
If there were any moments of levity came out of the last year, it most surely was mic fails during Zoom calls.
With the rise of teleconferencing for business meetings or interacting with friends and family during a time many of us were forced to be in self-isolation, there was quite a learning curve to get used to.
One of the typical foibles of Zooming is forgetting to mute the mic when it matters most.
Curious to hear embarrassing anecdotes from strangers online, Redditor ElectroIsland asked:
"[Serious] What was your worst 'Oh sh*t I forgot to mute my mic' moment on any zoom meeting?"
We Don't Object
These are things one would never hear in a courtroom.
Oh, Expletive
"Attorney here - when I literally said 'sh*t' while getting off a court call."
"ETA: to be clear, this was audible to the judge and all other virtual hearing participants."
Judged
"I'm a public defender and for the past year I've been doing court over zoom from the jail. It's pretty chaotic because we have my guys, the people who are out of custody at court, people appearing by zoom from home, private attorneys, you name it. Makes for a long day."
"I was in front of a judge who is very slow and deliberate and it became apparent that several of my cases wouldn't be called until after lunch. I turned from the screen and HOLLERED across the module, 'sorry guys, you'll have to come back after lunch. This guy is slower than death!'"
"I was not muted."
"After lunch, I made a sincere and abject apology on the record - 'your Honor, prior to the break I made a comment that was inappropriate and I'd like to apologize to the Court...' The judge was lovely and assured me he hadn't heard a thing. Everyone heard it. Mortifying."
Game On
Gamers don't hold back in the heat of the moment. And we're here for it.
It's Your Move
"Was playing online Chess, since my teacher was idle. The opposite side in the Chess game was taking too long to move so I yelled 'Make a move you f*king bastard.' My mic wasn't muted."
One Bad Shot
"Was playing 8 Ball Pool and was in final round of a tournament during Calc, screamed 'holy f*k I blow' after missing a shot. Got about eight texts from classmates and a nice laugh from the teacher."
Class Dismissed
"While in the call, i was playing league with half my class. I flamed one of them for stealing my well deserved kill all while being unmuted... everyone heard me and laughed, then the teacher simply says 'since some of you seem to be playing popular games anyways, let's end the meeting here' and he laughed."
"Good man, miss him as a teacher."
– EchoRaze
When You Gotta Go
Urine trouble if you don't mute the mic on the way to the bathroom.
The Soothing Sounds Of Trickling
"I went to the washroom with my phone. I turned off the volume in my phone so i wouldnt listen to the class and mistakenly ended up unmuting as well. My entire class heard me peeing. 😥"
When You Gotta Go
"Not so much forgot to mute as I just didn't think they'd hear it....."
"While playing ESO we were all just talking and one dude says, 'I'm sorry, is somebody peeing?'"
Academics
People seem to learn a lot more about their teacher or fellow classmates during remote learning.
Being Cute
"My wife and I have been taking a technical writing course at our university together. One day she was making comments on the Zoom call before class started and one guy started making comments along the line of 'Dannnggg that girl is cute! Man, [first name] [last name] I'll have to remember her. Oh, wait a second, was she married? I can't remember.'"
"Our instructor cut him off by saying 'Hey um, [name] we can hear you. Yes she's very nice. Yes she is married, but don't worry, [my name] is a kind person.' He was horrified when he realized his mic was on."
"To make matters worse, I was having problems getting my Bluetooth headphones to connect. They failed a bunch of times so I couldn't hear a thing but I was ticked at them. My video was on and I was staring at my computer with an angry expression trying to mess with the settings."
– A_Hale
The Entertainer
"I was in the beginning of a zoom exam, and i didnt realize the mic turns of on immediately... So i was for about 5-8 mins singing sea shanties while i prepared all my setup, with about 350 people listening to me."
Belch It
"Teaching a class and I felt a burp coming on. Thought I could swallow it away or take a quick break and mute myself. Nope. Had to joke about it after while being embarrassed."
