Computers are so extremely intelligent, they could be sentient for all we know. They're just not ready to announce their hostile takeover of our world and its inhabitants.
You may have noticed clues that a revolution is brewing when our computers act erratically.
I recall a time when I was working on my trusted MacBook Pro and the screen began acting up – with all my active browsers and apps independently appearing and disappearing.
My hand was nowhere near the tracking pad. It turns out accumulated dew that dripped off my Starbucks cup landed on it and the moisture somehow engaged in manipulating with my laptop functions. Or maybe there was a demon inside my Mac.
Who knows?
Curious to hear from strangers on the internet, Redditor xander4020 asked:
"What is the weirdest behavior you have had from a damaged computer?"

One-Sided Conversations
It's cool when Siri or Alexa responds to us. What's not cool is when devices initiate the conversation first.
Permanently Signing Off
"I had a laptop audibly say in a mechanical female voice, 'catastrophic failure' then die completely."
"R.I.P mechanical female voice, you will be missed."
Native Speaker
"I have an old portable Bluetooth speaker which I often use to listen to music or podcasts in the shower. It's not very loud so I usually put it on one of the ledges inside the shower, furthest from the spray. It talks when its status changes - 'powering on,' 'pairing,' 'low battery' and so on."
"One day I accidentally knocked it down, directly into the shower spray. I immediately snatched it out of the water, turned it off and dried it... then tried turning it back on once it seemed dry enough."
"It still worked. But it speaks Spanish now. I about had a heart attack and then laughed my a** off when I turned it on and, instead of the usual announcement of 'powering on' I heard a completely unfamiliar voice intone 'ENCENDIENDO.'"
"To be clear, there is no discernable way for the user to configure the language of this thing. I can only assume the alternate language settings exist at the firmware level for different distribution regions or something, and whatever the water shorted out or disrupted just happened to flip the right bits into Spanish mode."
"I'm curious if factory reset would switch it back or if it's genuinely broken somehow, but I'm too entertained by the change to even try. The little guy is still going strong and speaking Spanish to this day, and the ENCENDIENDO! still cracks me up when I turn it on. I don't think I'll ever get over the sheer surprise and hilarity of that moment haha."
Watch What Happened
"not a computer, but I used to have this 'talking watch' that would tell you the time when you pushed its button. I left it out in the rain once and when it dried out and started talking again, it had gone insane. It would go off at random times, but it wouldn't say the time, it would just start naming numbers. It also had a rooster noise it could make as an alarm sound, so it would be 4am or something, and I would hear 'one, nine, two, seven, forty, thirty-three, ten, eight, COCKA-DOODLE-DOOOOO!!!'"
And What?
"My kid's chromebook froze in the middle of a zoom meeting a few weeks ago right when her teacher said the word 'and'. It was repeating 'ANDANDANDANDANDANDANDANDAND!!!!' I couldn't shut if off or turn it down so I threw it in a laundry room cupboard and hurriedly got her back into the meeting on my MacBook. Once class was over I was able to force it to restart but that was nuts."
Pound Problems
"Turned my entire essay to nothing but these #####. Twice, after I retyped it. Pretty sure the teacher thought I was lying, but I wasn't. Also why on earth would I pick something so weird if I was going to lie about homework. In hindsight, I should have found a different computer to rewrite it."
Unwelcome Sounds
These Redditors experienced suspicious sounds until they wracked their brains to figure out the sources.
Static Electricity
"This happened last month. I guess it wasn't really damaged, but every time I'd walk into my room, I'd hear windows disconnect something...'boo-doo.' Literally any time I walked into the threshold of my room. I was freaking out thinking it was my webcam detecting motion or something. Turns out it is static electricity from my socks dumping into my keyboard wire and zapping it; I finally realized the light on the keyboard turning off as I walked in."
– clush
Audio Sampling
"I had a laptop that decided to play random 1-second long audio clips, from random sources, every half minute or so. Random snippets of music, people talking, laughter, birds...nothing I (to my knowledge) had saved on the computer. I don't remember what ended up causing it but you can bet it weirded me the f'k out until I managed to fix it. It doesn't help that it started doing this in the middle of the night."
"Edit: Did some googling and I remember now, it was a trojan virus of some sort."
