gives them the creeps.

When there’s no handle to work with

Not everyone has a handle. Some people never picked one up; others go by something that reads like an ordinary name. As Joey put it:

“I need a handle, man. I don’t have an identity until I have a handle.”

Route them anyway. The trick is to be specific without being identifying—pile on enough context that the right scene knows exactly who you mean, while a stranger reading the card learns nothing useful about a private person.

“Joey in NYC” is not addressable; there are a thousand Joeys. But a Joey pinned to a project, a table, a regular night, or a running joke usually is:

A real first name is fine when it is paired with a scene and a detail. A full legal name is not—that is identifying a private person on a public card, which is exactly what we are avoiding.

6. Postcard templates

Not mandatory—a card with the right fields scrawled on it works fine—but if you like a tidy layout, steal these.

Address side:

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ HACKER POST                         │
│                                     │
│ Recipient: ________________________ │
│ Date:      ________________________ │
│ Location:  ________________________ │
│                                     │
│ Route notes:                        │
│ ________________________________    │
│ ________________________________    │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

Message side:

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│                                     │
│ Message:                            │
│                                     │
│                                     │
│                                     │
│                                     │
│                                     │
│                                     │
│ ─────────────────────────────────── │
│ This is public postcard mail.       │
│ Do not include secrets.             │
│ Route closer if possible.           │
│ Boomerang if undeliverable.         │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

7. Worked example

What a good one looks like in the wild—a real handle, a rough destination, and a message that gives a courier a reason to go find the right table:

┌─────────────────────────────────────┐
│ HACKER POST                         │
│                                     │
│ Recipient: @badgelife_alchemist     │
│ Date:      2026-08-09               │
│ Location:  Las Vegas / badge scene  │
│                                     │
│ Message:                            │
│ Your SAO from last year made it to  │
│ a table in Brooklyn. Someone here   │
│ says the blinking pattern was a     │
│ joke. Confirm or deny?              │
│                                     │
│ Route notes:                        │
│ NYC → HOPE table → DEF CON?        │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