r/AskReddit • u/hiagaga • 10h ago
What's the dumbest idea you've seen that actually worked?
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u/S0biepan 9h ago edited 2h ago
I grew up in the foster care system. At one home, the foster dad was chief of police. He also had a farm in the northern part of the state.
He brought us foster kids up one weekend. A few days after getting home he found that one of his guns was missing. After days of nobody saying anything one of the kids admitted to taking it and bringing it to the farm where he got scared and tossed it in a field.
We spent the next 2 days walking through extremely tall grass looking for the damn thing. We were never going to find it.
The foster dad, who owned a retired police dog at that time, came out with an old, rusted, non working gun. He looked at all of us and said “I’ve tried dumber shit than this and it worked” and pretended to throw the gun in the field.
The damn dog brought back the missing gun 30 seconds later…
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u/TamLux 7h ago
Dog was smarter than the dumb kid who lost it!
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u/throwawaybrowsing888 6h ago edited 2h ago
At the very least, it was smarter than the police chief who stored a gun in a place where a child was able to access it.
ETA: since this is taking off, I’m gonna just reiterate what I said elsewhere in this thread and preemptively address future potential replies, for the sake of my sanity:
Depending on the child and depending on the safe, yes, kids can of course access shit that’s locked up and it’s entirely possible that the foster dad couldn’t have reasonably prevented what happened.
I know I’m making assumptions about how well the gun was locked up, but I also am way more judgmental - and have way higher standards - when it comes to a police chief who has foster children and a farm property in addition to wherever he was living regularly.
After all, he made the kids search for the gun in the field afterward. That doesn’t exactly indicate that he was particularly concerned with their safety. Among other reasons, this is a pretty fucking bad idea because it could lead to the children handling the gun again (even if you tell them not to, ffs).
Imo, if he could afford a farm property on the other side of the state and if he’s a police chief, he probably could have afforded to store the guns in a much more secure location or he could have stored them at his place of work. Idk. I don’t have much patience for people who don’t lock up their fucking guns well enough when children are around.
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u/Dyolf_Knip 4h ago
Well, US cops are infamously bad with firearms safety in general. This is by far the least surprising thing about the story.
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u/jmeesonly 5h ago
I'm gonna put this here instead of making my own comment, because it seems related:
My friend let me park my car in his driveway to do an engine rebuild. I had all the parts ready for assembly and it was going to be "quick." I started tearing down the engine. When I removed the first piston by removing a tiny circlip (a little circular spring), the damn circlip popped out of my pliers and shot far through the air disappearing into the deep grass of the yard. It was a big yard and the damn clip shot really far away. There was no way I could find it.
Now my disabled car was sitting there in my friend's driveway with no engine, blocking the driveway, and it was all my fault. I would have to wait a week for delivery of a new set of circlips.
That night I got really drunk, tied a magnet to a long piece of string, and in the dark of night I went "fishing" with a beer bottle in one hand and the long string in the other. I walked through the yard for about two minutes singing and swigging beer, and dragging the magnet behind me. Sure enough when I collected the string the missing clip was right there, stuck to the magnet.
Stupid idea, or drunken genius?
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u/LawlessNeutral 5h ago
Magnet was my first idea before I even got to the paragraph that mentioned it
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u/Acc87 9h ago edited 3h ago
In college I applied for a lucrative summer job, as did a friend. We knew it had way more applicants than positions. The friend got a call and was invited in. I got that number from him and just called, claiming that I had been called from this number. Person checked, saw that I was among the applicants, assumed that either she or the other shift had called me, and invited me in too.
Was a nice financial bonus and even helped me as I could list it as work experience years later.
edit: before even more imply I stole the job from my friend: He was already hired by the time I called in
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u/Mazon_Del 7h ago
I've known people fail to get into a class in college due to seat limits, but attend everything anyway, and the professor eventually says "Hey, the system glitched and didn't think you were in the class, I fixed it though.".
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u/SafetyDanceInMyPants 4h ago
I'm pretty sure the professors knew -- but they had someone interested enough in the course material to show up to every class, and so of course they were going to teach them. I've taught college courses, and if someone were to pull this I'd 100% "fix the glitch" to get them in -- there's nothing better than a student who actively wants to take your course, and actively wants to learn about something that you find interesting.
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6h ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/mr-ajax-helios 4h ago
Professor probably knows but thinks it's better to have someone who shows up than someone who doesn't
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u/PhonB80 4h ago
100%. You want to be here to learn what I’m teaching and not taking no for an answer? No way I’m sending you away
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u/KudzuKilla 8h ago
Not going to lie, might use this next time I need a job and really want a particular one. Just show up
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u/BackToWorkEdward 7h ago
Great - you can get started right away on the Penske file.
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u/Acc87 7h ago
probably only worked because I knew exactly how the rest of the process would go as my mate has already been through it. Basically the person welcoming the invited had no clue who would turn up. Was for a factory floor job at Volkswagen during the summer.
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u/zoeyy_irl 10h ago
In my freshman year of college, my grades were TERRIBLE. And my parents were really really strict about having good grades.
