Fake stupidity or ignorance, just a little. Otherwise, you risk getting people on their defensive sides (e.g., doctors, lawyers, architects).
Need a phone charger? Walk into any hotel, say you stayed here a while ago, and accidentally left your phone charger in your room. You’re finally back in town, and decided to swing by to see if they have a lost-and-found box. 99% of the time, they’ll just pull out a cardboard box full of chargers and let you pick one. No questions asked, no follow-up, no verification. They get left behind in hotel rooms all the time, so the hotel’s lost-and-found is almost always full of them.
I used to freelance, and used this all the time when I was between gigs and just needed to chill for a few hours. If I had taken the train downtown and didn’t have my car charger, I’d just find whatever hotel was closest after my gig, and stop there. They’d let me grab a charger, and I’d pop over to a cafe to sit and watch TV/YouTube on my phone for a while. And then when it was time to leave for my next gig, I’d just leave the charger at the cafe for someone else to find later. I didn’t worry about keeping track of them, because I never intended to hold onto them in the first place. My car charging cable is from a hotel. My bedside charging cable is from a hotel. My desk charging cable is from a hotel. I haven’t actually purchased a USB-C cable in literal years.
Yeah but how can you tell that you’re getting the right charger for your phone? No two chargers are the same; they have different wattage ratings and use different charging standards.
If you grab any old charger without knowing the model number, it’ll charge your phone, sure, but not necessarily at its maximum possible charging speed unless you get lucky or take extra time to examine and research each charger until you find the right one. And I don’t know about you, but I’d feel awkward about pulling out my phone to Google random chargers while digging through a lost and found box with the employee just standing there. I rather just spend the money on a compatible charger designed for my phone’s charging standard.
Chargers have the wattage ratings printed directly on them. And the rating will simply be the maximum that the charger can provide. Wattage is pulled, not pushed. So if you plug your phone into an oversized charger, the phone will only draw what it needs.
Just grab the highest wattage you see, and the phone will pull what it needs.
If you really want to piss people off, treat every individual with compassion and dignity. Even (especially) if they don’t treat themselves like that.
Also, corporations are not people, my friend. So use the above to help guide your social engineering tactics.
Not unethical or illegal, but avoiding a barrier, if you have a problem that a company won’t solve using regular customer service means, spend time to find their email formula (FnameLname or FLname or FnameL @company.com) do some online searching, and then email your unhelpful CSO person and start to CC senior people in the company “to bring this error to their attention.”
If the unhelpful CSO person hasn’t messed up, then it’s no heat on them and their supervisor will just say “ugh, just get rid of this guy,” and solve your problem. I’ve used this method a dozen or so times, works well.
When I have an issue with a corp and have to talk to a human I start with an apology to that individual.
“Hey I have an issue with X about Y, but I have nothing against you as a person. You’re just trying to do your job and probably deal with a ton of verbal abuse. I apologize in advance if I get upset or use crude language during this call. Be aware that I’m not upset at you I’m upset at the company policies.”
This is called the corporate carpet bomb. And yes, it is often very effective because the upper management doesn’t like being bugged by small things like this. So they’ll often acquiesce just to get you to go away. And it usually only takes one upper manager to bother. Even if nine of them ignore you, the tenth will tell their underlings “hey, what’s the problem here? Why am I being CC’ed? Just fix whatever it is so I can stop getting emails about it.”
When shopping, I like to make it seem extremely likely I am stealing to help poor people who actually need to steal to survive.
For example, when picking up a soda, I furtively look to my left and right to make sure no one is looking and crouch my head down. I pick up things and make it seem like I may be putting it in a pocket at times before putting it back. When security guards say hi, I don’t make eye contact or reply back and put my head down as if hiding.
I never actually steal and haven’t ever shoplifted anything.
I have been kicked out stores many times for abnormal behavior, but never while stealing.
Lol, I used to do this as a kid. Didn’t steal anything, but I deliberately acted shady just to see what would happen. Nothing ever did.
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…how does that help anyone at all?
If you ever see someone stealing food.
No you didn’t.I’ve seen shoplifters stealing granola bars or chips before. Not said a word.
Stealing electronics? Fuck that person.
