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.
terminator GIFGiphy- People Share The Weirdest Thing They Have Ever Experienced ... ›
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- People Describe The Weirdest Thing They've Ever Noticed While Visiting A Foreign Country - George Takei ›
"What's the most mysterious thing happened in your life that you can't find any explanation for?"
Mom Acting Weird
"My mum is a type 1 diabetic, has been since she was 11 years of age."
"When me and my little brother were very young, I was about 7 and he was 5 , I came into my mum's room to find she was acting extremely strange."
"She looked almost drunk, and wasn’t really responsive."
"I went to pick up her insulin needles to see if she would react to that and she didn’t."
"So I panicked and phoned my Nan who told me to put the phone down and dial 999."
"For some reason I was so frightened and confused I didn’t, and sent my little brother outside to get help while I tried to get my mum to respond to me."
"My brother came back in crying saying he couldn’t find anyone and then about five minuets later this woman just walked into my mum's bedroom, called me by my name, and my brothers, said she knew my mum and help is coming, she was calm, soft-spoken and had a warm feeling about her."
"I didn’t recognize this woman and neither did my brother."
"Shortly after the ambulance arrived and got my mum's sugar levels back up."
"And when I went to find the woman, she was gone."
"Like literally gone."
"When my mum came round I explained to her about this mysterious woman and what she looked like."
"And my mum had absolutely no idea who she was, and we never saw her again."
"If she didn’t help us my mum would have died eventually."
"Still gives me shivers now."- leeshouse90
Portrait Of A Lady On Fire Neon Rated GIF by NEONGiphyPsychic, or lucky?
"When I was around 18 a friend and I were traveling in Europe."
"We were walking along a pleasant, quiet street in Rome one day and saw an elderly homeless man sitting on the street."
"He said to us if he could guess our date of birth could we give him some money?"
"Of course we said ok."
"He did it! "
"He told us both our correct dates of birth!"
"Never met him before and never saw him again."- robertodurian
Some Unfinished Work, Maybe?
"I was at my mother in law's flat in Hungary."
"Fyi I don't speak Hungarian, so I couldn't be aware of any of this."
"I tend to go to bed later that my wife, and for the first couple of nights, I had trouble falling asleep because around midnight I could hear the neighbor upstairs."
"It's an old block of flats made under the communist era, walls are incredibly thin."
"Walk in high heels, which was very annoying."
"I could also hear little objects fall on the floor, and I told my wife it sounded like the plastic buttons you have on some clothes."
"She looked at me funny and told me her niece hated to sleep in that room because she was scared by the noises coming from upstairs."
"I said that was a bit exaggerated, and I thought it was until my wife told me the flat upstairs had been empty for the past at least 4 years."
"Neighbor died years before that, and guess what?"
"She was a tailor, always nicely dressed and wearing high heels."- mimzou
High Heels Shoes GIF by Real Housewives Of CheshireGiphyGone Without A Trace
"When I was a kid, I participated in Big Brothers Big Sisters, which if you don't know what that is it's pretty much just a mentorship program in the US."
"I basically just hung out with this dude Chris for a couple hours a week."
"We'd go to the movies, out to eat, he'd help me with my homework, that kinda thing."
"One day, he tells me that he's going to Baltimore for a couple weeks and when I should expect him back."
"The day rolls around and I give him a call to see if he's back yet."
"A man whose voice I didn't recognize answered and I asked if Chris was there."
"He said no."
"I asked him when Chris would be back just kinda thinking it was someone staying at his house or watching his dogs or something."
"But he said that I had the wrong number, that he and his wife had lived there for years, and there was never a Chris there."
"I double checked in the phonebook to see if it was the right number which it was because I had it circled."
"I was confused so I just said sorry and hung up, and I never heard from Chris ever again."- theautomemoriesdoll
A Clever Distraction?
"When I was 10 or so I was staying at my grandma's over the summer break and we were having breakfast."
"We barely started eating when the phone rang."
"She left the dining room and I followed her thinking that maybe they were my parents calling."
"When we returned most of the food was gone."
"She asked me if I ate while she was on the phone and I said 'no'."
"There was no one else home and there were no pets."
"My grandma just shook it off saying we might have eaten more than she remembered but I am absolutely positive that I had at most two bites of my toast by the time the phone rang."- queenliz2fr
Hungry Good Morning GIF by HBO MaxGiphyMystery Benefactor
"Every month around the 5th I get a letter with exactly 23 dollars."
"No note, no return address."
"I’ve asked family, relatives, friends, the two past occupants of this apartment."
"Nobody knows anything about it."
"It is not addressed to me, but to my unique postal address."
