Hacker Culture A to Z

Chapter 19. S

Sakura, Futaba

Futaba Sakura is a fictional character who debuted in the video RPG Persona 5, a spin-off from the popular Shin Megami Tensei series by Atlus.

Futaba is a teenage girl and an introverted, autistic-coded hacker who is ostracized in school for her neurological quirks. After her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, Futaba blames herself for her mother’s death, which profoundly harms her mental health. However, Futaba becomes a brilliant hacker, developing software and founding Medjed, a fictional hacktivist group. She and her friends, the Phantom Thieves, rely on her l33t hacker skills to navigate the Metaverse (a parallel world made from people’s dark emotions, not Mark Zuckerberg’s failed business venture).

Futaba has been an inspiration to many people in the hacker community. For instance, a hacker made a Discord bot that simulates her. Its source code is available on GitHub.

See also “Atlus”, “Autistic”, “Meta”, “Roleplaying games (RPGs)”

Salander, Lisbeth

Lisbeth Salander is a fictional character in Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series of books and films,¹ best known in the English-speaking world for the title of its first installment, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (originally Män som hatar kvinnor). Salander, a goth hacker chick, is “The Girl” referred to in the books’ titles. Salander, a survivor of extreme abuse, uses her hacker skills and tough-as-nails personality to help protagonist Mikael Blomkvist with his journalistic ...