People on Reddit were asked: “How has technology betrayed you?” These are some of the best answers.
1. When I was younger I left some adult material paused on my computer monitor and forgot about it. Some NSFW images were burned onto the screen, and I was grounded for a lonnnngggg time.
2. When I was in college my roommate’s vibrator went off all by itself, making her whole underwear drawer rattle and shake. This was in the middle of the night, and woke us both up. I was the first one to lumber out of bed and check out the scene with the kind of bravado that accompanies extreme drowsiness. So I found the drawer, while my roommate sat slowly up in bed – and I’m sure horror was cascading down upon her. I still at this point didn’t realize what it was, but fiddled around with something in the drawer and it turned off without me doing much to it. She finally said, “Holy, my vibrator woke us both up. I’m so embarrassed.”
This woke me up quite well, and yes everything finally clicked into place in my mind.
I said, in a voice now feigned with great disorientation,
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“I won’t remember this tomorrow, don’t worry.” Then I made myself drop back into bed as hard as I could, as though too confused to get in there properly. I pretended to go to sleep right away, which left me frozen in a still silence for 45 minutes. I never mentioned this again, because I didn’t want her to feel bad. I wanted her to think I really did forget.
But I still remember thirteen years later. I’ll never forget. I never told anyone, though, outside of right now and here with anonymity on my side.
[deleted]
3. I was bored and started to look at some really messed up drawings online. I came across a picture of a woman that had horse “Parts” and I was about to it next to not look at it anymore and clicked “like on Facebook” instead of next.
ksmash
4. So I had been watching adult videos on my phone, as I am known to do. But I forgot to close the tab it was on. So I was at lunch the next day with a work colleague and decided I wanted to find out what the Olympic medal count was (this happened last week FTR). I opened my the browser and, BAM. I tried to shut it off as quick as I could but it still went on for a couple seconds. My friend, and the adjacent tables of people, all just kinda sat there quietly for a second. Very awkward to say the least.
Kijafa
5. The mouse ran out of batteries just when my dad came home and I had a naughty video on…
PEEL_THE_PEN
6/24 I was getting ready to drive from Green Bay to Minneapolis for a weekend, which is basically a four hour drive west. While sitting in my driveway, I programmed our GPS to go to my destination in the Twin Cities. Late Sunday afternoon, sitting at my original destination, I programmed the GPS to take me to my home. I didn’t look at the map, because I was literally just reversing the route I had taken to get to the same spot. The estimated time of arrival said 8:00 something, and since I was leaving around 4 pm, that made sense too.
Except that it wasn’t estimating that I’d get home at 8:56 PM…
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For reasons we still don’t understand, the GPS didn’t just reverse the route and instead, programmed a route that would take me 8 hours and 56 minutes and go through Iowa and southern Wisconsin. I didn’t notice until I had been driving for almost two hours and I still hadn’t crossed the Mississippi River. I ended up having to turn around, go back to Minneapolis and stayed overnight somewhere in Western Wisconsin, missing a half day of work the next day.
I still want to smash that GPS with a hammer over that incident.
thatsmybix
7. I recently bought a 3d TV and some 5.1 surround sound gaming headphones for my PS3.
So I was bored one night and I thought, hey, why not watch some surround sound, 3D adult vids. So I load it all up and go to town. Once the business is done, I take off my headphone, but I can still hear the video. What.
I checked my ps3 settings and the porn was being output through both my TV and my surround sound headphones. Everyone was in. Everyone knew.
uckingtard
8. My web browser of choice is Google Chrome. For those who don’t know, Chrome links up with your Google account, and can sync any or all of your browsing preferences (history, bookmarks, homepage, etc.) across whatever computers you enable it on. The only two computers I really use are my home computer and my work computer (relevant detail: because my work is awesome, there is no Internet filter; we can browse anything we want). I maintain different browser usage for each computer, so I have the sync feature turned off for these two computers. Or so I thought…
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For some reason I’ve forgotten (it’s irrelevant anyway), my one friend had the need to use the computer at my house. She did so while I wasn’t paying attention, so I didn’t see what it was she was doing. When I checked my computer later, she had changed my home page to gayporn.com. Hahaha, there’s gay porn, you got me, I laugh it off.
