It’s a neat idea, and the name is so good. I even saw on an .onion site that had it told in plain text, and the visuals were ASCII recreations.
There is a (conspiracy) theory that the writer was actually working for a government since a lot of the instructions don’t work, or would potentially kill the person making it. Thus anyone who tried to follow it would not get results or die from making a project at home.
Seeing as it was published in 1971, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO ended that year, it’s not impossible. They hated anarchists and anyone too “un-american”.
That said, zero proof. Hence the conspiracy in conspiracy theory.
And then blamed for ruining the 2016 American election.
Snowden showed the government was spying, had to flee, deemed a terrorist. Assange showed the government disobeys the laws it enforces on everyone else, deemed a terrorist. Manning showed that war crimes are constant, deemed a terrorist, subjected to inhumane torture.
Every time a whistleblower exposes corruption and violations of laws in every country, they are punished. China, Russia, America, England, they’re all guilty of it.