There’s something about humans and technology that makes them a perfect combo for a disaster waiting to happen. And even though we live in 2020, where tech has become a quintessential part of our daily lives, it doesn’t mean it’s as easy as pie. Don’t believe me?
Ask the tech support workers who have been witness to such monstrosities, it makes you wonder what on earth their clients were thinking. A client upgrading his phone and keeping his old screen protector ‘cause why not? Check. A mouse covered in hand grease up to the point that it’s just a lump of sheer nastiness? Check. Rice inside the iPhone? Sure. Cables tangled so badly, they resemble a wasp nest? Of course.
Thanks (do we really wanna thank them for dis?) to the Reddit community that goes by the all-telling name r/techsupportgore, we now have pure nightmare material for tech support workers or any other person who is no stranger to common sense. Psst! More painfully funny and cringe-worthy tech and gadget disasters waiting in part 1.
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4 Hrs Later...
I Said "Put It In Rice." Not "Put Rice In It."
Apparently Someone Got Tired Of It Ringing, So The Put It In The Oven
The r/techsupportgore subreddit was created on February 29, 8 years ago, and has since grown into a solid community of 467k members. According to the group’s description, it will make you “cringe to the brink of passing out after a few minutes looking at this subreddit.”
Some time ago, Bored Panda contacted Coffeechipmunk, the moderator of the r/techsupportgore subreddit, who said that the most popular posts in the community are usually the ones that show a device a moment away from exploding.
“It’s both dangerous and cool,” explained the mod. “They probably get so big because people post the pics and you think, 'Wow, that's just a bomb at that point.'"Whoever is wondering why the subreddit got so popular, it all comes down to the fact that “Honestly... it's very fun," Coffeechipmunk said.
This Key After 10 Years Of Entering Orders At My Grandmothers Shop
Just Set It On Fire
Broken Clip? No Problem!
“In a time where most of the internet can be incredibly serious and most times saddening or angering, r/techsupportgore is fun because you go on it and you can laugh (and/or cringe) at the crazy posts. Where else can you see a post like, 'Wow, these cables really are messy' to 'A lizard fried my motherboard' back to back?”
Essentially, it attracts a bunch of people that enjoy tech and the very worst of it. Also, it’s especially relevant to the current generations Y and Z who basically grew up with tech around them. For these kids and young adults, seeing the picture of someone trying to charge their new laptop without taking it out of the box is essentially priceless.
One Of My Clients Upgraded His Phone But Kept His Old Screen “Protector”
German T-Mobile Found 3 Snakes Inside Their Network Unit
Ah, the irony. The German word for snake is also a term for someone who‘s deceitful. Seeing as our lovely Deutsche Telekom dastardly 'renewed' the contract I had with them (thus making me pay for my phone/internet TWICE for 1,5 years), I vote for this to become their official representation photo.
Customer Brought In This Imac For Not Powering On... This Is How He Apparently Uses It
The Nastiest Mouse I Have Ever Seen In The Field. Make No Mistake, That Is Not Dust. That Is...uh...hand-Grease
Shipping Thousands Of Dollars Worth Of Computers With No Packaging Material
Amazon did this to me... I ordered 3 6 TB hard drives and they shipped them in a bubble mailer that looked like a truck ran over it. All of the HD boxes were crushed. The drives weren't damaged but I sent them back anyway along with a really stern phone call. They replaced them (actually sent me 4 instead of 3.) Ordered some lavender soap bars for the wife and they packed them in paper and bubble wrap and in an oversized box that was so secure you could have shipped nitroglycerin in. Go figure.
Do You Think It Got Too Hot?
"You Can Fix Your Sisters Phone Right? It Gets Hot Sometimes And Turns Itself Off A Lot". "What's That Smell?" Battery Acid. Literally Battery Acid
why do you still have that phone?! THROW IT INTO A VOLCANO!!!!!
“There’s Something Wrong With The Printer In The Lab...”
User Calls About Disc Being Stuck In Another Computer, Mentions Off Hand About This Laptop. They Had Been Using And Charging It Like This For Weeks...
Brother Wanted A Wireless Mouse, Kid Wanted To Help
After Two Days Of Troubleshooting, The Solution Was To Simply Flip It Upside Down. Of Course
"My PC Won't Turn On"
What the hell? Did they run 220v power to a 110v supply? That's a first for me!
Just One Of Our Printers Doing Its Duty
Someone At Work Secured This Power-Board
People That Use PC Cables To Rest Their Feet
How Not To Transport A Laptop
My Parents New WiFi Mount
Came To A Restaurant With My Dad To Fix Their Internet Issues
"I Forgot That I Left My Laptop On The Top Of My Truck. It Flew Off When I Was On The Highway. Can You Fix It?"
Spaghetti Baguette. "I Was On A School Trip. 6 Electric Sockets For 70 People"
I saw a set-up like this once. I was using a fire extinguisher on it...
Drilled Right Into The Battery
Psu Thermal Throttling
“My Tablet Is Not Charging” - Is This A Battery Or A Pillow?
Customer Tried To Change The Mainboard
This Beauty Came In For Repair Today
My Girlfriend's Xbox 360 Hard Drive Was Rattling... Can I Recover The Data?
Holy smokes! How does a HDD platter shatter like this?! Someone play with Liquid Nitrogen?
Failure of the circuitry that drives the motor, or a failure of the motor itself. HDs use stepper motors to precisely control the speed of the disc, and for indexing purposes. If the disk was spinning at 7200RPM and was forcibly brought to a halt by a circuitry problem, that could result in enough energy to shatter the platter.
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there was an episode of forensic files where the culprit took a pair of scissors and cut up a floppy disc (yes this took place a million years ago) forensic IT literally used scotch tape to put it back together and were able to retrieve the data.
