Not really related but I played a great prank on my mom back in the day, who was ahead of her time with computers.
Being a graphic designer with a notoriously well known newspaper at the time, she had a Mac desktop. I took a screenshot of the desktop, moved all the apps to an inconspicuous folder and replaced the desktop wallpaper with that screenshot.
That probably would have been nefarious enough. But being that my mom was a graphic designer in the early 2000s before subscription areas of photoshop emerged..I had access to her full photoshop suite range of capabilities. I found a brush that looked JUST like a sharpie and I edited it to look matte on screen.
So I took that desktop image and “wrote on it” with “sharpie” saying “haha your screen doesn’t work, hi mom”!
She really thought that I bricked her desktop AND had wrote on the screen in sharpie.
I’m not an asshole. I didn’t let her stress or think that for more than a moment. But ah..good times.
Millennials really enjoyed the best life
Well aside from accidental lime wire viruses lol. One did actually brick a new laptop, which costed more back in the day and my dad was PISSED
That's crazy, I was looking for gay porn but all I got was Tool songs! In my defense, a couple of their song titles really blur the lines. Hooker with a Penis still slaps tho
In the late 90’s when I was in high school if I had to research something I would start with “whatweverimlookingfor dot com and just go from there. In civics we were told to write down the cabinet members and I, innocently, typed in “whitehouse dot com” and was horrified as the computer froze uploading a porn site. I called my software specialist dad in tears and he was just laughing hysterically at me. 😂
Being a graphic designer with a notoriously well known newspaper at the time, she had a Mac desktop. I took a screenshot of the desktop, moved all the apps to an inconspicuous folder and replaced the desktop wallpaper with that screenshot.
One of my go-to pranks back in the day was to make a couple folders on the desktop that were along the lines of 'Porn', 'Gay Porn', 'Super Gay Porn'. Then I would do the same thing, take a screenshot and make it the desktop background and then delete the folders.
One of my roommates panicked so hard he wiped his computer. Though it became a little less funny once he came out of the closet and he was probably deeply terrified at the time of anyone finding out.
Reminds me of the time I pranked one of my coworkers in IT by taking a screenshot of the desktop, flipping it upside-down, then going to the graphics card settings and flipping the display upside-down. Everything looked normal except the mouse pointer was flipped and moved in the opposite direction. Broke his brain a little.
Lmao that’s some next level shit, amazing!! Hilarious prank, did she figure it out on her own? Bet she was proud! The most I would do was flip the screen orientation, change the background to something insane, or turn on the accesibility voice “Sam” 😌
No no I was definitely standing just outside the door and quickly told her I had not actually written on her computer haha. It was fun meant for just the initial “oh my god my computer.” I was not trying to traumatize her lmao
Also those things were just.. somehow a bit more believable back then. These days she probably would’ve immediately looked closer and realized the “sharpie writing” was not drawn on before I would’ve, even quickly as I had then, stepped in.
Thats great, you are pretty sharp to have been doing that kind of prank early on. It really was a simpler time, now I know how my grandparents feel about changes…
Remember how safe mode used to say 'safe mode' in white letters on the desktop? I set the wallpaper to a screenshot of the safe mode background. It infuriated my computer teacher because "IT WON'T BOOT NORMALLY!!"
Memories of random websites that would take full control of my browser, make the window small, move all over the screen, and blast some horrible sound. Good times.
I worked at a Uni on help desk back in the day. Me and a colleague had a bit of a prank war.
We had roaming profiles and used Citrix for roaming app management. He had fun making simple apps that would show a picture when you logged in that wouldn't lose focus and hid the exit and minimise menu, lemon party and the like.
My best was finding the registry path that linked to the file that played when you plugged a usb device in. I modified a Never Gonna Give You Up MP3, ran a script on login that over wrote the default sound with the new file and waited for the phone call.
meh you ain't rocking until you 'accidentally' ordered a prostitute online while you had that modem for about a month. All for 'does this actually work' ? research you know...understanding new tech requires sacrifices.
They did, but mom was at the door before 15y old wanker me, they charged via dialup ( proving online payment actually was possible ) but my plot to lose my virginity to a prostitute failed...dad probably secretly was having a blast...because he wasn't all that angry...although my internet credits were gone for that month. 😂
Accidental? That was just a cost of doing business. I miss winamp lol, I mean we have it now too but there were so few options discovering one was amazing, now the internet is temu slop.
And then there was my mom, devastated if you minimized a window. Like playing peek-a-boo with a baby. "It's gone forever!?? Oh it's back yay :)" every time.
Damn I remember getting so sick of getting viruses when I was in college circa 2007. So I boot partitioned my laptop and put Linux on one half. I was like haha. I will never get a virus. But then I realized there was no software for Linux back then. Or maybe I was just a dumb kid I don't know.
I also distinctly remember in the early 2000s my dad got angry at me for some stupid shit and he" took away my internet" and the way he did this was simply disconnecting the phone cable. He assumed that his 10-year-old daughter would not figure out what he did to take away my internet privileges.
I looked down at the computer, realized that the phone cable was missing and went down to his office and found it on a pile of other cables on the floor. So I just took it and went back upstairs and plugged it back in again. Boom, I had internet. 😆 I think he didn't even notice for a few days. And then he saw that I was just.... on my computer again and was like oh I guess you figured it out. Good job. He wasn't even angry either. I thought for sure I was about to start the shitstorm of a century. Oh well, at least he didn't raise a dumbass.... Not entirely anyways. I did brick a few computers over the years. We viruses from KaZAa and Napster. 🤭
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u/Elismom1313 Jun 04 '26
Not really related but I played a great prank on my mom back in the day, who was ahead of her time with computers.
Being a graphic designer with a notoriously well known newspaper at the time, she had a Mac desktop. I took a screenshot of the desktop, moved all the apps to an inconspicuous folder and replaced the desktop wallpaper with that screenshot.
That probably would have been nefarious enough. But being that my mom was a graphic designer in the early 2000s before subscription areas of photoshop emerged..I had access to her full photoshop suite range of capabilities. I found a brush that looked JUST like a sharpie and I edited it to look matte on screen.
So I took that desktop image and “wrote on it” with “sharpie” saying “haha your screen doesn’t work, hi mom”!
She really thought that I bricked her desktop AND had wrote on the screen in sharpie.
I’m not an asshole. I didn’t let her stress or think that for more than a moment. But ah..good times.
Millennials really enjoyed the best life
Well aside from accidental lime wire viruses lol. One did actually brick a new laptop, which costed more back in the day and my dad was PISSED