Imagine if like 5% or so of people in a Grocery store acted like he does. Would be so much easier to actually steal something with security being busy all the time with the non-stealers
i’v never seen security care about theft outside of the egregious electronics and stuff like that, those guys don’t get paid enough to care about slippage
If you want a free quarter, make an online order at Aldi that is large enough for them to load into a cart and also justify you taking the cart out to your car. Return said cart to the cart line and boom free quarter.
I’m about to be so rich.
Keep a reflective umbrella in the passenger seat. When an asshole with death beams tailgates you, have the passenger open it across the back seats
I would do this alone. I just don’t trust assholes not to shoot into my car and kill my family.
Get a bulletproof one like the Penguin.
a machine gun one.
I like this one
Not a lifehack, just a reminder that legality is not an indicator of whether something is ethical
If you get junk mail with a return envelope, it’s automatically paid by whoever sent it, so you can mail back whatever you want, like vulgar imagery or blank forms
Those are typically paid by weight. Several spammers have gotten envelopes full of gravel because of me.
It’s paid by weight and thickness so fill it with trash like pieces of cardboard and sand.
Fuck, I’m gonna start doing this. I’ve tried to get the postal service to return to sender, but they never do.
Or bricks.
The post office got wise to that. Changed their regulations so that business reply mail cannot be used as a shipping label.
Pirate everything, block ads, guillotine billionaires
They said unethical
Is that supposed to be unethical? Well I guess pirating everything includes things where paying would be fair.
I’m not sure about unethical, but blocking ads is a big one for me. The WWW is unusable without blocking ads.
For the US: The Supreme Court has ruled that flashing your lights to alert other drivers of an upcoming speed trap is protected by your First Amendment rights.
Flipping off a cop is also protected, but that’s less helpful to others.
Why would you help someone driving dangerously and putting others at risk?
Yeah such an American take lol
In EU I would be glad that anyone going over speed limit is fined, even 1kmph, these rules are there so drivers don’t kill pedestrians. If someone is afraid to be fined for going 1kmph over limit, just slow down a bit
US drivers do it regardless to help other drivers avoid getting unfair/unjust tickets. We’ve been ticketed 275$ going 1mph over the speed limit (it was down hill bruh) when we were 19 in the middle of no where Texas.
Also we no longer drive because we were never supposed to drive and we hate doing it anywho
Fuck tha police
I do get where you’re coming from, but there are a lot of roads where the speed limit is artificially low (or temporarily lowered for no legitimate reason) for the sole purpose of collecting income from speeding fines
Going 5 over the limit and feeding money to pigs via ticket revenues is not “dangerous driving”
If someone’s doing 105 im not flashing them obviously
Going 35 vs going 30 on collision increases chances for pedestrians to die by up to two times btw
I guess it probably varies by location but 5 over the limit doesn’t usually result in anything either. It’s normally just people going significantly over that get fines.
Also it’s a limit, not a target. Plenty of roads have a limit that is too high to actually drive at safely too.
Something tells me you’re one of those who parks it in the passing lane going at or below the speed limit.
I don’t drive, it’s bad for the environment and costs loads of money.
They’re helping the other drivers, not the murderous Nazi pigs.
How adorably naive.
Torrent everything. If it’s legal for a company to cancel my subscription then torrenting isn’t unethical.
Use the free tier if you are low-income. Privacy and security shouldn’t be for those with money.
If it’s legal for the Zuck to torrent all the books, it’s legal for me to torrent a few books.
Books are one of the few things I am more than willing to pay full price for.
Sure the publishers eat a lot of the money, but the authors don’t do too badly.
The very nature of a book (unless something is published as an e-book only) keeps it from being enshittfied like streaming audio and video services. If someone were to print an ad in the book, I could just rip it out and throw it away.
Books are one of the last places where you just will not see an ad or be tracked, or have popups, and other irritating “features”.
Books are good.
I’ve seen some children’s books with popups.
Slightly more seriously though, I do have some books that have an advertisement for something else from the author or publisher.
I feel like being I am pedantic on the points here so I will make a point of saying that I agree with the spirit of your comment.
Alternative option is not to pirate the books and instead read the public domain ones that are just free. Project Gutenberg is a good completely legit source of free books.
If libraries didn’t already exist and you tried to make one now, you would be arrested and likely get pretty hefty sentencing for copyright infringement.