"The total is now exactly 1886, I have just stashed it all in a box."
"I do not want to spend it in case it is cursed."- Puzzleheaded_Ad928
A Comforting Sign
"My grandmother always loved roses and had them growing in her back yard."
"She died in a December and when we were gathered at her house for the funeral my father happened to look out the back window and saw a bright red rose had blossomed."
"It stood out brightly against the snow."
"He brought it in and put it in a vase on the kitchen table."
"We all left for the funeral and when we came back the rose was on the living room floor."
"No one had been in the house while we were gone."
"My father is the most hard-headed person alive but he was convinced it was his mothers way of telling him she was all right."- regular6drunk7
Mystery Portal?
"We have a built in wardrobe in our bedroom."
"About a month ago our cat had managed to get herself inside and I must have closed the door."
"I heard her meowing and I opened the door and she jumped out and walked off."
"Silly cat."
"I closed the wardrobe door."
"Less than five minutes later I hear a meow in the wardrobe, I open the door and to my surprise, our cat jumps out again and walks off."
"My partner and I were both stunned as there is no way into the wardrobe with the doors closed."
"Neither of us have any idea how this happened."- TorthOrc
Cat Jumping GIFGiphyLost Time
"I had just picked up a coworker from her house heading to work.'
"We are just talking and chatting, "how'd your weekend go" type of stuff."
"We are maybe 5 miles away from her house, when all of a sudden, we realize we are in town pulling into works parking lot."
"We both kinda look at each other not sure what happened."
"We had gone near 20 miles in a blink of an eye."
"And what cemented this experience as something that I actually happened, and not just simply losing track of time, IS THE TIME!"
"It should have taken us almost half an hour to get to work."
"Instead the time from when I picked her up was 2:30."
"And the time when we got to the building was 2:40."
"There is no way in HELL!"
"We couldn't have gotten there that fast."
"From that point on we both called that experience the time when we Jumped, like from the movie Jumper."
"I have no explanation why."
"I'll also state, I don't believe in the paranormal or supernatural."
"So this experience is one of those things that makes me question my own sanity."- belac4862
car dark GIFGiphyThere must be an explanation for these circumstances...
Even if it's not an explanation that will make any sense, otherworldly or not.
What is a great example of 'f*ck around and find out'"?
Never Be Afraid To Seek Help
"Hey remember how they said drugs can ruin your f*cking life?"
"Turns out that was true."- WowAPenguin
They Put Up Those Walls For A Reason
"People who die after going over the safety fence at zoo, or basically any safety fence."- Solid_Refrigerator16
They Can't Say They Weren't Warned...
"Those who go deep cave diving and ignore the warning signs."- somekindofmiracle
cave GIFGiphyNever Stand Behind Them...
"Jacka**es who come to the stables I ride at and act weird around horses."
"Those animals play no games."- clem82
Is It Really Worth It?
"Running of the Bulls in Spain."
"The videos each year of the people getting completely annihilated by the bulls is a great example."- getagrooving
Never Get Too Big For Your Britches...
"When I was young I boxed and eventually got into golden gloves."
"I got a few wins under my belt and said I wanted to fight someone legit, someone who would be a real challenge."
"An opportunity came up to fight someone very good, a guy who'd eventually win regional and state and later go pro."
"At this point I'd not lost or even been knocked down, so my confidence was high, that is until he knocked me the hell out very early in the fight and taught me that there are BIG differences in the different talent levels of fighting."-Reddit
episode 2 boxing GIF by Archie ComicsGiphySharks might be the least of your problems...
"Go swimming outside the flags in Australia."- d*ckflip1980
Clown Behavior
"When people were dressing up like clowns to scare people."
"It kinda stopped after one got shot."- BigMaraJeff2
Or With Anything Dangerous...
"Playing with electricity."- tlmega124
Jack Nicholson Hair GIF by MOODMANGiphyThey Won't Harm You If You Won't Harm Them...
"People that approach wildlife in state parks."- Rider-of-Rohaan42
Best To Keep Hands And Feet Out Of Moving Vehicles...
"Your boss at the warehouse is constantly telling you to keep your feet within the confines of your vehicle, and not to hang them, and to stay clear when walking, because if you don't, a 6,000 pound+ vehicle impacting a fixed surface will turn your foot into spaghetti sauce."
"Do not f*ck around, ever, with industrial vehicles."
"Follow all guidelines, always."
"A powered ride-on pallet jack weighs as much as 2-3 small cars, when fully loaded."
"It will absolutely ruin you if you don't operate safely."- SpaceCorpse
Still Probably Best Not To Do It At All!
