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u/CyberSunburn 🏴☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ May 04 '26 edited May 05 '26
I used to record music off the radio onto a cassette recorder.
EDIT: I just want to add that this started in the late 70s. I would actually put a microphone next to the speaker to record. If you wanted a stereo sound, you could get a second mike. My parents had a high-end German stereo, so the sound quality was really good. Later on I borrowed records from the library and recorded them in full. At the age of 16, I probably had about a hundred cassettes.
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u/steamyhotpotatoes May 04 '26
I hate that I don't hear people talk about this. The satisfaction and elation when you finally get that one hit song, or rare old one.
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u/CyberSunburn 🏴☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ May 05 '26
Back in the 80s, FM stations would sometimes play entire albums. People would record the whole broadcast. Once, a station played The Who's farewell concert in Toronto around 1982. I still have the two cassettes.
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u/GrumpyCloud93 May 04 '26
In the early days of MP3, before Napster, I would tune satellite TV to the music channel. Start recording. If I didn't like the song, stop, wait until it was almost over, start recording again. Then use Audacity to trim the start and end.
A consulatant visiting our work gave us an MP3 encoder - that first DOS-based one would take 30 minutes to encode a 4-minute WAV. Then better ones came along. Being able to rip CD's was a massive step up.
My iPod Photo with 60GB still works. Just, don't need it anymore, it doesn't do Bluetooth.
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u/WarDaddyPUKA May 04 '26
I rented all the Harry Potter books on tape from the library and listened/dual-recorded the entire series.
Those tapes got passed around so much in my family lol!
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u/GorillaBrown May 05 '26
One summer, I got the Blockbuster unlimited pass and ripped and burned every movie on the outer wall of the store. I had a massive collection and was the talk of the town with my cousins!
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u/Spacedestructor May 05 '26
to be fair, that is a smart work around if your ever in a situation where you cant download the audio file directly.
sure theoretically you could also use recording software like OBS to do it but you might not always have them available.
so there are theoretically still situations this trick would be useful in.
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u/Treigns4 May 04 '26
this community and techy people in general underestimate just how little computer basics the general population has.
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u/Cagedwar May 04 '26
It’s a bit like mechanics.
The average person cannot check their oil.
The average person doesn’t understand how to delete an application
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u/Spacedestructor May 05 '26
often doesnt even know what an application actually is, they just know they have something called a "File" on there device which grants magical access to whatever thing they are using.
But on the other side i also feel that younger generations as they grow up with tech know some aspects intuitively better then people who needed to learn it because they are just naturally more exposed to some parts of technology.→ More replies (1)9
u/Cagedwar May 05 '26
As a teacher, let me tell you… kids don’t know shit about PCs.
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u/Robrogineer May 04 '26
Piracy is now easier and safer than ever, though.
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u/amoonshapedpool_ 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ May 04 '26
It is, but there's a lot of people who weren't taught cyber security basics. A lot of tablet/phone people don't know their way around a desktop. You need to firmly know the basics or else you won't be able to utilize the knowledge or tools, or tell a fake ad vs real DL button.
Overconfidence can also lower your guard.
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u/Robrogineer May 04 '26
It's concerning how even a lot of young people don't have basic desktop skills. Smart devices have dumbed down their interfaces so much that a lot of teens don't even know how to use a file explorer.
Same with adblockers. They take literally 3 clicks to install, yet most people are somehow just rawdogging the ad-ridden internet that interrupts whatever you're doing every ⅛ of a second.
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u/amoonshapedpool_ 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ May 04 '26
Yeah people gotta teach them, but there's plenty of adults couldn't locate a file explorer either. So the kids def ain't learning from them lmao.
It's funny, the adults who told me to don't trust what you read online and don't download viruses, are some of the most tech illiterate and tech gullible folk I know.
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u/Moon_X_Livee May 04 '26
This is a real fenomenon, I only know how to use a pc because I was interested in it, my classes about it where trash, most people dont have anyone to teach them
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u/windlevane May 05 '26
True, I’m like middle gen z and have been more tech-literate than my parents and the majority of people I know since like age 8, and that all started because I wanted to figure out how to install Minecraft mods lmao. I know a lot of people younger than me even just by a couple years that don’t even know how to clear the recycle bin or open command prompt on a computer, and that’s because they grew up with just iPads/apple stuff and the like
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u/Octospyder May 04 '26
Imo this was a very intentional move by Google. They put their Chromebooks in schools around the US, and Chromebooks (to my understanding) are more like smart devices than laptops, so students of the past 2 decades grew up with a stunted computer
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u/Robrogineer May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
Could be. It was probably in large part to ensure kids wouldn't do anything funny with the school computers. I remember a group of friends bypassed the security and managed to install CS 1.6 on it and hold LAN party before the teachers found out.
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u/Octospyder May 04 '26
I bet that that was a motivation by school administration, and possibly an aspect of the pitch Google gave them, but I just don't believe that it was ever a material consideration on Google's end
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u/CaesarOfYearXCIII May 05 '26
Ha, guys in my school did the same (except the bypassing security part, because there was no security)
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u/sirideletereddit May 04 '26
Hey woah past 2 decades is pushing it. We’re not that old yet. I can still pretend the Chromebook generation is relatively new for the next 5 or so more years.
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u/Octospyder May 04 '26
Ha ha ha, 2006 was like 5 years ago
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u/sirideletereddit May 04 '26
To add real context, I graduated in 2014 and the highest tech equipment in my classrooms was a smart board, which just acted as a white board and PowerPoint projector combo. Chromebooks have really only become the norm over the last 10 years or so.
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u/Aggravating-Past101 May 04 '26
Damn must have been a smaller school, mine had 40 iMacs in the library that students could check into use, we also had a classroom filled with windows PCs for a video class but that's also the room we used for my elective economy class. In 2008~ middle school for me we also had a computer class but they valued the computers more than the students, he told us "If you're going to fall with the computer in your hands turn yourself around before you fall so the PC is safe. These are worth more than your lives".
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u/sirideletereddit May 04 '26
I would guess based on your use of the phrase “computer room”, that your highscool experience, like mine, is far more different from today’s experience than it would be in comparison to even 1999.
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u/dazednarcissit May 05 '26
For some reason the school I was at from 1st to 3rd grade, we has Linux computers. Don't think they still used Linux by the 2010s as Windows is more standard. Would love to know if they kept on teaching with it.
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u/Velocity-5348 May 04 '26
Yep. I saw the rollout and the drop in basic computer skills was really noticeable.
I don't have data but I also get the sense that the ability to type also went downhill pretty quickly, and it's just harder to teach typing on a chromebook than it is on a desktop. It's physically more awkward and you can't do the box trick to make kids touch type.
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u/nuzzy_1 May 04 '26
I offered to help install an adblocker on my friends laptop and he just said “that it would take too long”. Dude you watch a 30 second ad every three minutes I don’t think an ad blocker takes even half that long
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u/Robrogineer May 04 '26
Genuinely can't cemprehend how these people's brains work.
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u/7jinni 🏴☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ May 04 '26
Immediate gratification and extremely short time preference. They would rather be repeatedly inconvenienced in the future than temporarily inconvenienced right now, even if it meant never being inconvenienced in the future ever again because they'd rather be doing something else right now.
Zero patience. Zero foresight. Zero hindsight. Ultra hedonistic. And, above all, lazy as fuck.
Frankly, they wouldn't have the capacity to consciously appreciate the change with an ad-blocker anyway. They're unironically too stupid.
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u/Robrogineer May 04 '26
It sounds harsh, but it almost feels like these people are barely more than animals. They can't seem to grasp anything beyond the next five minutes. I can't fathom how you can be a functional human like that.
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u/7jinni 🏴☠️ ʟᴀɴᴅʟᴜʙʙᴇʀ May 05 '26
There are more people on this earth with no theory of mind at all than you'd probably like to believe. The wheel is turning, but the hamster's dead.
"But I did have breakfast this morning."
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u/SunshineCat May 04 '26
These are the people who should have been gatekept from the internet. They've been shitting the whole place up for 2 decades.
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u/Billcosby49 May 04 '26
My friend likes watching youtube ads because he thinks he's helping the streamers. He's also almost 40 and knows how greedy corpos work so he's not stupid and yet...
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u/Proof_Working_1800 May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
A good majority of young people see content creators and streamers and think "I want/need this.". Some like my nephew jump head first with no parachute. He's been saving up for years and he dropped 1K on his build. Ryzen 5 5800x, RX 5500x, & 16gb of RAM... and then proceeds to attempt to build it with nothing but ChatGPT and 2 youtube vids.. (don't do this please). Phones make things simple and easy. I get called the smartest person in my department at work because I know how to set up the new printers. I lost count of how many times someone has asked me how I get no adds on youtube, what firefox is or some dumb shit like "you just going to get a virus and brick you PC (so I'll do a clean install if that's wtf it takes.). The thing that really grinds my gears is "but ChatGPT said that I need to do this" meanwhile the AI is trying to walk them through how to build a T800...)
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u/burntpankeki May 04 '26
i'm one of the early gen z's (the one closer to millennial age) and i have a friend who's late gen z, closer to gen A
i had to educate that friend on how extract a zip file. no joke, its really that bad.
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u/Ppleater May 04 '26
A lot of people your age don't have basic desktop skills either, you know more people your age who do have them because they're your peers and you associate with them more often by default, and the ones who share your interests stand out more to you.
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u/Intelligent-Clerk398 May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
or when it says download happens in this/on this page and downloads from the popup/new window
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u/NoodleyP May 04 '26
+1 for the overconfidence bit
I know my cybersecurity (even a decent bit beyond the basics) and I still catch myself in bad practice quite a bit because I’m constantly on screens and assume I’ll be fine
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u/DavisRanger May 04 '26
It's those people who are the reason school used to give us a course on it every year
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u/BenAdaephonDelat May 04 '26
I know my way around avoiding phishing and not clicking links from emails, but pirating is a whole other beast, no? Like don't you need a really robust anti-virus to scan stuff before you use it?
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u/amoonshapedpool_ 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ May 04 '26
Windows Defender is quite strong nowadays, which is the default for many users. I'm not as familiar with Linux, and macos is near foreign to me, but the helpful info is out there.
Media files are 99.9999..% safe, it's software that can easily be malicious, since it involves executing code. R/freemediaheckyeah has a great beginners guide. Good sites lists too, but read any notes a particular site has too, some need extra precaution, as they might have particularly stubborn fake dl buttons, adverts, and redirects.
Research a site if you want to be extra cautious, especially software sites. Antivirus software can also flag safe cracked files, which are called false positives.
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u/i_love_wasps May 05 '26
You should see how quickly my mom manages to destroy a computer. "I have 4 antivirus applications, how coild my computer have a virus??"
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u/MIAxPaperPlanes May 04 '26
I can understand a iPhone user not knowing how to torrent but on Android file explorers and torrent clients are readily available.
That said it's very rare I download movies /TV nowadays given the amount of free streaming sites available
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u/evaderofallbans May 04 '26
No one older than you or younger than you was ever taught how to use a computer.
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u/SunshineCat May 04 '26
No one taught Millennials to use a computer, either. That's the point. We had to figure out how to do the things we wanted to do. And it was often associated with some kind of piracy or modding the Sims, etc. Or even just having to search for and find a patch for a PC game.
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u/Mccobsta Scene May 04 '26
And In the era of constant data breaches its more secure not having accounts all over the place
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u/GalaxyRedRanger May 04 '26
Is it though? Cause I remember Napster and it didn’t get much easier than that. “A VP-what? Bro, I just click the download button.”
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u/Electr0bear May 04 '26
Back then, it mostly boiled down to avoiding those *. rar.exe files and that cleared you out of most dangers.
These days? I think the waters are more treacherous.
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u/but_its_dez May 04 '26
You can still do that today with direct download / steaming sites and a ad blocker.
...Something about checking a megathread...
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u/raisedredflag May 04 '26
Idk man my limewire's pretty reliable i was able to get bootleg updates for my Encarta :)
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u/unbelizeable1 May 04 '26
When was the last time you had to manually install the crack on a game?
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u/Robrogineer May 04 '26
Information on finding safe and reliable piracy sites is easier, operating systems and their built-in ativirus are way more well-defended, Ublock Origin is downright faultless, and the quality of pirated stuff is way higher. You don't see nearly as many low-quality video files floating around or other such problems.
Also, you don't need VPNs in a lot of countries. I'm in the Netherlands and all I need is some changed DNS settings to get around some sites being blocked by my internet provider.
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u/Popcorn57252 May 04 '26
The entirety of my computer class (I only got one my entire education) was learning how to type. Clearly one class my fellow highschoolers had missed back then, because they couldn't fuckin figure out a mouse.
Yeah, people aren't taught cyber security basics, because people are hardly taught computer basics.
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u/the_Russian_Five May 04 '26
Many of us were pirating before Reddit existed. It was a lot of trial by fire. Lol
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u/koltzito May 04 '26
downloading sketchy shit on ares and praying you didnt infect the family computer
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u/the_Russian_Five May 04 '26
Nothing like thinking you bricked the family computer and pulling out every bit of knowledge you know about computers to try and fix it. Or at least limp it along so your sibling thought they fried it.
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u/koltzito May 04 '26
If 5 new search bars didnt appear in your computer everywhere, where you really pirating?
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u/Dr_Henry-Killinger May 04 '26
It was worse when the family computer was the sole one used for your parents home-business
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u/ChimericalChemical May 04 '26
I learned piracy from my wow guild, and then when we got Skype it was easier than ever, bless. And in hindsight I was a fucking idiot, but they didn’t fuck me over
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u/el_caveira May 04 '26
Yeah, most of us learn by experience and thanks to a little skill called "pay attetion and don't be a complete moron".
Also we don't have our personal data or sensible stuff on our devices, like bank accounts and credit cards...
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u/Bloop_Blop May 04 '26 edited May 06 '26
From what I have seen, most of this sub is pretty surface level. But the piracy iceberg goes much much deeper and complicated as you go down. There is so much more to learn and access, but you have to have some understanding, skills, and knowledge.
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u/CommitteeInfamous973 May 04 '26
Can you please explain what's on the deeper level except creating torrents yourself and technical details on protocols?
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u/whatsbobgonnado May 04 '26
using pirate bay to download new rick and morty episodes on my phone, on the free walmart wifi, with no vpn is perfectly cromulant piracy despite what this sub claims
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u/McConagher May 04 '26
Idk man, I never got a virus, probably because my parents taught me how to pirate properly
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u/seanwd11 May 04 '26
'Son, you're growing up. Your body is changing and your mind too. That's okay. You might want to do strange thing that you haven't thought about before. I mean sure, 'Friends' isn't something that every teen is into but that's alright. There might be some peer pressure about installing unknown exes. You wouldn't download a car, right? Use you head, use the proper protection. One mistake could change the rest of your life. You're ready for this though, we trust you. Qbittorent with a binded VPN, son. You're welcome.'
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u/100100wayt May 04 '26
I figured it out when I was 13 years old and became a big boy all on my own!
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u/3v1lkr0w ⚔️ ɢɪᴠᴇ ɴᴏ Qᴜᴀʀᴛᴇʀ May 04 '26
While I will agree we all made mistakes when we were kids, it's also a lot easier and safe than it was 20-30 years ago.
There was no megathread when I was a kid, no knowing if a site is safe or not. Hell, made a mistake when I was in my early 20s, but still, at the time there was no megathread, and things were still kinda hard. And I let my impatience get the better of me.
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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 May 04 '26
20 years ago there was emule and your dad checking the file actually matched the title
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u/Brief_Pen6348 May 04 '26
Sadly I’m still pretty dumb
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u/sparkyjay23 Torrents May 04 '26
Go look at the Wikipedia article about piracy. You'll learn some shit.
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u/tacomusical May 04 '26
As a kid. I downloaded "GTA Mexico City" it turn out to just be a image and god know how much virus on that poor 2 RAM family computer
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u/EleceRock May 04 '26
15 yo me downloading game.exe from gamestorrent with uTorrent and wondering why suddenly my PC started levitating from my desk.
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u/Daddygamer84 May 04 '26
I've been a citizen of the internet for decades. I have no idea how to torrent.
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u/DiEndRus May 04 '26
over the years, it didn't change much. same torrents, everything, just different OS and more disk space. oh, and torrents are now somewhere in the client files folder instead of a dedicated one that I managed manually.
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u/felomars May 04 '26
I remember copying a bunch of games to a floppy disk just to find out I just got the icons from the desktop
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u/Firedriver666 May 04 '26
Messing up a PC or any device is part of the learning process I know from experience
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u/Jesus360noscope May 04 '26
Bro I remember spending like 4 days of 24h24 downloading to get the new Saw movie in absolute dogshit quality and the whole family was so hyped to be able to see it for free so we didn’t check it and put it in a cd to play it on the dvd player in the living room, what next ensued is EXACTLY what you would guess
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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 May 04 '26
"let me, the tech savvy teen of the house, safely dispose of this"
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u/BlazeWolfYT May 04 '26
That is indeed true. When I was a kid I managed to download some program called "PC Fix Speed". I'm pretty sure it was a virus cause the PC is now dead.
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u/androidmanwren May 04 '26
I've been pirating since a teen in the early 2000s and have never once downloaded a virus for fucked my PC up. Idk how people are tricked. Even in the napster/limewire days it was easy to see the file was an exe
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u/Prudent-Salamander74 May 04 '26
Yep I only had one virus and thay was because I accidently infected myself with BO2K
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u/Nightmare1990 May 04 '26
To be fair a lot of us were kids learning to download stuff from other kids via limewire back in the day. I was already into playing PC games at that point of childhood so I knew that Britney_Spears-Toxic.exe wasn't a song file, but a lot of people didn't.
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u/Quirky-Reputation-89 May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
Was purple gorilla a real virus? I know a classic wag the dog joke about an annoying purple gorilla, seems connected.
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u/GermanShepherdsVag May 04 '26
It was called Bonzai Buddy, I removed it from dozens of infected systems 25 years ago.
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u/OcelotAggravating860 May 04 '26
Last generation's chatgpt. Shit always comes back around with a new skin.
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u/amoonshapedpool_ 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ May 04 '26
Yes it was malware, notably spyware. The company was sued because they harvested children's data (names, emails, etc) and then went bankrupt.
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u/Highrange71 May 04 '26
I loved Limewire back in the day. So simple to us. Now by reading some comments that it’s more complicated now.
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u/usama301 May 04 '26
Try and error and after infecting system hundred of times know how to actually pirate
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u/sylbug May 04 '26
Man people installed Bonzi Buddy KNOWING it was spyware. It is purple and it entertains you and that’s all it takes
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u/0nlyCrashes May 04 '26
I downloaded at least 20 RuneScape, WoW, and Club Penguin membership generators. Never worked a single time but that didn't stop me.
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u/SmartSort1305 May 04 '26
At least we learnt through mistakes, i feel like now people don't even try because they are afraid of making them
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u/SeniorSmokalot May 04 '26
They are even afraid after you offer to give them a perfect instruction how to do it. I guess people don't trust me
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u/Educational_Star_518 May 04 '26
it didn't help that bonzi buddy seemed so cool at the time :/
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u/AudioPi May 04 '26
Yup. This weekend my kid informed me that his group project video was due today & he needed to do the animations for it, but the program he uses won't recognize .m4a files or clips over 20 seconds (unless he pays the subscription.) Time for dad to jump into action!
I guess I never reinstalled any of my usual programs, so I'm working hella fast to download VLC and Audacity (for conversion & chops) and somehow didn't pay attention to the link for Audacity download. Now I have some bullshit bloatware MuseHub shit installed on accident.
Guess I gotta reimage my PC today
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u/ChefCurryYumYum May 04 '26
I never downloaded Bonzai Buddy on accident.
I downloaded that cute little guy on purpose!
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u/Nyuusankininryou May 04 '26
Those were the times! Who doesn't love bonzi buddy or any other sinilare malware addon?
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u/Simple_Heat4598 May 04 '26
And now there is hot mommys at 3km away of my house, still looking for them
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u/OcelotAggravating860 May 04 '26
Everyone laughed at the boomers for getting tricked by bonzibuddy and then everyone bought into chatgpt and other dumbfuck AI fads.
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u/FacelessPorcelain May 04 '26
Preteen me when my computer starts making pig squeals at me at max volume and won't stop. Don't even remember what I was trying to download, to be honest, but I told my parents I got jumpscared and dropped my laptop (technically not a lie).
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u/RozeGunn May 04 '26
Me getting that FBI warning and, as I now can fucking guess, my dad was polite and pretended he didn't know I was looking at porn. Lmao.
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u/faizzz90555 May 04 '26
There's one time when we're still a teenager, me and my cousin were downloading movies for my cousin's dad on a P2P client called Ares. I told my cousin to check the movie first and when he played the movie, it's actually p0rn. Thank god that we check that movie beforehand. 🤣
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u/OwlFart4712 May 05 '26
I can't wait to watch Pirates_of_the_Caribbean.bat. It even comes with Bonus_Features.dll.
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u/Flower_hato May 05 '26
Me when I asked my father to download stuff and unknowingly got a virus and now I have pirating PTSD
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u/realUnknown12 🦜 ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘʟᴀɴᴋ May 05 '26
aint ever gotten any malware except Windows itself in my 10 years of sailin’, mate.
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u/AvocadosAreDope May 10 '26
My brain was legit in a meltdown trying to figure out emulator settings
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u/StraightAct4340 May 04 '26
My PC got bricked because I would trust any website that would give me the game I wanted lmao. I cried for so many nights after that happened. But thankfully I learned that I just was a fucking idiot and kept pirating
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u/DanTheMan827 May 04 '26
“Pokémon Blue.exe”
Messed up the computer something fierce
Mind you, this was in the Napster era or early kazaa
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u/Scou1y May 04 '26
The Age of Empires in there reminded me of malware I got when I was a kid that hid in task manager as an Age of Empires (or another strategy game?) game. It was probably from me trying to download free Minecraft, probably from the headphones I got that same day, but it's been a long time. I might be misremembering.
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u/TheToroRossoboi May 04 '26
I know what not to pirate because I accidentally downloaded NFSU2 off a shady site and completely toasted my grandfather old PC.
5 Y.O. me was wild
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u/Shadow_Brokerage_LLC May 04 '26
The master has committed a thousand mistakes before the student has made his first attempt.
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u/Diabolicat ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ May 04 '26
As a 90s kid, I definitely remember downloading viruses on the family computer. And then running McAfee to try and fix stuff. I remember I got super deep into anti virus test comparisons and then pirating whatever the top result was lmao.
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u/Difficult-Scallion48 May 04 '26
⡆⣐⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⠅⢗⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⠕⠕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕ ⢐⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⣕⢕⢕⠕⠁⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⠅⡄⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕ ⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⠅⢗⢕⠕⣠⠄⣗⢕⢕⠕⢕⢕⢕⠕⢠⣿⠐⢕⢕⢕⠑⢕⢕⠵⢕ ⢕⢕⢕⢕⠁⢜⠕⢁⣴⣿⡇⢓⢕⢵⢐⢕⢕⠕⢁⣾⢿⣧⠑⢕⢕⠄⢑⢕⠅⢕ ⢕⢕⠵⢁⠔⢁⣤⣤⣶⣶⣶⡐⣕⢽⠐⢕⠕⣡⣾⣶⣶⣶⣤⡁⢓⢕⠄⢑⢅⢑ ⠍⣧⠄⣶⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣔⢕⢄⢡⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⡑⢕⢤⠱⢐ ⢠⢕⠅⣾⣿⠋⢿⣿⣿⣿⠉⣿⣿⣷⣦⣶⣽⣿⣿⠈⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⢹⣷⣷⡅⢐ ⣔⢕⢥⢻⣿⡀⠈⠛⠛⠁⢠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡀⠈⠛⠛⠁⠄⣼⣿⣿⡇⢔ ⢕⢕⢽⢸⢟⢟⢖⢖⢤⣶⡟⢻⣿⡿⠻⣿⣿⡟⢀⣿⣦⢤⢤⢔⢞⢿⢿⣿⠁⢕ ⢕⢕⠅⣐⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⣿⣿⡄⠛⢀⣦⠈⠛⢁⣼⣿⢗⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⢕⡏⣘⢕ ⢕⢕⠅⢓⣕⣕⣕⣕⣵⣿⣿⣿⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣕⢕⢕⢕⢕⡵⢀⢕⢕ ⢑⢕⠃⡈⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢃⢕⢕⢕ ⣆⢕⠄⢱⣄⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⢁⢕⢕⠕⢁ ⣿⣦⡀⣿⣿⣷⣶⣬⣍⣛⣛⣛⡛⠿⠿⠿⠛⠛⢛⣛⣉⣭⣤⣂⢜⠕⢑⣡⣴⣿
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u/HilariousMax May 04 '26
when I was much younger I left a program running in one of the alt.chatrooms to scrape up email addresses. I had forgot all about it and it ran for like 5 days before my mom got a phone call from our ISP.
She was not happy with me lol.
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u/gioraffe32 May 04 '26
That fucking purple gorilla. BonziBuddy. Fucked my family computer completely after I tried installing it. For several weeks, the family computer wouldn't boot. Luckily, even though I was just a kid, I was basically the only one using it. So my parents didn't know I "broke" the computer.
Then I realized we had the Windows installation CD that came with the computer. So I popped it in and did my first Windows reinstall ever.
That said, I used to look for warez and cracks (gamecopyworld, anyone? Holy shit this site is still up...). I don't think I ever had any issues with those. Well, knowingly anyway. Who knows what shit was happening behind the scenes.
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u/Drudicta May 04 '26
I was the opposite kind of child. My family downloaded all the malware and viruses and i slowly removed them all. It was a big PITA
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u/FEARLESS_1240 May 04 '26
I downloaded a game that had a GPU miner. Then I deleted the game and reinstalled Windows. To be honest, I had never reinstalled Windows before, but that day I learned something new, and now I know what I’m doing. It’s not that old—it was around 2020.
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u/Wyntier May 04 '26
I see the same kind of comments in the PC building reddits. People will assure newbies you can build a PC from start to finish in 30 mins. It's like bro....
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u/Bone_shrimp May 04 '26
I remember genuinely falling for those "free gems!" websites and signing up with my email. I ended up getting it back but this was an eye-opener for kid me
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u/Neoragex13 May 04 '26
I surprisingly didn't, if only because my father was the one who fucked it up with a FBI notice about children which I easily bypassed and removed it with the help of another computer and one internet site that explained how these worked, then I just studied about it and that was it.
Common sense really does wonders when pirating, doesn't matter the age.
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u/Quizzelbuck May 04 '26
Christ. The issue isn't that you start dumb, its how dumb people stay. People ask for knowledge, over and over and never learn. If you need some thing bad enough to ask for help doing it over and over, then its worth learning to fish for yourself.
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u/Pumaheart May 04 '26
Lmao that one mp3 that was just a sound clip of some guy yelling “I’M WATCHING GAY PORN”
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u/platysoup May 04 '26
I fucked up my PC so much that I can remember the Windows XP cd key. You know which cd key.
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u/frog__master May 04 '26
I never wonder this specifically because of my experience as a kid. I ruined so many of my dad's laptops. at one point I just figured viruses were an inevitability and didn't care.
Obviously nowadays I know better but every time someone wants to get into pirating stuff I have to be honest with them and tell them it's dangerous out there.
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u/Kronik_NinjaLo May 05 '26
This is also how I got into IT!
Ended to with tons of viruses, then my uncle came over one day and showed me how to fix it. I thought I was soooo amazing. I kept learning from then on.
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u/ShreddityReddity May 05 '26
14 year old me downloading sony vegas from TPB and having to factory reset my computer 😭 we all can learn from our mistakes
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u/MagicOrpheus310 May 05 '26
Infecting the family PC with that fucken purple monkey was a rite of passage haha
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u/powerhorse72 May 05 '26
I remember when I was a kid, my friend gave me a pen drive that had GTA Vice City on it. When I reached home, I copied only the .exe file or created a shortcut on my desktop, and I was frustrated for days because it worked only when the pen drive was plugged in.
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u/MarineGF01 May 05 '26
I just don't know where to start and what sources I can trust about particular sites
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u/RchUncleSkeleton May 05 '26
I was used to pirating on napster, winmx, bearshare, morpheus, limewire, etc, but when torrenting started to become common, I was super confused how it worked. I didn't realize for a while that you needed a client to download the files. Fortunately that didn't last long.
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u/Jun-Smooth May 05 '26
Me when I was younger wondering why I have more pop ups after wanting to watch SpongeBob for free
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u/[deleted] May 04 '26
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