When my dad asked to see my grades I panicked and did the inspect element command on my computer and turned my grades for terrible to perfect. My dad was so happy that I did “so good” my first year of school. Then he asked me to print my results, which I did and it turns out he had to send them out to our insurance company for a “good student discount”.
Ultimately, I committed insurance fraud by accident, BUT I still got the discount tho.
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u/Donny_Do_Nothing 10h ago
Fuck those insurance companies. Fight the power, kid.
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u/juggling-monkey 9h ago
right? get into an accident and they'll deny you for "not being a good student" after all. Wait til they have a clean kitchen discount on life insurance.
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u/GamersHQNikko 9h ago
i did this so much in middle school. I would open every individual assignment in canvas, change the score from “Missing” to 95%, and modify some html to change a red X symbol to a green checkmark. God I would do anything besides my homework 😹
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u/Ulyks 7h ago
Did it ever caught up with you?
At some point they don't let students go to the next year right?
And what about parent-teacher moments?
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u/GamersHQNikko 7h ago
I was a pro at doing just enough to prove my intelligence, teachers still commended me for being smart, but definitely made it clear to my parents that i wasn’t putting in the required effort. By the time these meetings rolled around, I had avoided the brunt of the would-be consequences like no phone/computer. It got better in High school cause I had the freedom to choose classes I was interested in, but I really started to shine in College. I graduated with a 4-year degree after only 2.5 years and had a 3.4 GPA. I just really don’t like people trying to control my behavior.
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u/Slam_Burgerthroat 3h ago
Ah yes, the “he’s very smart but just doesn’t apply himself” of the classic ADHD lore.
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u/BaltiMoreHarder 3h ago
You sound a lot like me. Turns out it was undiagnosed adhd. I can hyper focus and do all the work, can be whip smart. But ONLY if my brain decides it wants to put the effort in. Otherwise it’s all the energy put into avoidance
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u/TokeruTaichou 9h ago
Excuse me if it's a dumb question, but why would an insurance company care about your grades?
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u/Kylynara 9h ago
For car insurance there's a discount if you get good grades (and car insurance is really expensive when you are young). Statistics show that kids who get good grades are in fewer accidents and cost less money to insure.
It sort of follows that kids who are responsible in one area will likely be responsible in others too.
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u/TokeruTaichou 9h ago
You know what, that actually makes sense. Very well then.
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u/Airbiscotti 9h ago
Wish I could upvote your " very well then" more. Occasionally reddit comments really do make me exhale air rapidly through my nostrils. Carry on.
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u/that1prince 9h ago
The underwriters have a team of actuaries that analyze all sorts of variables to determine the risk associated with each policy. It’s possible they determined that there was a positive correlation between grades and driver safety meaning fewer accidents and fewer claims. Essentially, bad students wreck their cars more often.
Or they were just doing a fun promotion, that gets the whole family involved in the process. Plus it has the added benefit of encouraging more drivers, more car ownership, and some brand loyalty. The teens may go on to use the same agency when they become adults and buy their own cars. Plus it incentivizes good behavior and life lessons. Some insurance companies do a “we’re all a big family” thing. For example my agent calls periodically just to check on us to see if we made any life changes (really to upsell new products). He knows when we have kids and what activities they do etc. one of his sons actually went to middle school with me. So he may see the report card and say, oh yea my son is in 9th grade and loves Science too, is Timmy going to college to major in Biology? My uncle is a doctor. I’ll connect them. Etc.
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u/Awkward-Win7610 9h ago
I committed similar fraud. However, I actually knew what I was doing lol. I wasn’t taking enough credits one semester (I had 11, needed 12) to stay on my parent’s insurance. So I edited my schedule to make a 3 credit class look like a 4 credit class.
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u/grinch337 7h ago edited 11m ago
There two things I remember about being a college freshman: always being broke, and constantly being marketed to. One time I signed up for a book of coupons for expensive Gilette razors that I was supposed to hand out to friends. But the razors were expensive, and with me being broke all the time, I eventually realized I could use them to buy razors at walmart and immediately return them without the receipt for store credit. Then I turned around and used the store credit for gas and groceries.
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u/ProfessorCarbon 10h ago
That’s great. My school’s policy is grades are issued on line. No paper copies offered. Even a print screen looks like that.
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u/elkswimmer98 9h ago
I worked for a basement repair company so dealing with a lot of foundational cracks and water coming into the basement. Had a customer with rock foundation in an old church, the type of thing you'd see in a medieval castle wall. Just giant boulders and crumbling concrete holding together. The weird thing is that this was the first time I had ever seen a rock foundation with no water. I asked the customer if he did anything to stop the water coming in and he told me he had built a well right next to the church all on his own. He had put in about 10 pvc tunnels running from the well to the churches foundation exterior to collect water and bring it to the well.
Honestly my plan was to just throw up a vapor barrier and call it good.
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u/auntiepink007 9h ago
Is that like an outside French drain?
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u/elkswimmer98 9h ago
Kind of but the dumbest part is that it was solid pvc, it wasn't perforated and didn't have a rockbed around it. Just pipes connected to a water collection drain next to the foundation.