Reminds me of when CD drives started getting up to 52x. Occasionally a CD might be a little off-centre and it would just spontaneously explode and scare the s**t out of you, throwing fragments all through the case and jamming it up - leading us to the solution of caseless operation (we'd often already have the PCs caseless for impractical reasons of practicality) and fragments merely being thrown all through the room exactly when you didn't expect it.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/security/how-to/a8566/how-to-read-a-smashed-hard-drive There are ways, despite what Krazy Kanuck says.
Is your "Girlfriend's Xbox 360 Hard Drive Rattling"??? Fix it with FLEX TAPE!!!!!!!!!!! OR DIE
What data? You can install the games again and anything else should be on cloud, no?
Some Beautiful Patchwork
Dispatched About A Computer That Wouldn't Boot, It Was Epoxied To The Desk. They Had To Cut It Out For Us
Hey Boss, The UPS Had Some Crazy European Connector, But I Fixed It!
He Paid Extra For The Expert Installation
Teacher Was "Multitasking" And Set Laptop On Hot Stove... It Still Works Other Than A Few Lines On The Screen
Customer Attempted Their Own Hdmi Repair With A Blowtorch
I Tried To Use My Old Case As A Chair
"I Straightened Bent Pins With Tweezer, But It Won't Work Afterwards"
Note: this post originally had 80 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
You really have to wonder about those people who drilled holes in their electrical appliances...
Best. Advice. Ever! Just leave it to the experts if you’re out one yourself. You can turn an inexpensive repair into a total loss and have to spend way more to replace your device.
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After seeing how people are throughout 2020, I now understand how these things can happen.
Some people should not be allowed anywhere near technology unless it can be proven they know what to do with it..
I've seen some crazy servers in my 10+ years as a fiber technician. We've had server racks above toilets and above a sink in the janitors closet. Also horrendous cable management, that would have taken 2 minutes to fix before they plugged it in a switch, but was impossible now without disconnects.
I did printer tech support (via phone), here are some of the things I and my colleagues have heard of: "Printer doesn't work". *plenty of troubleshooting, before asking the dumb question : "Is the power cord in?" "Eeeeeh, no" ..... Keys dropped inside the unit that staples/ stacks the documents. ... But my favorite: Kindergarten: Documents got a smudge when doing copies. Turned out it was poop!
I assume they were all taken care of before they exploded or combusted, but I feel you. I think newer batteries aren’t supposed to have whatever it is that makes them swell like that, but it’s still pretty... YIKES anyway
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I serviced a computer control system on a refinery. The customer complained that the plant kept tripping out because of the control system... I found that rats liked the taste of the field signal cables they brought into the bottom of the racks. Nothing wrong with the equipment we sold them. The customer figured out how to block the holes the rats were using. They changed to cables that did not taste so good.
IT person here...had a client tell me that their printer wasn't working. Saw this when I arrived... forked-5fc...3590e2.jpg 
I facepalmed a hole into my head reading some of these...XDXDXD
Imagine having to replace 200 desktops. Imagine sending a mail to every user to check if they removed all USB-sticks and Cd's from their desktops. Imagine replacing all desktops and getting flooded the next day with abusive mails of people who lost their Cd's, memory-cards and USB-sticks. That's when you send all replaced pc's to the scrapyard and mail a "Sorry for your loss" message to everyone involved.
Sorry about that, but seriously I worry about many of these people
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Every time I load a page. Really BoredPanda? 2020-12-03...7a-png.jpg 
You really have to wonder about those people who drilled holes in their electrical appliances...
Best. Advice. Ever! Just leave it to the experts if you’re out one yourself. You can turn an inexpensive repair into a total loss and have to spend way more to replace your device.
Load More Replies... After seeing how people are throughout 2020, I now understand how these things can happen.
Some people should not be allowed anywhere near technology unless it can be proven they know what to do with it..
I've seen some crazy servers in my 10+ years as a fiber technician. We've had server racks above toilets and above a sink in the janitors closet. Also horrendous cable management, that would have taken 2 minutes to fix before they plugged it in a switch, but was impossible now without disconnects.
I did printer tech support (via phone), here are some of the things I and my colleagues have heard of: "Printer doesn't work". *plenty of troubleshooting, before asking the dumb question : "Is the power cord in?" "Eeeeeh, no" ..... Keys dropped inside the unit that staples/ stacks the documents. ... But my favorite: Kindergarten: Documents got a smudge when doing copies. Turned out it was poop!
I assume they were all taken care of before they exploded or combusted, but I feel you. I think newer batteries aren’t supposed to have whatever it is that makes them swell like that, but it’s still pretty... YIKES anyway
Load More Replies... I serviced a computer control system on a refinery. The customer complained that the plant kept tripping out because of the control system... I found that rats liked the taste of the field signal cables they brought into the bottom of the racks. Nothing wrong with the equipment we sold them. The customer figured out how to block the holes the rats were using. They changed to cables that did not taste so good.
IT person here...had a client tell me that their printer wasn't working. Saw this when I arrived... forked-5fc...3590e2.jpg
I facepalmed a hole into my head reading some of these...XDXDXD
Imagine having to replace 200 desktops. Imagine sending a mail to every user to check if they removed all USB-sticks and Cd's from their desktops. Imagine replacing all desktops and getting flooded the next day with abusive mails of people who lost their Cd's, memory-cards and USB-sticks. That's when you send all replaced pc's to the scrapyard and mail a "Sorry for your loss" message to everyone involved.
Sorry about that, but seriously I worry about many of these people
Load More Replies... Every time I load a page. Really BoredPanda? 2020-12-03...7a-png.jpg
