A man is playing a video game and asks his friend wearing the Hasidic Jew Hat to give him some assistance, since he is experiencing some difficulty progressing past a certain challenge. But because his friend is “evil” (as denoted by the Black Hasidic Jew Hat), he responds with unhelpful wordplay of the similarity of the word “pointers,” thus earning the ire of the man who is playing video games.
The Man Wearing the Black Hasidic Jew Hat (further referred to as “Black-Hat” for brevity) is playing off the similarity between the word “pointers” as used colloquially to mean “helpful information or guidance” and “pointers”, which refer to a specific construct in low-level computer programming. When programming in C, C++, or Assembly the notion of a “pointer” or the logical address of a value in computer memory is a lesson that is considered both difficult and essential to master as early as possible in one’s programming career. Black-Hat provides several hexadecimal numbers that are a shorthand for numbers that fit into 32-bit memory. The length of these numbers is significant because they closely match the length used by most computer programmers as they learn to program, and thus should be immediately recognizable to anyone who has been introduced to the field.
Thus, “Black-Hat” answers the player’s query with an honest answer that is simultaneously precise and entirely unhelpful. These homographic puns are considered high art in recognition-heavy geek humor.
CURATOR’S NOTE: While the association between Jewish Fashion and Math might seem to suggest a veiled reference to the racial stereotype: “Jews are good at finance and math,” it does not seem to have been the the author’s intent to draw this allusion. As such, the charitable reader should dismiss it as a artistic curiosity and nothing more.