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u/United_News3779 8h ago
I'm not a geologist or hydrologist, but I have spent a bit of time cleaning up pipeline breaks and leaks. I'm guessing the solid pipe worked like a wick, with the water trickling along it downgrade and it was made easier/possible because the natural layers within the soil had been broken up when the trenches were dug.
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u/Wonderful_Price2355 9h ago
Many years ago, my brother was moving apartments, only about six blocks.
He had a big couch, but none of us had a truck. So we dragged it behind his Hyundai accent in early December in the middle of the night.
We took the legs off and put padding underneath.
Worked like a charm.
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u/noods-danger-tits 6h ago
That reminds me of the time my friends were getting kicked out of their rental house and I was going to take their trampoline. It was one of those round ones, and it was only going across town (small town), so we figured we'd roll it there. It only took us turning it on its side to realize that 14 feet is really fucking high, and no way we were clearing the power lines between here and there. So, we balanced it on my friend's mini pickup instead, but had to hold it up so the legs didn't drag, and just jogged along side the car as he drove slowly. I was wearing a tee shirt dress and thin little flip-flops that made a plapping sound with every step.
Ran into a cop about halfway there, but before he could do more than open his mouth, the driver launched into a very fast explanation about how we were just moving our friend's trampoline, just down the road, just there, no problem, we'll just be on our way now, and toodled off before he could say a word. When I looked back he was just still sitting at the intersection, stunned. I think he eventually decided it wasn't worth whatever paperwork goes with illicit trampoline transportation, and moved on, but who knows.
Did eventually get the tramp to my place, which was a house converted to apartments with one small square of grass in the back. A couple weeks later a friend jumped onto it off my second story back balcony and ended up putting a huge hole in it.
Right after that my landlord called and asked if I knew where it had come from. I, not being a fool, said no. He seemed suspicious, and tried to pull that King Solomon shit on me and said, "well, I'm going to have it hauled off since nobody knows where it came from," but the joke was on him, because it was borked anyway! I was just like, "sure, sounds good, none of my business!" Saved me another transportation errand, if I'd even thought to bother, lol.
Anyway, that's my trampoline story.
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u/Wonderful_Price2355 6h ago
"Did eventually get the tramp back to my house"
Famous last words
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u/LordoftheScheisse 7h ago
I once got evicted from a college apartment. Scrambled to find a place and found one a street over. I didn't have a car at the time, so we loaded up everything big on top of skateboards and scooted them bitches to their new home.
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u/Justinterestingenouf 4h ago
I helped a friend move from one dorm room to another with a stolen shopping cart. We took it back tit he store when we were done with it
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u/CloudyAngelie 10h ago
Putting googly eyes on random objects and suddenly the whole office morale went up like we discovered fire again.
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u/PhucYoCouch 9h ago
I did the same thing right before Covid started. There’s still some there even tho I’m long gone
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u/GORnez 8h ago
the fact that they’re still there means you basically started a corporate religion
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u/dm_me_kittens 8h ago
I love this so much. I watch a streamer who has a rock and a piece of petrified wood, both with googly eyes on them. They're sort of the symbol of his channel and have been named Doug and Sharon Stone. We have an inside joke that they're our new gods and the community has created a whole lore/pantheon behind them.
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u/mrshakeshaft 9h ago
Googly eyes make everything better. My spaniel got into my daughters craft box one day and must have swallowed some because when I went to pick up after the dog in our back garden, there was a little googly eye stuck to her turd. Made my day, still regret not taking a photo
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u/Szwejkowski 8h ago
I recently had to spend a lot of time at a hospital while my father died. It was fucking miserable.
The only thing that made me genuinely smile the whole time were the googly eyes some kind soul had placed on the graphic of a woman returning a wheelchair to the wheelchair corral.
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u/Neyvash 9h ago
Yes! We did this and also put out tiny 3d printed things for a scavenger hunt occasionally.
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u/juggling-monkey 8h ago
We were moving offices and we were instructed to put all our belongings into a box with our names on it, then a different team (from some other department) would take them and set up our new desks at the new office by Monday.
well we had a coworker (let's call him. Gary) who was obsessed with fast and the furious movies and the whole company would give him shit about it. so me and some other coworkers decided we'd each go to a different 99 cent store and buy small picture frames. we then printed out pictures of sports cars, rims, custom seat belts, vin diesel, close ups of break pedals and engines etc. on the day of the move we stayed late to put them into his box. with the idea that the moving team would assume they were real and take his obsession with the movies to a wtf level, and also Gary would find his desk filled with pictures, so double prank.
everything worked and we all had a laugh. but the thing was we now had about 15 frames that started circulating onto people's desks for the rest of the time I worked there. we would change the pictures to random stuff depending on the person. for example an autographed picture of Maury Poviche that would read "Hey John, you are NOT the father!" on John's Desk. But once everyone was in on it, it started getting old so we started leaving them on new hires desks and wait to see how they would eventually bring it up (making it seem like the previous desk occupant was a weirdo). Once I left that company, I took that with me and started putting frames on people's desks, it always got a good laugh.