I go into work the next day, and open up my usual applications (Google Chrome, Outlook, Pidgin), and wait for them to load. As I wait for them to load, I look down at my phone to burn the 10 seconds or so on Reddit. I look back up, and gayporn.com is glaring at me from my very large computer monitor. I was mortified.
schwagle
9. In my college english class my teacher was reading out loud and all of a sudden everyone could hear porn. The really loud kind coming from someone’s bag. A girl took her phone out, tried and failed to turn it off and ended up taking the battery out of her phone. She looked embarrassed and said “bloody pop ups” before slumping back into her seat.
whatwouldbuffydo
10. I was sitting in a class of roughly 150 people while I was at Michigan State. It was a particularly slow and boring class so I decided to open up my laptop and play Super Mario 64 on an emulator I’d just downloaded.
I almost always check the mute button but forgot to time this one time. The program opens in full screen mode and starts the game. For those of you who loved this game as much as me, remember the first audio?
“It a-me, Mario!”, played so loud the entire lecture hall went silent and the prof just sat and stared at me until I had successfully muted and shrunk so low in my seat no one else could see me.
threelions9586
11. I didn’t realize my iTunes automatically “shared” my playlist on a network. So for about two years, I have been going to the library, sharing with the everyone on the public network that I have an iTunes filled with Hannah Montana, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, One Direction (basically anything and everything that a 13-year-old girl would like). To make matter worse, my iTunes album was apparently shared using my first AND last name.
Whatever, I still like to think I’m manly regardless of my musical tastes. I can be awesome and still listen to Hannah Montana. I get the beeesssst of both worlds.
charbok
12. This took place a few years ago when I still lived at home. I had just gotten my first iPhone, so obviously I immediately used it to look up pornography. I watched some sleezy video before going to sleep, but apparently I didn’t actually “close” the video; I just clicked the home button, which sent the video to the background.
You see where this is going.
I place my iPhone into its fancy new dock/alarm clock, set the alarm, and drifted off to sleep without a care in the world.
This is the part where I should tell you that I am a heavy sleeper.
I set my alarm clock loud. LOUD. Gods stir in their sleep when my alarm clock rings across the land. I had used this alarm clock every day, and every day the same thing happened: when the time for the alarm arrives, my iPhone would open the iPod app and play whatever song was currently playing. That faithful day, I discovered a hidden feature of my alarm clock: if a video was opened in safari in the background, my alarm clock would say, “Close enough” and just roll with that.
You see where this is going.
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This is the part where I should remind you that I am a heavy sleeper.
My alarm was set for 8 AM. My alarm was set at the “god stirring” volume I mentioned earlier. But, there are no guarantees. Not for me. I have been known to battle my alarm clock for hours in the early morning.
Alarm set for 8 AM.
Around 11 AM, I rub my eyes and slowly find my way back to the world of the awake and living.
My first thought was, “why are two very tiny loud people banging in my god damn ear canal?” After a second, though, I fully woke up and thought, “Jesus Christ why is pornography blaring throughout my house?”
I jumped up and looked right, and that is when I saw one of the most frightening things I had ever seen. Two, approximately 3.5″ pornstars GOING AT IT on my iPhone.
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JEEKRIS. I quickly snatched my phone and closed the video.
I did what everyone does when they are in shock. I quietly chanted “oh [no]” as my brain rallied to assess the damage.
It was Saturday. Parents home.
What time was the alarm set for? 8 AM. It’s now… 3 hours.
Was it really that loud? Maybe it just seemed loud because I just woke up. Who am I kidding?
There was no way to pretend this one away. My alarm clock betrayed me on a level I never could have imagined. You hate when your alarm goes off? We all do. But no alarm clock in all of the land had ever been so cruel and sadistic as my alarm clock had been on that morning.
After hiding for a while, I stumbled downstairs. No one ever said a word. But, they knew. They knew.
The thing is though… what did they know? Yeah, they knew… but knew WHAT? Being caught masturbating is one thing; it’s a harsh, upsetting, albeit straight-forward blast of shame and embarrassment. But, 3 hours of constant pornographic sounds blaring from your son’s room? They must have been confused more than anything else. Did they think I just said [screw it] before going on a 3 hour masturbation free-for-all in their home? Or, maybe they realized it was my alarm clock… but they must have thought, “Why is my weird son using pornography as an alarm clock?”
I almost feel more bad for them than me. I’m not sure what I would have done in their shoes. Lord knows you don’t wanna walk in, but after 3 hours… one would start to worry I imagine.
Maybe they did walk in to check on me, only to find me happily asleep to the lulling sounds of gangbangery.
Maybe.
Regardless, technology betrayed me that day, and I’ve never trusted it since.
LovableContrarian
13. After the Jenna Marbles music video came out (Bounce That [Penis]) I got the grand idea to set the chorus as my ringtone (“Bounce that [penis], shake it all around..etc).
Now, usually I keep my phone on vibrate anyway, out of habit during school. But one fateful day I was visiting my grandmother and mom with my two roommates, who, mind you, thought my ringtone was hilarious. Obviously, my phone had somehow been turned up ALL THE WAY and I got a text message. Deep male voice begins to blare from my phone about bouncing [penises].
I have never turned my phone off so quickly in my life. I looked up in horror to my roommates who were doing their best to not laugh and my mom and grandma were just kind of sitting there. I’m not sure if they had heard the lyrics, but I figure they did.
Songbird07
14. Trying to show off Siri to my grandparents. I wasn’t getting much signal at all in their house, so 5 times in a row I asked my phone to do something impressive it just responded with, “Sorry, Sexy. I can’t do that right now.”
lancastor
15. I like to use my iPhone as a alarm clock. But the standard ‘clock’ app does not allow you to play your own music. After a while I started sleeping through those annoying tunes, causing me to be late for school. So, I looked for an app that would allow me to play my own music. Found it, set an alarm, then went on browsing the web. Next morning, damn thing doesn’t wake me up. Turns out you have to have the app open, and your iPhone has to be ‘unlocked’. Ok, try again. Still doesn’t work. I forgot to turn the sound on.
After trying a couple of times, I have the app all figured out. I’m very happy I’m not being late everyday anymore. Until one day, I wake up at 7:30. School starts at 8:00. What had happened? The app crashed in the middle of the night. (that or sleeping me pressed the home button to buy me some more sleep). I now use an online radio app with a built-in alarm clock. Works great.
Jllle
16. Once I asked my mom if she would rent Dazed and Confused for me and my friend. She was hesitant and started arguing with me about how it was inappropriate. I decided to text her while she was in town to convince her to rent it, I sent her a text message that said something along the lines of ” Why can’t you rent a rated R movie when I have rated r movies at home?”. She never responded. An hour later, she came home LIVID and needless to say, without the movie. I had never seen her this mad. I was so confused. She finally made a comment about how I should re-read the message I sent her. Turns out I sent a message that read ” Why can’t you rent a rated R movie when I have rated r mother at home?”
Thank you auto-correct.
lshayr
17. This happened to a friend of mine — so she bought a Roomba and was really happy with it for a while, used it mostly to vacuum up the hair her Pug sheds.
So apparently her Pug had a little bathroom problem and decided to take a crap on the living room rug one day. So Roomba’s Roomba-ing along one day while she’s at work, and its sensors aren’t strong enough to go around the pile of dog crap. So it goes right through it.
But that’s not enough to stop the Roomba, so it continues vacuuming around the entire house, completely covered in [poop], for the entire 8 hours my friend is at work. You can imagine the look on her face when she enters the front door to find every floor surface on her main floor coated in dog [poop].
PandaSupreme
18. My friend had just graduated high school, and as a gift from his grandparents received a laptop. One night, we changed his homepage to brownlove I think it was (maybe brown loving?). A site that has images of orgy’s where the people are absolutely COVERED in fecal matter.
Anyway, we thought he’d see it shortly after we left. He didn’t. We later learned his internet had been down all night and so he couldn’t get online. The next day was his graduation party, and his mom said why don’t you show everyone what you got from your grandparents? Well he whipped it out in front of his family, and BAM! His browser gladly decided to load up brown love for all to see. He was blushing and panicking and trying to close the browser. Not quick enough though, because everyone saw it and sat in silence for a few seconds.
bagelpirate
19/24 This may be the reason I dislike Apple. But when I was in the 7th grade or so, we were in the computer lab working on some project. We were using these all in one macs, those ones that are big. Anyways being an immature 7th grader I googled something stupid like “how do I know I am gay” or something, for some cheap laughs. Well the mac didn’t like that and froze up. Like it was punishing me for googling such a thing. The stupid keyboard became a cruel accomplice to the Mac, it refused to process anything I pressed. The whole screen is frozen, it isn’t doing nothing.
I see the teacher, she starts walking down our row…
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I start freaking out, I’m supposed to be a good kid, not someone looking up silly stuff like I did. I tried the power button in desperation, but to no avail. For some reason the whole machine refused to help me out. As the teacher neared closer, there was only one thing I could do. I pulled out the cable from the back. THe teacher didn’t even notice me doing this and she just walked by. A very close call. Kids, that’s why I don’t like Macs.
deltasabre
20. Ok, so I was the ripe old age of like 16 and I went home after school one day and I wanted to get on our family computer. My little brother had been the last one on the computer (he was like 13). I could tell because it had an IE session opened to some stupid lego site that he was obsessed with. There was another IE session popped up too and I figured it was just a popup based on the address I could see, so I went to close it and it opens up full screen.
My poor face was assaulted by some of the nastiest BDSM, BBW, and other porn I have ever seen. I stand there, flabbergasted, trying to figure out how the hell this happened, when all of my extremely young siblings (age 6-9) walk in and ask what I’m doing. I panic and tell them to leave and turn off the monitor. Once I get them out I try to get the IE session to close. I go through the internet history then and find a list that could rival Satan’s spank bank. It was terrifying.
So, I leave the computer sitting, and assure myself that once my parents get home I’ll show them my find and they’ll be pleased I was able to catch something as bad as gay porn.
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So I go about the business of taking care of my siblings like a good older brother and eventually forget about the porn. A couple hours later my parents come home.
They had needed to check something online right away so they both went to the family computer where they find the internet history still open. They SCREAM for me to get in there RIGHT NOW. I go in freaking out because I can’t figure out why they would be so mad at me.
“WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS??” They demanded.
“Oh yeah, I was going to tell you guys about this…”, was the best my stupid brain could manage to stammer out. After a few minutes of explaining, my mother was still not convinced that it wasn’t me that did it. Finally, I had to tell my dad if it was me, I would have cleared the history, deleted the cookies, and left no trace. He agreed that I’m not that dumb and convinced my mother to agree. They called in my brother and interrogated him. Then my mother sat there and went through Every. Single. Link in the history.
So yeah, the internet history tried to get me in trouble for something that I hadn’t even done.
TheLegNBass
21. I did the whole online dating bit for a little while, wasn’t really my thing.
I met my ex at our college gym. Hit it off with her, start dating a few months later. A couple months after we started dating, she logs onto my browser and all of these online dating ads pop up (these ads are targeted toward what sites you’ve been on & what you search, generally).
She thought I was going on these sites and cheating on her. Truth be told, I guess they were just saved in my browser history from before I was dating her. Couldn’t take it after months of on and off accusations. Left her.
[deleted]
22. Ok so a few years ago I was in photography class and I had my laptop with me. This girl and I decide that this other girl looks just like someone from a tv show we used to watch. We decide to google image the actress and show the girl in our class how much she looks like the actress. I pull up the picture and as I’m turning the laptop around say “Hey, you look just like her!” Well she looks up, seems horrified, then immediately goes back to what she was doing. At this point I’m confused… this boy scowls at me and says “What are you doing?”
So my friend and I turn the computer around to find that the link we had clicked on completely rerouted to a porn site. People bangin’ everywhere on the screen. I immediately slammed the computer shut and the two of us sat there in silence until we started cracking up 10 minutes later.
At the end of the semester one of the bonus questions the professor added on the final exam was “Who showed porn to the entire class?”
GizmoMo
23. I just completed the summer portion of my program which was an online art class. The professor required our final project to be a PowerPoint and e-mailed to her the day before our meeting so she should could upload our work to the virtual classroom. My project was finished beforehand, so I put on some finishing touches, sent, and enjoyed the rest of my day.
After logging in the next morning, my professor took roll and informed us that we would be presenting in alphabetical order. She announced [to me], “I did not receive your project, but you can still earn participation points.” I panicked and checked my e-mail where a mailerdaemon message awaited. Because the file was so large, it bounced the project back to me. Fortunately, though, my professor allowed me to resend it while others presented and she successfully uploaded my project. I was given the go-ahead after my fellow classmate.
Everything was going well until I reached my last slide. What should have been the “show stopper” ended up being a mess of overlapped images. I apologized to my classmates for the error and thankfully my professor did not drop my grade for the submission error or the slide conundrum.
lucidviolet
24. When I was young, I remember saving a lot of NSFW pictures to the computer for quick and easy access later on (since the internet was really slow back then). I hid the pictures pretty well (according to me) under invisible folders, where the icon was blank and the folder name was simply `
Well, a day or two later of creating this extremely sneaky place to hide things, my mother calls me into the room that had the computer (family computer, only had one in the household). I walked up and stared in horror at the exact pictures I hid so well was now playing as the screen saver for the computer… The hidden folder I created? It was in the My Pictures library, and the screen saver was set to go through my pictures. After a while it got to the not-so-hidden folder and begin displaying those midday, as casual as can be.
They never found the folder path though, so there’s that.
TheEchoFilter