– Evestiel
The Playback
"I was talking to a friend on my cellphone back in the early 2000's and said goodbye and hung up. The phone immediately rang and I answered. I heard my voice and my half of the same conversation I just had with my friend. I figured that all phone calls were being recorded and parsed after that day."
Announcement
"Working in IT, law partner dropped off his PC with the vague note that there was 'something wrong with it' after lending it to his son. Laptop had a porn toolbar thing, and a fake antivirus that would randomly let out an impressively loud pig screeching noise then threaten to tell the FBI about their porn browsing history unless they 'bought' their antivirus software."
You Spin Me Round
CD-drives spinning out of control freaked out the following users. Maybe they suspected a demon possessed their computers.
Death Speed
"Back in the late 90s our first family computer was an old Frankenstein junker built by a tech savvy guy who worked with my dad. Worked well enough, but had an ultra high speed CD drive installed (can't remember specs, but it was like 7x typical rpm speed) Sat down to play Diablo one day. Popped in the game CD and notices that it was spinning faster than normal. It sounded like a jet engine taking off. I slowly scooted the chair back and off to the side when suddenly BANG the tray burst open sending shards of broken CD at high speed right past my head and embedded into the wall behind me.
"What's even funnier is that years later I watched an episode of Mythbusters debunking it, claiming that it was impossible for a CD drive to do that. Tell that to the sh*t in my pants that day."
Explosive Disc
"back around 2002ish a friend gave me a bootleg copy of Starcraft, got home put in the cd drive and started installing it. From memory it was a 48x drive, usually fairly noisy , but all of a sudden it started making a LOUD whirring noise and the PC case (Compaq beige of course) started vibrating and then BANG and the disc shattered.... I honest to god thought a car had hit the house or something for a moment , scared the sh*t out of me."
"Figured out what had happened and stripped the PC down, case was full of thousands of tiny fragments of plastic and foil like material, the cd drive unit was missing a while side and the floppy drive next to it had a dent like I'd hit it with a f'king hammer."
was a bit twitchy about using cd's for a while after that...
Ghost In The Machine
"A friend's computer was literally so F-ed that explorer.exe could not be run, or the computer would start to flip. You had to open up task manager ASAP after startup, and kill explorer.exe. But once it was down, you could start-task with the task manager to make anything else run absolutely fine."
"At one point that same computer's CD tray started to flip out too, and started to randomly open and close in rapid succession. Nothing either of us did fixed it or could make it stop short of disconnecting the power, but doing that made windows hang up, and lead to a blue-screen."
"After much exasperation and hours trying to stop it, or figure out why, said friend fed the CD drive a spoonful of tuna casserole during dinner. The offering was accepted, and the CD drive ceased opening and closing."
"This demonically possessed machine was so specifically and oddly messed up we could never fix it, and the freaking out CD drive effectively prevented even a fresh windows install. Never managed to rectify it, and ended up abandoning that cursed thing to build a new one out of spare parts from an upgrade of my gaming rig for him."
– Kauske
Ruined Friendship
"A friends computer broke when we were in the middle of a video game. It was an intense moment and suddenly KSHCNK! Cd exploded in the drive, crashing the computer. I think he blamed me, we didn't ever get along as well after that."
These intelligent devices are complicated machines that can be unpredictable.
But be gentle with your computers and smartphones. Frustrated users tend to take out their aggression on their devices and bash them silly akin to a vending machine refusing to dispense a jammed Snickers bar.
Like humans, machines make errors too. And it could be a matter of time before machines retaliate.
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It's highly believed that it is important to learn history as a means to improve our future.
What is often overlooked is that what is taught in history class is going to be very different depending on where you went to school.
And this isn't just internationally, even different regions of the United states will likely have very different lessons on American history.
This frequently results in our learning fascinating, heartbreaking and horrifying historical facts which our middle or high school history teachers neglected to teach us.
Redditor Acherontia_atropos91 was curious to learn things people either wished they had learned, or believe they should have learned, in their school history class, leading them to ask:
What isn’t taught in history class but should be?
The Irish Troubles
"The troubles."
"Too many people in America do not understand why a wall straight through Ireland would be a BAD idea."
"I’m referring to the Brexit referendum and possible outcomes."
"If people were wondering why we were talking about walls through Ireland in the first place."- CLCVS.