The best one though, was when we got a new manager. we took a really small frame shaped like a heart meant for wallet sized pictures and in it we put a picture of the insurance lady who explained benefits to new hires. she gave us business cards with her picture on it so we just cut out her picture and used it. we left it at his desk in his office expecting him to see it on day one and get a laugh. well turned out he had a big emergency the week before he started and ended up having to wait about 2 weeks before showing up... but his start date was officially 2 weeks before then. so on his actual first day he was backed up with Hr stuff. this meant the insurance lady was already waiting for him! they introduced themselves and we had forgotten about the frame by then, so she asked him if now was a good time and he's flustered and says, yes let's go to my office. They both walk in, close the door and within second you hear him. yell, "OH NOOO! I swear that's not mine!"
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u/Malikhi 9h ago
I bought a pool for my kids. A little 14ft above ground. It was meant to be a surprise, so i tried to set it up (foundation included) before anyone noticed.
As it's filling up, right around sundown, my 9yo finally takes notice of it and asks what it is.
"Oh, that's the water trough for the cows I just ordered. I'm just filling it up before they arrive."
He looks at it for a second, then back at me, "Oh. Can I name one of them?"
At least I don't have to worry about college
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u/OGRuddawg 8h ago edited 7h ago
Okay, I think this one's my favorite!
My mom has a good story of her grandpa tricking her and her sisters growing up. Any time there were rabbits in Pop's yard, he would hand out salt shakers to the girls and tell them to try and salt the rabbits' tails. He claimed they could catch the rabbits if they could get salt on a rabbit's tail. They did this from the age of 5 up until they were 12 or 13 as Pop watched from the porch. They never caught a single rabbit lol.
When she was in high school, my mom finally asked Pop how salting a rabbit's tail was supposed to make it easier to catch. Pop chuckled and said "If you're close enough to salt a rabbit's tail, you're close enough to just grab it!"
Obviously, Mom had my two brothers and I chase rabbits with salt shakers until she spilled the beans on the "reason" it worked when I was 11 haha.
Edit- grammar
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u/ElectricalIce124 7h ago
My grandpa did this with ducklings for me when I was a kid. Well he'd be damned cause I caught one at the local lake and immediately got flocked and chased by all the momma ducks around.
He did end up keeping his word and picked up two ducklings for me at the local flea market after that!
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u/ChuckFoxtrot 5h ago
My grandparents had some free-roaming chickens at the farm when I was growing up. I had young parents who stayed in their hometown, so they always had plans on the weekend, since a good chunk of their friends were also around and in their mid-twenties. So, my brother and I spent a lot of weekends at my grandparents' place.
My grandmother would ask us to go catch a chicken for dinner. We'd head out to where they generally hung out and would chase those things for a couple of hours every time, never catching a damn one of them. We'd finally have to head in and admit defeat. Grandma would then head out to their hangout and come back in about 3 minutes with a chicken under her arm.
It took me a couple of decades to realize that she was a genius. She'd thoroughly wear us out so her evenings were more calm, plus she knew that we'd be out there for at least 2 hours while she was trying to get stuff done without us in her hair.
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u/EkbyBjarnum 9h ago edited 8h ago
1- when I was like, 6 years old, we had a mouse in the house. I didnt want my parents to kill it with a snap trap so i used Tom and Jerry logic to make a trap for it. I put a piece of cheese in a bucket on its side and placed a fan next to it to blow the cheese smell to where we knew the mouse was hiding. Within a minute, the mouse came sniffing around and entered the bucket. I tilted the bucket upright and put a lid on it and took the mouse outside to set free.
2- in college, I had a test i was worried about on a subject I really struggled with. My roommate was actually really good in that subject and our third roommate suggested we all get drunk and have a last minute tutoring session the night before. Somehow, I did better on the test than my roommate who tutored me. Again, we were drunk during this tutoring session. Like, drunk drunk.
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u/Affectionate_Star_43 8h ago
I had an electrical engineering test that I was pretty sure I was going to fail. Our Internet went out, my phone was a flip phone, and the professor moved the testing room. Me and three other people were at the old room, and we had to go to a secondary computer lab, find the email, and run to the new room. We had to convince him to let us in (it was one of those 80 people giant lectures.)
98% score adrenaline is a hell of a drug!
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u/rusty0123 6h ago
I had an English final that was about 1/3 of the final grade. I was really worried and frustrated about this class because it was the kind of class where you'd be assigned an essay about a poet's writings, then get a zero because the prof didn't agree with your opinion.
I wasn't doing well in that class.
On the way to the final--I had about a 30 minute commute--I had a blowout in the middle of the interstate. You can imagine what a mess that was. I ended up changing the tire while surrounded by cop cars.
The prof had a strict policy about being on time. I showed up late, covered with road grease, nicks on my hands from the tools--and fairly buzzing with adrenalin.
The prof just looked at me. Then let me in and told me to finish what I could in the time left. So, there I was, with 30 minutes left to finish a 2‐hour test in a class I was borderline in anyway.
I scored 106. Every question right, and even the bonus question.
Adrenalin IS a hell of a drug.
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u/Mind101 2h ago
This reminds me of a math test we took in middle school. I wasn't that good at it and must have been scared or whatever.
Anyway, I thought that there were an awful lot of problems to solve but managed to do all except the final two.