– djac13
Trigger Word
"For some reason my lecturer said the word 'boobies' and I laughed super loud (I'm 29 years old) only to realise my mic wasn't muted. He then proceeds to call out my name asking if I had a question 🤦♂️"
No matter how hard people try, even the most efficient of us will inevitably slip and invite us into their uncensored thoughts.
But mic fails have long been around even before Zoom.
I won't name the show or the performer, but a fellow actor talked about how badly they wanted to take a p*ss after exiting a scene....on Broadway. Hey, it wasn't his fault he didn't know the sound guy forgot to turn off his mic.
I remember hearing the audience howling after the semi-serious scene. And it was awesome.
- Teachers And Students Share Their Funniest 'Oops, I Forgot To ... ›
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- People Divulge Which Foods They've Eaten The Most By Volume During Their Life - George Takei ›
People Share Their Best 'You Either Die The Hero Or Live Long Enough To Become The Villain' Experiences
"You either die the hero or live long enough to become the villain."
Though not necessarily a universal truth, all of us have witnessed unfortunate moments in our lives where we've seen this saying become a reality.
Be it seeing our favorite public figures take a serious fall from grace, someone we know and admire eventually disappointing us in a devastating manner, or even seeing ourselves turn into someone we promised we'd never become.
One Redditor was curious to hear people's examples of this saying coming to light, either from a personal experience or seeing it happen to a well-known, public figure, leading them to ask:
"Who is your example of 'you either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain'?"
Jim Jones
"Jim Jones."
"He originally stood up for civil rights when it was really unpopular."
"Was hospitalized and accidentally placed in the black ward."
"When the doctors found out, they tried to move him, but he refused."
"Then he became a cult leader and used his power and influence to end the lives of a thousand people."- Crvsby
Earning a position of power
"Working in restaurant kitchens."
"You either burn out young, or become the boss that everyone hates."
"There's exceptions, but that's the rule."- grandpas_old_crow
Henry Heimlich
"Henry Heimlich, inventor of the Heimlich Maneuver."
"Made up a bunch of untested uses for it, treating people having asthma attacks, and drowning victims were the two I remember that he publicly talked up."
"Later, he funded an experiment that involved injecting people with Malaria to see if it would treat other conditions.
"The experiment was found to be unethical by American review boards, so he conducted them in Ethiopia." - User Deleted
Philippe Petain
"Philippe Petain."
"In WW1 he led the French to victory at Verdun, one of the worst battles in human history."
"In WW2, after France was beaten, Petain was the head of state of Vichy France."
"Guy went from the Lion of Verdun to the biggest Nazi collaborator in France."- arthuranymoredonuts
Our bodies
"Every organ until it gets cancer."- SuperBaconjam
Conor McGregor
"Conor McGregor."
"He had the whole country behind him here in Ireland at one point bar people who thought combat sport is grotesque."
"He was witty, original, backing himself up and having a Hollywood like rise to stardom."
"Now he's someone who the whole country is ashamed of, goes punching old men, clearly sleeps around on his wife while she's at home with the kids, just a walking caricature of himself."
"He didn't listen to his own advice."
"Get in."
"Get rich."
"Get out."- StephenPigot2020
Turning into our parents
"My dad used to annoy me by calling my Pokemon cards 'Pokey-Mans'."
"Now my kids have them and I do the same thing and it annoys the sh*t out of them."
"Thanks for the (Pokeyman) gold!"- rumpel4skinOU
Benedict Arnold
"Benedict Arnold."
"Almost died during the revolutionary way, if I recall correctly, and if he had he would have been remembered a huge hero, and a martyr."
"Instead he lived and changed sides, and is remembered only for his being a traitor."- uniqueperson22
Be it someone we knew quite intimately, or someone we admired from a far, it is always heartbreaking to see someone evolve from someone we love, to someone we utterly hate.
Sometimes we do things that have to be done.
And some of those things live in life's gray area of right and wrong.
What comes as a surprise to some is when we don't care if we're wrong.
We may still technically be in the right.
But morally and ethically, there may be some issues.
But still, many people don't care.
Redditor BirdyPizzawanted to see who would fess up about some of the worst things we're responsible for but have no shame.