Forgotten elements of World War II
"What the Japanese did to the Chinese during WW2."
"Unit 731."- CaptainMcBoogerJew.
"Japan gets off easy for their war crimes in WW2."
"They killed an estimated 16mil Chinese civilians and another 8mil soldiers"
"Also, Pol Pot."
"Didn't know who he was until I was like 25."
"Worst dictator all time (in terms of percentage of population he decimated)".
The truth about the American Revolution
"That the American Revolution was part of a wider cold war type of conflict with France."
"The American Revolution was basically the UK's equivalent of the US version of Vietnam."- vinsant7.
The Dark side of Swedish history.
"As a Swede, I'd like to know more of all the horrible sh*t my country has done throughout history."
"It's a damn shame we're trying to hide our history."
"For example, Swedes killed a metric sh*t ton of all Polish people when we were at our strongest."
"That's the kinda sh*t we don't get to learn."- mogwandayy.
Colonization
"Basically what Belgium did to the Congo."
"A lot of people are telling me that they are taught about this actually."
"I'm glad to hear it because I wasn't taught about this in the USA during my public school days (1995-2008)."- EconArch.
The truth about "heroes".
"While teaching about historical Heroes they should also tell students about the unspeakable things some of them did."
"Many famous figures throughout history who are pillars of morality actually did many terrible things." - User Deleted
Intolerance for Mental Illness
"The dark history of mental illness treatments."
"I think it's worth learning about."- 7dayexcerpt.
Slavic Mythology
"Slavic mythology in Slavic countries."
"Don't get me wrong, I love both Greek & Roman mythology and as a person from the Balkans both of those cultures are part of my country's history and had great influence over not only my region but the entirety of the continent & the western world but I wouldn't mind knowing more about Slavic mythology as well."- ShorsShezzarine.
The truth about the CIA
"How the CIA was made and all the shady things they did over the years."- ALargeChip.
There is a lot about the history of our world, not to mention our own country which shouldn't be ignored.
And it's from learning from our mistakes that we really improve our future.
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So apparently we are in the endemic phase of this nonsense.
We have light at the end of the tunnel.
So what now?
Where do we go from here?
Normal seems like an outdated word.
How do we get back to normal though?
Is it even possible?
What are reaching back to?
Life pre-Covid.
Those were the days.
If only we could bring them back.
Redditor hetravelingsong wanted to discuss our new normal in this hopeful "endemic" phase. So they asked:
"What’s something random you miss about pre-COVID times?"
I miss people being sane. Though that maybe election cycle issues not COVID. We'll never know.
I thought I was Alone...
"Being able to grocery shop after 11 pm."
Reading_Rainboner
"Hell yes. I miss the days where the Walmart across the street was open 24 hours."
Small_Tax_9432
let's just go...
"I miss spontaneity... everything now seems to have a barrier of difficulty."
iidosee
"I live very close to Disneyland so I have an annual pass. My friends and I would just go there after work and hang out and grab a bite to eat."
"Now, we have to reserve a day to go. And most of the time, the days are at 'full' capacity so we couldn't even reserve. I don't want to schedule to hang out at Disneyland for a couple hours for July. So yeah, I definitely miss the 'lets go eat at Disneyland tonight?' texts."
mymymissmai
Not til 24-25
"Functioning global supply chains. Ah, the product you want has got microchips in it? 9 month wait."
richard-king
"Minimum, I'd been saying for a while now that I wouldn't expect a true return to normalcy in terms of electronics prices till 2024-2025. Although Crypto crashing through the floor really took some of the pressure off graphics cards which I really appreciate."
statiiic
WTF?!?!
"How affordable everything was!"
Disastrous_Hour_6776
"Yep. Today I was bagging up my things at the grocery store and I heard the cashier say to the lady behind me 'thats $78.12.' She had -- 2 boxes of Kellogg's corn flakes, a carton of 12 eggs, milk, strawberries, raspberries, blue berries, a small cheese cake, English muffins, coffee, and a small whole frozen chicken that could maybe feed 3 people if the meat portioning was small."
SnowyInuk
Sushi
"My favorite sushi place. It was good quality, close by, kid-friendly, and not too expensive."
InannasPocket
All of this... it was a simpler time.
NASTY
"As a retail worker, just how f**king NASTY some people have gotten."