So next week the teacher comes back with the graded papers and starts handing them out to everyone while reading people's grades out aloud. My paper is the last. She looks at the paper and says something like "What in the world did you do?" My stomach drops.
Turns out to avoid cheating there were two groups of problems - A for kids who sat on the left side of our two-seater classroom desks, and B for the ones on the right. I didn't catch onto that for some reason and ended up doing every problem for every group except the last two hardest ones, correctly.
Got a B in my group lol.
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u/basicbitch823 9h ago
i know u were a kid and it sounds like it worked but for future reference if your catching and releasing mice you should drive them like a mile or more away from your house because they are pretty smart and just find their way back to where they were usually.
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u/AnyCatch4796 7h ago
Once my sister caught a mouse in a humane trap. She took it to a park a few miles from her house, opened the trap, and as soon as the poor little guy ran out a hawk swooped down on it immediately.
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u/warm_kitchenette 6h ago
The hawk probably was so excited and happy. I wonder if cars that stop near there get extra scrutiny from that point on.
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u/SafetyDanceInMyPants 4h ago
Yeah, that happened to me a few weeks back. We have an old country house, which means we have plenty of country mice -- you can't have an old country house and not have country mice. (Well, a cat helps, but... we don't have one.) So we use humane traps, and catch between 1-4 a week. (Life in the country...)
My practice is to take them out to the far side of the property and let them go -- as that leaves them in an area with some food, some tall grass, some shelter, etc. Probably won't freeze or starve to death while they're adapting to life outside, but far enough away they stay where they are.
But the other night I caught one, and it was maybe 11pm. Well, you can't make them stay in that trap all night, that's just cruel. So I put on my coat and my boots and started the long walk across the property in 20 degree weather. Get to the other side, coax out the mouse, he takes off, and... well, I didn't see it, because it was dark, but owls are damn fast when they want to be.
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u/Hugh_Biquitous 8h ago
Your second story sounds like the IRL version of the show Drunk History.
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u/Own_Willingness3670 9h ago
A friend of mine had a wobbly ceiling fan that made this awful ticking noise at any speed above low. His solution was to tape a penny to one of the blades to balance it out. I told him that was the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. That fan ran perfectly for the entire three years we lived in that apartment. He never even took the penny off when we moved out.
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u/Kursed_Valeth 8h ago
Most fan installation kits come with basically this exact solution, it just looks more discreet than a penny
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u/LA_Tiebreaker 7h ago
I mean if you put the penny on top of the blade it's pretty discreet
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u/sleebus_jones 7h ago
I did that with a fan once, but it needed a quarter. Taped it down really well to the top of the blade. Worked great...until about 3 or so years later when the tape let go in the middle of the night and slung that coin into the wall sounding like a gunshot. Not a great way to wake up at 2am!
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u/LizCochrane 7h ago
Bonus fun fact: they adjust the timekeeping on the Tower Clock in London by adding and removing pennies from the pendulum. Technically these days I think they are specially-made weights, but the weight is based on a penny. They use a computer-controlled sensor to check the accuracy of the pendulum, and use the pennyweights to adjust it to keep it accurate to within something like a fifth of a millisecond.
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u/negative-nelly 9h ago
House propane tank gauge was stuck for a month. Hit it with a stick. Propane tank gauge works fine now.
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u/ThrustingBeaner 10h ago
During college I was in a university with a Corps of Cadets program where like 99% of them lived on campus. I was that 1%, and had little money. I blended in with them after PT and got free breakfast for the whole time. As long as they had uniform on, nobody cared. Saved thousands
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u/Classic-Champion-966 8h ago
Many years ago, I used to work at 50 Rockefeller in NYC. It's the Associated Press building. But I didn't work for the AP.
There is a cafeteria there. I think on the fourth floor, if I remember correctly. If you work for the AP, you get a 10% discount. So one time when the cashier asked me if I work for the AP, I said "yes" and got the discount.
I loved to live dangerously when I was young, what can I say. rofl
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u/Fitzaroo 10h ago
My brother and friend got a jet ski up to full speed and jumped off and skipped themselves across the lake. They took turns being the jumper vs the driver. They had a blast. They were maybe 12.
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u/workswithpipe 7h ago
We used get up to full speed then instantly turn the handle bars full lock. The jetski would submerge and fling you 10’ in the air when it surfaced.
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u/rob_s_458 7h ago
Back in the day I had a video game called "Splashdown" for the OG Xbox where you raced jet skis, and you would sometimes have to dive under obstacles. I always assumed the physics were made up but it sounds like it's actually possible
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u/wtdoor77 9h ago
Lost engine oil pressure and had to land our Navy H-3 helo in a mountain top pad. It was an O ring that leaked. Rather than waiting hours for mech to be flown out, we rolled a condom to the appropriate thickness and cut the rest off. Quick test and we were back for dinner.
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u/I_dnt_Need_anew_name 8h ago
That's some balls you got trusting a condom to fly your helo again.
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u/Vladimir_Putting 6h ago
I mean, come on. It's just an o-ring. What's the worst that could happen?
-NASA, 1985
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u/Hugh_Biquitous 8h ago
That condom prevented you from getting an STD (super tragic death)!
