The FBI wants you to know hacking is bad, fellow kids

Like everyone else, the FBI has had a tough 2016. Between their court battle with Apple and director James Comey's controversial role in the presidential election, it's been a wild ride -- but is that any excuse for lame ass tweets?

This week, the intelligence service launched a public prevention campaign with Europol and other law enforcement agencies to address cybercrime amongst young adults.

However, the tweets promoting the campaign were borderline embarrassing and, well, can you just do a little better, please?

"Today’s generation is closer to technology than ever before, with the potential of exacerbating the threat of cybercrime," Steven Wilson, head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3), said in a press release.

To discourage young people from using DDoS cyber-attack tools, the FBI then tweeted a graphic. And while you might expect it to be sophisticated and advanced, quite frankly, it looks like it's straight out of an Agent Cody Banks film.

The image casually depicts a "Cybersecurity Expert" as a happy teenage male with excellent health, dexterity, stamina and of course high “cash total." Besides that, it portrays the alternative lifestyle of a "Cybercriminal" as a sad, unhealthy, poor teen wearing handcuffs.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

The press release explains many young people are unaware that the penalties for DDoS attacks can have severe, negative impacts on their futures, so this FBI graphic is here to assure us cyber attackers will be doomed.

However, should today's youth use their "coding, gaming and computer programming" skills for good, the "cyber heroes" have bright futures ahead of them.

As the FBI puts it, the choice is #Up2U. (Please also note how painfully hip the bureau is attempting to be by using a hashtag that includes the number "2" and letter "U" instead of the full words.)

To continue their spot-on appeal to today's youth, the FBI released an additional graphic in the form of a lame-o video game-inspired GIF. "Launching #ddosattacks is illegal, even if you do it to boot out a video game enemy. Penalties can be severe," the bureau wrote.

This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed.

It was a solid attempt, FBI, but you are being the security service equivalent of Steve Buscemi in 30 Rock.

[H/T: Gizmodo]