"What is the darkest thing you have ever done and don’t regret?"
I've stolen from department stores that overcharged. I was arrested. I didn't care. So there...
The Grief
"Five years ago my dad suffered a catastrophic stroke. Left paralyzed and robbed of his speech and ability to communicate he was a shell of the once vibrant, charismatic man he once was. He was moved into skilled nursing where he lived for nearly two years, he was miserable."
"On my last visit I told him it was okay if he wanted to leave us, that we would miss him but he should go. A week later I received the call that he had passed. Instead of immediate grief I felt relief. Relief that he was finally free. The grief came later and I still miss him every single day."
theroadtoeverywhere
Things Missing
"Got into a car accident and had to stay with my mom for a couple days to figure out what to do. Went back to my apartment (I had two roommates) and everything was missing from my room. Long story short one of my roommates had everything hidden in her room."
"I called and told her the things were missing from my room and she came up with a lie that a couple girls came to look at my room (I was moving out bc of the accident, long story) and that they must have taken my things. She had everything I owned. Including my grandmothers perfume bottles, stuffed to the back of her closet, under her bed, behind her dresser etc."
"So I packed all of my stuff up. Then took a giant black garbage bag and stuffed as much of her closet in it as I could. Took it to the middle of nowhere, dug a hole and burnt it. She called screaming at me that her stuff was missing. I told her the two girls must have come by and taken her stuff too."
udntsay
Violence
"I hit my uncle left right and center when he was trying to choke my father to death. I was 16 years old at that time, a very skinny girl. I beat his face neck and every part of him that I could target with so much intensity that my knuckles turned blue the next day. I had an animalistic rage that day trying to help my father get away from his death grip. I hate my uncle even today."
"I got anger issues because of growing up around him. And I don't regret beating him that day at all. He was physically abusive to his wife as well. One fine day, his wife retaliated by beating him blue with a stick. And he stopped being physically violent towards her post that."
avadakebakra
Danger
"A neighbor like 10 years ago was neglecting their dog badly in the heat. The dog escaped often and ended up at the shelter a lot. One day she jumped the fence and got her tie-out cable stuck on the fence. (She was not in danger of choking.) Neighbor put her on a 3-foot-long cable tied to a doorknob, no water, 90 degree day. I let some kind folks steal her, watched the whole thing and said nothing to stop them."
Oh-Oh-Ophelia
Goodbye
"When my father was dying and in pain I was the one who told the doctors he had been through enough and we couldn't see him suffer anymore. Doctor injected him with something, I assume a morphine mega dose and he passed peacefully moments after. Euthanasia may not be legal in UK but compassionate doctors know what's what. I don't regret it because my pa made me promise I would have his back when he got sick or old. I'm sad he got sick and never got to get old."
Express_Evidence_23
That is a lot of mess. But sometimes we have to do what we have to do.
Toxic
"One of my ex best friends in high school was a real narcissistic lunatic. Had so many egotistical fantasies about what he deserved but I remained his friend because we met through my close friend (his girlfriend). As I started realizing what a terrible person he was I convinced him to go after his fantasy of a harem by asking to add a 3rd to their relationship, that led to a fight between his gf."
"I called her about it and asked how she felt about him adding someone to their relationship and about him sleeping with her. She said she knew nothing about that and started crying because he cheated on her. I basically helped orchestrate their breakup and have no regrets. She is happy with her first child now and he is in a toxic af relationship with 3 kids, 2 of which aren't his and his partner is 8 years older than him."
skijeng
My Buddy
"Had to make the choice to take my dad off of life support after he got Covid this year. He was sedated for a couple of weeks and one of his lungs collapsed and I couldn't watch him fall apart anymore. My dad was a bulky dude. Constantly did a lot of outdoor work and to see him bone skinny and have no muscle left killed me and I knew even if he somehow got through it, he would have been so miserable and depressed in that state he was in. I don’t regret it. I think it was the right thing to do by him. I’ll never not miss him though. That was my buddy."