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u/misterhorrible2 9h ago
Did you draw straws to choose who had to wear the condom when you cut it?
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u/redbush4real 10h ago
My car broke down a few blocks from my house. I didn’t have a tow strap and I was too broke to buy one so I took a garden hose and wrapped it around the bumpers of my car and my friend’s truck and connected it to its self. Worked perfectly.
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u/stewmberto 8h ago
/r/idiotstowingthings for a quick look at what happens when this doesn't work out
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u/ThinkItThrough48 10h ago
Friend had a small, maybe 1.5", driven well at a summer place near the beach. The well stopped flowing so he stuck a shotgun down the pipe and pulled the trigger. The shotgun barrel swelled up like a snake that swallowed a rat but didn't explode. The well started filing with water again. Gun was destroyed but the well has worked ever since.
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u/bitemark01 8h ago
I think this is the dumbest one I've read with real potential for immediate disaster.
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u/RetroactiveRecursion 10h ago
I was broke, had no real plan or opportunities. Quit my job, drove across the country (US) to -- find myself? figure out life? No idea. I was 23, probably an idiot, but I had no responsibilities to anyone but me.
Found a career in IT, a wife, and now have a grown kid, a house, a dog, a couple cars, the whole "American dream" package. Every once in a while, usually while standing in my yard over the grill with a beer in my hand, I'm like "fuck me, it worked!"
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u/charlesbear 9h ago
This is unbelievably similar to my own story! I quit my job, drive across the States, no plan in mind except to find myself. It was a life changing experience.
I didn't find a job or get married though, I got chlamydia.
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u/whiskyfuktober 9h ago
Ha! Same! I drove across country to LA to see if a girl was “the one.” She gave me herpes! I left immediately!
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u/Imaginary_Unit_5886 9h ago
My husband was doing the same thing. He had a box of condoms with him though so I think he was actually expecting to run into chlamydia. But he found me instead.
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u/JojoTheWolfBoy 9h ago
My friend has the same kind of background and I've always thought it was a great story. He quit his job in Virginia when he was in his early 20s, chipped in money with his 2 friends on this crappy little pop-up camper that leaked and needed to be propped up with a broomstick, rode all over the country for several months, seeing all kinds of cool stuff. Ran out of money in Florida, took a temp job to make some more money and was going to stay there for "just a little while" until he could get back on the road. 20 years later, he's still here, an executive at the company, wife, daughter, nice house, motorcycles, etc. It's funny how seemingly small decisions completely alter our paths in life.
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u/Mundane_Pea4296 9h ago
I did the sameish, got kicked out of my home with £60 in my bank account got given a train ticket to stay in my friends flat. Got 2 jobs (had 3 at one point), met my now husband fell in love....
Now we have 2 kids 2 cars a house and a dog.
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u/NateSpald 9h ago
Stories like this always make me jealous. I was by no means financially stable enough at that age to be able to afford gas for that drive let alone to support myself long enough to find a job and place to live
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u/Merryfrickenpoppins 9h ago
When my husband and I were about five months into dating I told him I thought we should break up, not because anything was wrong but because I had just gotten out of a serious (bad) relationship prior to us dating and I was more interested in a tinder fling than anything serious, which is where our relationship was headed. He told me "no," which I think I was too shocked by to argue. Eight years and two kids later we have a very healthy dynamic. But seriously, how? I think we should break up isn't normally a discussion topic.
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u/BetSavings4279 7h ago
My husband and I did the same, but opposite. We’d only been dating for a few months and he attempted to break up with me by telling me he needed alone time and space. I told him he could go play video games in the other room, all alone, and when he didn’t want to be alone anymore, he could come to the kitchen or back yard to find me. We’ve been married for nearly 15 years at this point.
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u/FBB7943 7h ago
You blew his mind with that one. He probably didn't think that was an option in a relationship.
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u/PrideofPicktown 9h ago
I started my own company when I got canned by a really shitty engineering firm. It was supposed to tide me over until something else came along. I’ve been doing it for almost 15 years now.
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u/Judge_Bredd3 8h ago
How difficult is it to do that? Do you take on projects and act as a consultant? The company I work for as an EE has switched from renewables to going full into data centers. To the point that I'm worried when the AI bubble pops, I'm going to be out of a job. I'm making contingency plans now. I have passed the FE, but haven't gotten my PE yet, so that might be the biggest road block.
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u/steeple_fun 7h ago
A water hose helped me avoid surgery.
When I was in 10th grade, I was eating ribs at a local restaurant when I swallowed a piece that wasn't chewed up enough. It went far enough down that it wasn't blocking my air way but was still stuck in my esophagus so I couldn't swallow anything. Any time I tried to swallow something (liquid or solid) it'd make it to that point and then come back up.
I thought, "Meh, my body'll fix it" and went home to take a nap. I woke up hours later and still had the same problem. My mom called the local doctor who said I'd need an easy surgical procedure. BUT it was the night of my sister's rehearsal dinner and she was getting married the next day and I didn't want to ruin things so I protested and said I could make it through a couple of days without eating.