"My uncle was a high-profile defense attorney specializing in folks who were arrested for drug trafficking."
"The greatest advice he ever gave to me was, if you want to smuggle ANYTHING, you can do it one time."
"Just once."
"After that, you will be caught and you will be f*cked."- redoctober2021
Confusing On So Many Levels...
"Trying to armed rob a gun store."- VagabondTexan
You'd Think People Would Have Learned By Now...
"Taking Julius Caesar hostage."- EgoSenatus
caesar GIFGiphyNo One Is Invincible...
"Ye saying he can’t be dropped by Adidas, then immediately getting dropped by Adidas."- Admin_Untold
It's one thing to make a mistake after being a bit too hasty, and not giving something enough thought.
But if you end up in the ER after being urged not to do something, and well aware of what might happen, don't expect too many flowers...
Redditor Sir_Baconstrips wanted to see who was willing to discuss actions made while randy, so they asked:
"What's the biggest mistake you've made because you were horny?"
I can't tell you mine, because my mom might read this. But Reddit was more than happy to share.
History Help
Hide Reaction GIF by florGiphy"I browsed porn and then I asked my mom how to delete the history."
Ramon80589
What was that?
"Probably my most embarrassing moment. Was on my work computer (family business so nothing locked) and it was a super slow day and I was alone. Anyways was doing a classic 3 min facebook check and scrolled down for a second and saw the news post about Adriana Chechik injuring her back in a foam pool. Figured top comments on that would be golden. Read one funny one that said 'her and her scene with [performer I can’t remember] is still goat.'"
"Never heard of said performer so I got curious and google her. Of course photos never do justice, had to see the performance ya know? So I clicked a random video, quick glance and thought 'meh' and was about to close the tab before I noticed my mouse twitch on the screen… What was that? No.. that wasn’t mouse error, that was someone… then within seconds I realized the accountant who taps in remotely to finish work came in at that exact moment that I had a browser open for less than 60 sec."
"The worst wart was I could have sworn I had all those remote services off, but she tried to tap in for over an hour and must of did something to wake splashtop (probably had it on some type of standby mode). She even called earlier but I saw a random number and was speaking with a client and ignored it."
"Anyways, decision time, do I call her and play it off as nothing or apologize? Naturally as a fearful 28 year old I play off as nothing. I call, no answer… then a few minutes later i get the call back and her words after exchanging 'hellos … are you finished with whatever you were doing…' still burns me."
Satmatzi
Years Later
"Let my (ex) boyfriend dry-hump me for an hour on a bench outside after summer school."
"The bad news: this bench behind our school was also beside a swimming pool. Where parents were taking their children for swim lessons. Eventually a staff member came out and yelled at us for being inappropriate."
"I still have shame flashbacks today, over 10 years later."
hannlouiseols
Size Issues
"I had a one night stand with a guy who was, in retrospect, seriously self-conscious about his penis size and kept going on about how if it was on the small size it was just because he has to have sex with it a few times and it would gradually get bigger until it was it’s 'true' size. I really didn’t care."
"But then to make himself feel better he turned it around and started talking about how big and wide my vagina was but kept reassuring me that it was ok because he liked the challenge. I wish I had snapped my legs shut and given him the boot right then and there."
bewarethes0ckm0nster
In San Diego
No Money Bangladeshi GIF by GifGariGiphy"Lost my entire tax refund and got my phone stolen at a strip club in San Diego."
BigFatPapaBear
Always check your pockets on the way out.
The Reward
Happy We Did It GIF by StoryfulGiphy"Hooked up with a girl at a party. Just kind of bored, drunk, and horny. Having to go to the doctor for a case of pubic lice was my reward for poor self-control."
No_External7289
Dedicated...
"I got my first serious gf in high school. She was two grades below me. So when I finished third year and moved 500 km south we was still a couple. I was so in love (and most of all horny) I commuted every. Single. Weekend. And I was poor. So I took the bus to the nearest station after school. Waited for the long distance bus for 4-5 hours."
"Went to a larger city to hitchhike my way there. I was there Friday night or Saturday morning. Locked ourselves in her bedroom and went at it until Sunday morning. I made my way down to school again and went to class straight from the bus Monday morning. This went on for almost a year…"
pelo_ensortijado
I'm Out
Chris Pratt Running GIF by Parks and RecreationGiphy"Was trying to get with a girl in college. We were texting and I asked her what she was up to, she said she was training for a marathon and going to the gym and asked if I wanted to come."
"I ended up running 9 miles before I tagged out. So now I know how far I'd go to have sex it's up to 9 miles."
euesquecimeunome
Lord the things people will do when slightly turned on.