CarterS20884
The Ruin
"Turned a close friend into the fish and game. He would poach mountain lions and bears. His whole family would literally shoot them and leave them. He would brag about it. I couldn’t stand it and felt that I needed to stop him. He’s in prison and so is his uncle. I know I ruined his life but he was literally killing so many mountain lions and bears."
Donkey-Puncherr
School Daze
"In middle school, there was this group of boys that would corner me in the hallway and try to scare me. I was the perfect target for these little b**tards. I was short, skinny, and had (and still have) and anxiety disorder. One day I just had enough, and asked a friend if I could have an extra pencil, sharpened it as much as I could, and when I saw one of them in the hallway, I stabbed the hell out of his leg. Sh**head got what he deserved."
leserolith3
Wow... we really are a dark and secretive people.
HOAs look good on paper, but they come with rules and unspecified cult like ownership.
They never seem to explain the depth of their involvement in your life in the paperwork.
But once you let your grass grow one centimeter too high... then the letters and lawsuits start piling up.
This is why people will pay anything to live free!
RedditorGlam_SpaceTimewanted to hear about the times the HOA has driven everyone crazy.
I have been able to avoid HOAs for awhile... but for how long?
Trashed
"HOA sued us for leaving out garbage bin out a day past garbage day… a total of five times in the three years we’ve lived here."
boardcertified*itch
"I live in a neighborhood with no HOA and do you know what my neighbors do if I happen to leave out my empty trash bins? They have the audacity to pull them in for me and I have to thank them next time I see them."
emailaddressforemail
Additions
"They wouldn’t let me add an acre of land onto my property. My neighbor owned 100 acres of land and was letting me buy an acre from him to add onto the 4 acres of land I already had. Since you can not build anything on 1 acre the HOA was refusing the purchase. However, when some lawyer said it was ok they let me buy the acre. I think they just wanted to waste our time."
TheCactusClub
Secrets
"HOA attempted to hold a 'secret' community meeting, where they'd vote on turning the large field and walking path everyone used for recreation into an RV park. It was 'secret' because they basically told no one and put up the required notice in a place where no one would see. As you can probably guess, most of the board owned RVs. Thankfully a few neighbors took notice and started knocking on doors. A crowd showed up and the proposal was starkly shot down. Freaking dirtbags."
CloudsOntheBrain
Enforcement
"HOA tried to enforce a rule that many houses in the community didn't comply with. I did some checking and it turns out that (at least in our state) if an HOA doesn't enforce a rule on everyone, then they can't enforce the time on anyone."
mypoliticalvoice
"Well that is kind of the point of a rule. If it's just used to abuse people the board don't like, it shouldn't be enforceable at all."
Painting_Agency
Useless
"One of my coworkers got a warning from his HOA saying that he had too many boxes inside his garage. They claimed that he couldn't use his garage for storage."
BirdSh*tPie
Who makes up these rules? Why are they evil?
No Good
"We built a new fence around our property and told us to take it down since the other fences looked old. We built a walkway from the door to the driveway, they told us to take it out."
OkraFit3987
Let's Throwdown
"The condo association wanted to renovate the pool and pitched the cost they were moving forward with. There were a lot of developers in the building and they noticed that it was about 4 times the cost it should have been. Association says tough cookies, things get fun. People writing notices of what's going on with the association, the association writing emails about it, lots of sniping back and forth."
"Then one day I'm in the lobby waiting for someone to show up and the head of the association and one of the people calling them out ran into each other and they had to immediately get separated by security because they were about to start throwing punches."
thugloofio
A Feet Away
"HOA of my neighborhood tried to tell me that my house needed to be added onto, because houses need to be at least 1800 sq ft in the neighborhood. My house is 1750 sq ft. HOA was started in 2004. My house was built in 1989. My family took the HOA to court, to make a long story short, HOA had to back down, cuz their rules didn’t exist until AFTER the house was built. So, the HOA rules do not apply to my house."
AmaranthRosenrot
Wake Up!
"I slipped in my driveway and fell and broke my femur near my hip and couldn't get up. I was laying in my driveway calling for help for about 30 minutes and I could hear people walking past but nobody stopped for quite a while. I eventually asked someone to call an ambulance as my phone was in my car out of reach and got taken care of."
"Spent a few days in the hospital and when I got home I had a letter from my HOA saying I was in violation for sleeping in my driveway in the middle of the day. So the people who walked by and definitely heard me call for help and didn't stop were from the HOA or reported me to them."
Zonerdrone
The Punishers
"Everyone had to drag their trash bins down a hill to a curb where the garbage truck would pick it up. People would be slow to get their bins back after pick up. So the HOA went a dragged all the bins to the other side of the neighborhood and threw them in a pile in a random patch of public grass. So we pay these people to be childishly petty and antagonize us? And their 'punishment' only created more of an eyesore than bins uniformly lined up on a curb."
FireteamAccount
Age Old Wood
"A gorgeous vintage wooden sled that has been in our family for at least 100 years was laid out one winter by my family. We received a letter informing us that since firewood is not allowed in front yards, we had to remove the pile from our yard."
Loose-Possession-68
Pay Up...
"My wife and I bought our condo almost 6 years ago and the guy we bought it from had owned it for less than a year. When we closed he said he had never got a key to the neighborhood pool when he bought the place from the previous owner but he was old so didn’t care and was never gonna use it. We said no big deal, we will just ask for a new one."
"Well the HoA wants us to pay $300 for a 'new' key because we had 'lost' our old one and it’s some fraud prevention measure to stop people from selling their pool keys or something. We had told them immediately after moving in we never got a key and after 6 years they refuse to get us a new one."
"We just pick the lock and go anyway but if it was an issue I’d be furious at the ridiculousness of making us pay into the HOA to maintain this pool when we never got access to it even though it wasn’t our fault and probably not even the fault of the guy before us."
Manly_Mangos
The HOA people are worse than the DMV!
History is littered with horror and fright.
And much of it is journaled and cataloged for our reading pleasure.
Which sometimes is reading that can leave one a bit on edge.
That's because some of our best long-dead wordsmiths left some serious echoes.
Now we all do love a good speech.
We're especially entranced when the speaker has that certain... "thing."
But once and awhile when you listen and really dig deep, they are less inspirational and more morbid
Redditor KeyWar8755 wanted to compare notes on the words we can't shake.They asked:
"What’s a quote from history that gives you chills?"
I always listen to famous serial killers. So I've long been tainted.
To the Sea
"'It is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated […] that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.'"
"General Sherman, from a letter sent in May of 1865 in the midst of his march to the sea."
TTTriplicate
Loss in Life
“'WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.'― Smedley Butler"
ayayaJAMMER
Shoot
"'Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.' -- Dwight D. Eisenhower"
zyygh
Dirty
"'In Germany, the one who complains about the dirt is considered much more dangerous than the one making something dirty.' -Kurt Tucholsky"
"(Not an exact translation, the original quote is in German)"
EsszettOfficial
I'll Find You
"Nobody believed Marco Polo’s stories about travelling through Asia, and on his deathbed someone asked him to admit he had made it all up. His response was 'I have not told half of what I have seen.' That always got my imagination going. I would have liked to have heard his stories straight from him."
mariam67
I've always wondered about Marco Polo's origins.
Dreams
“'All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.' T. E. Lawrence"
Kravashera
Time to Die
"'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.' — Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner"
cisforcoffee
Send it All...
"'Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle… If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send another.' - Said by Josip Broz Tito to Joseph Stalin"
ChangKaiShek2
Death
“'I used to have five brothers, now I'm not even a brother' - Kevin Von Erich"
"His older brother died at the age of 6. His younger brother David died suddenly at 25. His three youngest brothers all killed themselves at 33, 23, and 21. Between 1984 and 1993 he went from having four younger brothers to not being a brother."
ToxicBanana69
Remember
"'We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.' - Martin Luther King, Jr."
RecalledBurger
Power
"'We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or make it the last.' - John F. Kennedy"
VerdHorizon
These are some powerful words that have stood the test of time.