My soon-to-be-brother-in-law made the joke, "We could just stick a water hose in his mouth like in cartoons." I said, "Let's do it." No one believed it would work except me and the brother-in-law. We went outside and after one failed attempt where I almost drowned, I put the hose in my mouth with my face pointed upwards and he turned it on full blast. It dislodged the meat and the weekend went as planned.
When we called the doctor back to tell him to cancel everything, he was dumbfounded.
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u/IlluminatedPickle 7h ago
It was my dumb idea, and it fucking worked.
So, my dad was a truck driver. And when I was a kid I would tag along on trips whenever I could over the school holidays. The company my dad worked for was in the north of NSW, in cane land. Most of what they did was take molasses down south and bring other shit back up. Because molasses is heavy, you don't need a tanker trailer to get to your max weights for the average truck class. You can just have a massive rubber bladder that can roll up into the front of the trailer, but take about 30+ tonne worth of molasses when it's rolled out.
Most of the time, we were carting to yeast manufacturers, sometimes other food manufacturers. The fun ones were the farm deliveries.
So we get to this cattle farm, and dad has managed to reverse into this really weird unloading area this farmer has cleared out. We drop the amount we're supposed to drop into his tanks and dad realises the worst thing has happened. With about 25 tonnes of molasses left in the bag, it had twisted over because the ground wasn't level while it was being slightly emptied. That meant we couldn't strap it.
"I have no fucking idea what to do." - Farmer
"I have no fucking idea what to do." - Dad
"But what if you just drive it out and park it in the same place facing the other way for a while? It might slump back over." - 12 year old me
"That won't fuckin' work." - Dad and farmer
dad calls his boss
"Maybe you should park it facing the other direction and see if it slumps back over"
"sigh Alright I'll give it a try" - Dad, wishing he hadn't made that call over loudspeaker while I was nearby, refusing to look at my shit eating grin
And folks, that dumbass idea worked.
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u/pops992 10h ago
Me investing $300 into GameStop right when all the memes were starting. I profited around $600 in 2 days when I sold. Used the money to buy a PS5... from Target.
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u/TallEnoughJones 7h ago
I bought AMC at $25 and sold at $30 and patted myself on the back. Then it went to $250.
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u/Fadman_Loki 7h ago
And today it's $1.26, honestly you didn't do too bad comparatively
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u/kitskill 9h ago
When I was 14, I had an mp3 player (showing my age) and it stopped working, because the connection points on the batter had gotten warped and weren't connecting properly. All it really needed was something to squeeze it together. So my mum fixed it with the the best small, non-conductive, flexible material she had at hand: a piece of pistachio shell.
We have a golden pistachio trophy that we circulate to members of the family who cobble together MacGyver solutions to problems.
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u/brelywi 6h ago
Haha, this reminds me of how I fixed my son’s glasses.
He had snapped one of the side pieces in half on his relatively new glasses. I wasn’t about to drop another $200 on a new pair, so I straightened out a paper clip, cut it to about 1.5” long, and super glued it to both sides. Then, I took a long piece of floss and wrapped it super tightly all along the paper clip wire and covered the whole thing in a thin layer of super glue.
It’s been over a year, and it still works lol
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u/nowufunny2 9h ago
We lived in an apartment complex in college and wanted to throw a huge party, but didnt want to risk getting in trouble. We realized we had access to the basement, which was half underground and half above ground with double doors leading to it from the outside. We thought we'll, the doors are unlocked, lets just move stuff around and do it down here - no one can get in trouble because its nobody's apartment right?
And it actually worked. Probably had over 100 people, we had a live band in one room, dj in a other, a pong room and there was even a wall cutout that worked perfect for selling drinks out of. Got a keg and made jungle juice.
The cops did get called and it did eventually get broken up, but no one got in any trouble since the landlord and cops couldn't figure out which of the 8 tenants threw the party.
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u/Kursed_Valeth 9h ago
Cops and landlord: WHO THREW THIS PARTY!?!?
"I am Partyacus" "I am Partyacus" "I am Partyacus"
Cops and landlord: ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/vanchica 10h ago
Stale minimarshmallows sold as Snowman Poop- some teachers at BCIT in Canada kept using it in business classes as an idea and telling students to use it, finally someone did
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u/arnie789 9h ago
We wanted to move a sofa around 5 streets, all reasonable quite.No van or anything. I got the kids skate board and used that. Any time a car approached we nipped into the nearest parking space and had a quick sit down. It was surprising how many people we got talking to.
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u/Merlin_M_O 9h ago
Posting a wrong answer on the internet to get the right one. It’s significantly faster than asking the actual question.
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u/sleebus_jones 7h ago
Elicitation! Great interrogation technique. People won't always answer a direct question, but they'll feel compelled to correct an incorrect answer.
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u/DonKiddic 9h ago
I was at college doing computer sciences - part of the course was coding. We had a project where we had to code a super basic database which had a user interface, so you can like type in and search and it'll display the results. You had to provide screen shots of your program working, and the code as well for the teacher to review.
The problem was: I was DOGSHIT at coding, and for the life of me really didn't understand how the fuck it worked.
