Just earlier today, I had occasion as I've had many times before to consider one of life's last remaining solitary pleasures: the Password Hint.
There has always been something, well...playful and friendly about the password hint. After all, there is no hint provided for one's zip code or bank account or cellphone number. One must remember this information straight-up and cold, or is, as they say, up shit's creek without a paddle. There exists no known Blood Type Hint to toss one a lifeline.
The earliest, and true Mother Of All Password Hints, is that still swaggering classic:
I have always liked this hint, partly because I like my mother, and partly more so because I like her maiden name, which is cunningly not spelled quite like it sounds. But, in this era of Hillary For President, is there not something antiquated and paternalistic in trafficking maiden names? What if your mother was really never much of maiden to begin with, or, perhaps more awkwardly, if she is still a maiden? What then? Festering too is the grating sense that, if the hint is supposed to be one's own little secret from the world, why is it ultimately all about one's mother? Why does the hint want to know my mother's maiden name? Why not MY maiden name??? Or, since I am unable to have a maiden name, why not:
Standing chin-to-shoulder with Your Mother's Maiden Name is that other well regarded password-hint pillar, "What are the last four digits of your Social Security Number?" Functional? Yes. Clever? Eh. Who but a moron could not within decades' time learn to remember these numbers with but a two-to-four-second pause? Imagine what greater intrigue were the hint to introduce the frisson of performance anxiety and the specter of real failure?
Just as these two hoary titans defined the Golden Age of Password Hints, the Silver Age ushered in an era of subjective and trendy specificity, anchored front-to-back by what are warmly known as the "Firsts 'N Faves."
The "First" hint queries the user about those firsts in one's life, such as "What is the first street you lived on?" But does the hint mean "What was the first street I lived on as a newly born infant, barely cognizant of my own existence?" or does it really want to know the first street I actually recall living on? Or, more pruriently, the street on which I candidly deem I first truly "LIVED?" It would credit the hint to ask only for those firsts that are indelibly linked with just one moment in time so that they allow no such ambiguity:
The "Faves" category trends to similar sloppiness, asking at times for one's favorite when, like "Number," there is no reason to have one, and alternatively, for one's favorite when, like "Pet," there are reasons to name more than one. The hint should, but never publicly did, admit to this mistake and become more progressive, allowing for logical discourse and flexibility:
And now, arriving at über-today...the age of the i-Hint...rapidly reaching the point where all we know is on a crash course with technology, it is tempting to dismiss the password hint as stodgy and recherché. Although it performs a function ever more important, the hint runs the risk of being relegated to some kind of figurative Cntrl-Alt-Delete dustheap.
If it is to survive, let alone thrive, it seems clear that the password hint needs to, quite literally, "take the hint!" and recreate itself in a vibrant new business model for tomorrow's multimedia future. But how?
One way the hint can redefine a new space is to, in a word, contextualize itself. For far too long, the hint has lazily pointed to the distant past or to some rhetorical non-timespace. Well, no more! The hint needs to belly up to the bar and declare "I'm here and I'm now, dammit!," becoming at once more "with it" and interactive!
The hint might also prosper by noting the broader canonization of pop culture, and recast itself as something of a "Password Challenge"®!
True again, the hint has for too long coasted on proper names, nouns and specific numbers. Surely the hint realizes that there are many other types of words and thoughts that our fluid language can express:
Furthering this approach, the hint could finally get up off its digital duff for once and offer actual assistance to the user:
Ultimately, the time has perhaps finally come for the hint to stop hiding behind yesterday's same old cloying tricks: the constant one-upmanship, the "me first, then you," and, yes, the palpable smugmess! To tear away once and for all that which seeks to separate user from use, question from answer, finger from key. To finally embrace the brutal honesty of pure, naked quid pro quo, as it were:
