My random tales:
One night, playing bunch of Halo, I got an Xbox 360 voice message. “Message to all recent players. Fukushima nuclear power plant just exploded. You should stock up on iodine tablets.” (I almost sent back a message saying “thanks for your concern, but I’m in the Chernobyl fallout zone and I turned out just fine thank you”)
Pluto photographs from New Horizons? Frigging NASA retweet. (Edit: Actually I think it was a retweet of someone making a Disney meme about Pluto the Dog)
Most recently, I got a random Discord message from a British YouTuber I follow saying “the Queen just died, please be respectful and stuff”.
On the reverse side I told a bunch of people on Furcadia that 2 airplanes had just hit the twin towers.
Do not Google Furcadia on your work PC.
I worked at Equifax during the big breach. (I did not know about it beforehand.) One morning I was chatting with coworkers about stuff and they were talking about a crazy massive breach and how stuff would need to change. At some point I said something like “who got hit?” I hadn’t checked my email (or the news) yet.
But, to be honest, I think hearing it like that may have actually been best. Hearing in on the train on the way to work would’ve been scary.
I was eating Pizza at Amici in San Rafael, CA when news came across that Princess Diana died. Someone at the table said we’d all remember that moment for the rest of our lives. It’s been true me.
I watched a conspiracy theory video with a friend for laughs in early 2020. I think January or February. It mentioned some kind of virus from china that was gonna take over the world. We laughed about it.
I knew about COVID way ahead of the general population because of WallStreetBets (WSB). Before becoming what it is now after the Game Stop thing, WSB was a little known gambling subreddit of degenerates that jokingly called themselves autists after that guy that made millions predicting the 2008 subprime lending collapse (Michael Burry).
Users on WSB were predicting a major disruption because of some new virus in China and were betting against the market. There was a day where the market just suddenly went into freefall. It had 2 circuit breakers (stop all trading for 15 mins to prevent a disastrous runaway collapse) in one day. While the entire world was going to hell because of a deadly outbreak and resulting collapse of the global economy, the users of WSB were cheering it on because they were making a few thousand bucks.
It was one of the most ridiculous experiences I had ever witnessed and been a part of. I am so happy to have been there for it.
It wasn’t exactly unexpected, but I didn’t expect it, if that makes sense. I was working at the call center of an insurance company on election night in 2016, and my team was half people from Connecticut in office and half remote people from non-Chicagoland Illinois, politically divided exactly as you’d expect. My shift went 13-23:30 EST, and the team chat was trying to be somewhat non political, but it was tough.
When I went into work, it seemed like Hillary would win, but throughout our shift, my coworkers and I kept getting chirps about new states being counted while the office slowly emptied (most people in office were on core hours, so by 19, we were the only ones left, including cleaning crews). When the first firm-ish numbers came in, one of our remote team members just spammed the chat with a bunch of terrible r/thedonald memes and there was an audible groan from the group.
I didn’t like Clinton, but I was certain she’d win, because I was pretty sheltered in a New England state. Hearing that trump won felt like finding out your foundation is full of mold. I don’t know how else to describe it, except that I was certain we’d choose the “chicken that’ll do” (I know that was a spoof from the democratic debate, but it feels on brand for her whole deal).