When I wanted to start using contact lenses, they gave me a pair of those that last one month for free to try them out, I didn’t find them entirely comfortable so they gave another pair of another brand, and a third one. Then I started again on another place, and another, I think I went a full year without paying for contact lenses.
Worked as a lab manager for some of those one hour shops to pay for college. The drs would tell me horror stories where people would go to the strip malls and get these cheap “contact” lenses that had smiley faces or some shit on them. They wear them then swap them with friends. Basically not taking hygiene into account. They’d get some serious eye infections. Like nearly lose your sight serious eye infections.
Oh wow, another former optical lab tech in the wild.
I switched fields years ago and I’m glad I did. Visiting glasses shops today, there’s almost no on-site lab to speak of anymore. Maybe some finishing machines, but I haven’t seen a full surface lab in years.
I don’t have anything to add to the contact lens story except - wow, that’s nasty.
you wouldn’t download contact lenses… /jk
Absolutely.
Me right now
The optometrists over here change an extra fee for lens fittings on top of the fee for an eye exam. I think it’s $80 for us after insurance.
This might be specific to Spain then. I don’t know how the shop that sells prescription glasses is called, here they are called óptica. Their margins are big enough that they don’t charge you for the eye exam, the fitting or the test contacts.
None, I strongly advocate for ethics in all things.
Now if we want to talk about illegal lifehacks, that’s a different ballgame.
do you have any ethical but illegal life hacks in mind?
other than Internet piracy
Throwing away junk mail that isn’t addressed to you is a felony in the United States
but throwing it into the street is only a misdemeanor for littering.
What is your best illegal lifehack?
If you’re ever in charge of a young child with a stroller, it’s the ultimate shoplifting tool. You can cram all sorts of things under or behind it under the guise of fussing with the baby, and just walk out afterwards, no one wants to stop a fussy baby from leaving a store. Use this to harm predatory corporations that you can’t ethically give money to.
That’s true, but when you work checkout, you’re told to look there, specifically. And cameras, so be careful. If you steal meat, for instance, move to a non monitored isle, something cheap they don’t care about you stealing, so they don’t monitor it, and stash the meat there. But also Buy one of whatever you steal. They see you pick stuff up, but they can’t really tell you picked up 2 of the same slab of meat, they see you pay for one, they think all is good. Be super friendly and nice to all the staff. It’s not them you’re stealing from, they hate the system as much as you. Wear glasses, and mildly but not flashy upmarket clothing. Don’t wear hoodies or sunnies or nondescript clothing. And then you’re magically invisible. After working in a supermarket for multiple years, I can tell you exactly who they watch, and who they don’t.
Oh, also, watch out for security disgused as shoppers, they’ll walk around with a basket without any refrigerated items, just weird random junk, and they look at the people more than the shelves, walk too slow, and they’ll randomly follow you, so go in weird directions so you can spot them, act like you gotta double back to a few different weird isles, out of order, then it’s too obvious for them to follow you. Then If you see them try to follow you, but get frustrated, you definitely know to steal away from them. Or come back another day, they’re not there every day, or all day.
Storytime, I had a lady with a stroller come through, saw her all the time. She never looked me in the eyes, never bought much, was always a little off, avoidant to the point of rude. I always knew something was off, but i never check prams, because f that. One day I see a line of big burly blokes lined up at the exit to my register, I was running, “what’s up fellas?” “Here to catch a thief, don’t worry about it” they apprehend her, she had been loading her pram, chockas full, with meat slabs, they tell me later, they watched her put them all in her stroller. They watch the expensive stuff like a hawk.
Don’t feel bad stealing from corporations, they don’t feel bad stealing from you.
Also in bigger stores like Target, there may not be an unmonitored aisle. Just… look up, if you don’t believe me. But maybe not too obviously.
Many places punish employees for excessive “loss” in their departments. Sometimes explicitly.
Even ignoring that places will price “loss” into their products, I think it’s important to consider that this can affect “the little guy” too. Disproportionately at times, imo
Pricing in the loss only makes sense if it recovered any of the losses. And if it did, I’m pretty sure they would’ve already done it regardless of whether there’s any loss since it would just be pure profit in its absence.
Watch youtube through other apps like Grayjoy If people are having a conversation in a dumb spot, walk through the middle of them
Use Morphe
Is grayjay any better than newpipe