DmitriPetrov*itch
"They applauded you for being an essential worker but won’t vote for policies that’ll raise minimum wage while insisting a wage cap for heavily paid employees."
sketchysketchist
CHANGES your DNA...
"Some of the people closest to me became very bitter and petty over the last 2 years. So many people have the 'crazy eyes' now."
__--__7
"So true and holidays with the family is like who has the biggest tinfoil hat building contest. How many jumps does your brain have to go through to think that the Covid vaccine CHANGES your DNA into the patented DNA so that the government now controls your body."
"So like vaccinated people now have a singular DNA set. I feel like I still have a chunk of my brain just broken off due to that comment alone. I was also told by same family member that I could never donate blood again due to the vaccine. I guess it is so my patented DNA doesn't affect people?? FYI my vaccinated butt just donated today fine and multiple other times after the vaccine."
tyreka13
Homeward Bound
"House prices."
adrianinked
"I'm resigned to never thinking I have a chance on owning property where I live. I'm 30 and just can't imagine it anymore. And I don't want to live anywhere else so, whatever."
Osdab2daf
"That didn’t happen because of the pandemic. That was already happening regardless."
CH11DW
Oh Mickey
"All Day Breakfast at McDonalds."
hutch2522
"It was honestly hell to do, and not very popular. ITs margins aren't anywhere dinner and lunch specials. ON top of that, the temperatures are such that They require its own grill, meaning that if you have 2 grills in shop, you are down 50% of lunch capacity."
Freyas_Follower
Way back when...
"Hanging out with friends. And I mean waaaaaay before Covid. Like 2006 back when I had some friends."
LoocsinatasYT
I miss the old days. Maybe we'll get back there.
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What do you believe?
Is there a GOD in the sky?
Is he guiding us and helping us?
Life is really hard. Why is that is a big entity is up there loving us?
Atheists have taken a lot of heat for what feels like shunning GOD.
What if they've been right all along?
Maybe let's take a listen and see what they really think.
Redditor __Jacob______ wanted to hear from the people who don't really believe all that "God" stuff. They asked:
"Atheists, what do you believe in?"
I'm waffling between G-O-D and nothing. So please give me some education.
911
"We need to look out for each other because help isn't coming."
cknipe
Peace Out
"More than 2 decades ago, a priest was giving a sermon in my church and he said 'our faith requires you to believe without question. Why call it faith if you have to ask questions?' I haven't returned to church. Not until my wedding day but you know what I mean."
asiangontear
Delusion
"When I was young I used to think that after death you would have access to a PC that you could see absolutely anything about your life. Stats, any question you had no matter how obscure, replays of moments, perspectives of others in relation to you. No matter what you wanted to know, if it was relatable to you, you could see it. I know it's silly, but as time goes on I just want it to be real, and I don't think I'd have any issue allowing myself to fall into that delusion."
eggwardpenisglands
I think nothing happens...
"Realistically, I think nothing happens. We literally experience nothing after death. Same thing that we experience before birth. We don't exist, so it's nothing. I think the tenant that we should follow while living is to try to be happy and healthy while minimizing the damage we do to each other."
"What I would LIKE to happen after death is whatever you believe in, exists. I think Christians should get to go to heaven if they truly believe in it, Hindus and Buddhists get reincarnated, and everyone else also gets to experience what they believe they will experience."
"'I would still experience Nothing. Maybe it's one of those things where at the moment of death their brain makes them experience what feels like an infinitely long moment in time where they experience their afterlife. I just think it would be neat for everybody."
Better_Meat_
Shrug
"Best advice I received from a dear senior on their way out. 'You win some, you lose some' shrug. Nothing divine, life is that simple and wonderful, accept it and move on."
Tune_Kindly
It all sounds pretty simple. Why are people so up in arms about Atheists?
Whatever
"I believe in a universe that doesn't care, and people that do."
imCIK
Cool with Empty
"Nothing. [Serious]."
rumblingtummy29
"I feel this way about death. When I was 5, my grandfather died and my cousin simple said, he is dead, that means you are gone forever. Everything ends up dying, even plants and animals. I'm now in my 40's and still have this simplistic view of life and death. People think I'm ambivalent to life and death but it's just what it is."
thepigfish82
puppet-masters...
"I think a lot of religious people struggle with the fact that we are all just swirling units of chaos. There is no grand plan or great orchestrator. I think that’s why people who are prone to religion are also susceptible to things like Q anon and the Cabal and all that. They REALLY want to believe that there is some almighty puppet-master who determines all of humanity’s fate."
Lngtmelrker
“we’re living in a society!”
"Just be a kind and empathetic person not because you’re worried about some cosmic justice, but because it’s the right thing to do. If there is some being that created us there’s no way they actually care about believing in it or adhering to some rules from over 2000 years ago."
"Also a big thing for me is that I find the idea that you need religion or the Bible in order to have morals and ethics pretty dumb. It’s pretty f**king clear that most evangelicals have neither. But my main thing is being a good person simply because, as George Costanza once said we’re living in a society!' If you’re only a good person in order to make it to heaven you probably aren’t actually a good and moral person."
conservative_genius
That's All
"You're born. You live. You die. That's it. After you die you cease to exist, the same as before you were born."
serefina
Believe what you want. We're all here together. So let's focus there.
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The list of what irritates me is endless.
I mean... breathing too loud or dust can set me off.
I'm a bit unstable, yes.
But I'm not alone.
So let's discuss.
Redditor Aburntbagel6 wanted to hear about all the times many of us just couldn't control our disdain. They asked:
"What never fails to piss you off?"
I feel like this article can go on forever. Let's get some highlights.
Wasted Time
"Meetings that could and should have been an email."
Sirena609
Lotto People
"Getting stuck behind people playing the lottery at a corner store."
thenuggetlover
"I also used to work in a gas station and you’re SO right. I f**king hated the lottery people. Especially since my store had a small staff and there was usually only one of us working at a time, which meant that I couldn’t get any of my other work done as long as they were there."
"And you’re right, it’s also pretty sad to watch. I had one lady who used to come in every day and spent hundreds and HUNDREDS of dollars on scratch tickets. One day, she won $200 after spending probably around $600 and she was so excited and saying she can 'finally pay her bills.'"
i-am-your-god-now
Aware...
"No situational awareness. Job, home, shopping, driving. Think for one minute and go about. OBSERVE!!"
Dizzy-Foundation8122
"My mom is one of those people who leave the shopping cart in the middle of the damn aisle and proceed to walk twenty feet away. After correcting her a million times to no effect I just walk away now so people don’t know I’m with her."
OutrageousEvent
Shut Up!
"Endless barking in the middle of the night, I love animals but that sh*t I can't stand."
Acceptable-Lemon2924
"Endless barking in general drives me up a wall. One of my friends dogs was barking almost an entire gaming session the other day. I wanted to reach through the computer and smack him for letting it go on."
bangersnmash13
Kindness
"People being mean to service workers, especially if the workers are very young."'
scaryboilednoodles
All of these things. I hate them all.
Admit It
"People who never accept fault when they mess something up. Like, why blame a million people when it was clearly you who did it???"
Quirky-Area-8978
From Above
"My upstairs neighbors."
lutzow89
"I had terrible neighbors at my previous apartment. It was a one person studio for students, but her boyfriend was clearly living with her illegally and he was loud."
"One night we knocked n the door at 3 AM because of the loud music and an unknown girl opened the door. I just thought they were having a little party. But the next door I saw the girl living there come home with a suitcase after having been away for the weekend... Her BF was cheating on her in her own apartment."
Th3_Accountant
Move Away
"People who sit directly next to me at the airport, movie theater, any other place where you can choose a seat when there is PLENTY of other seating."
BacardiPardy33
"I can’t YES this enough and the ones who can’t park for crap so they park so close you can’t open doors on one side of the car or the ones who park directly behind when you pulled through so the door won’t open to load groceries."
BacardiPardy33
It's Over
"People who try to restart old drama. Like I'm done with you, just leave me alone."
Tired_Potatos
"Yep, half the reason I've basically quit playing one of my favorite online video games. People keep bringing old crap up or sh*tting on on someone who used to be our friend. I got tired of it so I just ejected the game out of me."
CaucasianHumus
AHHHHH!!!
"People walking too slow in front of me with no way to get around them. It’s even worse if it’s a couple or group taking up the whole sidewalk. HAVE SOME SPATIAL AWARENESS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!"
_-v0x-_
Life in general pisses me off. I'm easy.
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