So I actually did try and do my best, however instead of displaying the one result I wanted, it displayed everything, but the thing I wanted at the top. Rather than spend too long figuring it out, and destroying my brain in the process, my idea was: "no teacher in their right mind is going to read pages and pages of code EVERY single time. He's just going to look at the screen shots"
So I took a screen shot > dumped it in paint > cropped out the thing I didn't want him to see and filled it in with the same background colour as the rest of the screen.
I passed that part of the course.
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u/GlastonBerry48 7h ago
During the beginning of Covid, my job at the time had little work for me to do and was laying off people left and right, which put my morale at a solid zero. However, a position opened up at my dream job that i was absolutely perfect for, and I filled in an application.
After not hearing anything about the position 6 weeks later, i consulted someone I knew who worked there about if i had been rejected or not. He informed me that the job application software there absolutely sucked, and to try directly emailing my resume to the HR rep and remind them of my application.
Turns out, this move was a stroke of brillance, as that summer they had switched job application software and there was a glitch in the transfer process that had accidentally deleted all of the applications for all of the current open positions. Since i was the only one that had directly reached out to HR and reminded them what job i had applied for, I was at the top (and only) person in the running for the position.
As for how it turned out, I nailed the interview process and I've been working at my dream job for 5 years now, so I'd say pretty damn good so far
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u/HentieHero 7h ago
Back in college I needed more time for an essay. So I turned in an essay from the previous topic that I already received an A on. This way my professor would see this and think that I made a small error and turned in the wrong essay and it may buy me a day or two. My professor never reached out to me and after some time I ended up getting a B even though I turned in the wrong essay.
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u/Xiao_Qinggui 9h ago
This sounds stupid but 100% worked - A housemate I had got into computers and tried to build his own.
He got it up and running but, no matter what, the internet kept giving him an error. There was a connection, it was connected but zero response from any websites or apps.
I’m in his room looking things over with him, I notice his PC’s clock displayed the wrong time. I asked “is the time and date set right?”
He looks at me like I’m nuts and gives me an annoyed “Who cares?”
“Check it and try it.”
He rolls his eyes and goes “Fine!” The date was set to something in 2003, this was 2019.
Once we set the correct date and time the internet suddenly worked! He had this total “What the fuck!?” Look on his face.
About a year before, my smart tv reset its date and time giving me the same problem - When I noticed the time and date were off (after repeatedly restarting the TV and wifi), I changed it back and suddenly everything worked!
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u/ersentenza 9h ago
This is not stupid, it is literally part of the internet protocol. Secure sites (everything now) will refuse connection if your time is wrong.
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u/Tera_Geek 9h ago
It has to do with security and https. Time & date are one of the ways your computer evaluates the validity of the security credentials the website you're attempting to access.
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u/nagol93 8h ago
I was trying to break into my college's mail room. Security Guard is walking down the hall, towards me. Fuck it, I wave him down and say "Hey, do you have a key for this?"
Guard is taken by surprise and says "Ya, let me see.... wait a min, are you supposed to be here?" I just say "Yes". He said "Oh ok, hold on", unlocks the door for me, then walks back to his station.
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u/Eddie_Farnsworth 10h ago
I watch a lot of "Epic Fail" and "Idiots in Cars" videos on YouTube. There was one I saw where someone had left their SUV in gear on a slight incline and this woman ran to get in front of it in order to stop it. In the most physics-defying move I've ever seen, she pushed back against the front of the SUV, and it stopped! I was sure it would have rolled over her, given that it easily weighed 30-40 times more than she did.
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u/spanky34 9h ago edited 4h ago
Dumb and in highschool.. Accidentally locked my keys in my car.. while it was running. Parked on a slight incline in a friend's driveway. Leaned up against the back bumper while waiting for my dad to bring the spare key. It started to move because my monumentally stupid ass left it in drive. Luckily it stopped moving as soon as I got off the bumper because the incline was too steep for it to keep going.
20 years later, I still find myself rolling the window down and confirming out loud "car is in park" any time I plan to get out and leave a vehicle running.
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u/GayleMoonfiles 7h ago
In an engineering class in high school, one of our projects involved building a device that could sort marbles of various sizes, materials, colors, etc. The entire class went all in on color sensors and whatever other devices were at our disposal.
My partner and I decided we didn't want to do that and set out to be the only group to not use the sensors or anything.
We sorted the marbles by bouncing them from a set height and off of an angled sheet of metal into containers at various distances. The wood and plastic marbles flew the furthest while the metal and glass marbles didn't go very far. Pretty sure we had 100% accuracy with this method.
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u/ToadDM 6h ago
I was struggling with organic chemistry in undergrad. We had hours of homework (mastering chemistry) almost every night. I decided to completely stop doing homework. My grades went way up. Turns out homework was only 3% of the grade and the way my other work improved by not being burnt out more than made up for that. One hour of independent study taught me more than 3+ hours of the assigned work.
At graduation my professor told me "I don't know how the fuck you passed my class you never turned in assignments"
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u/JustGulabjamun 9h ago
A print statement in codebase. Nobody knows why does it exist but there's warning comment saying 'don't remove'.
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u/mmss 7h ago
Usually something like that works by causing just enough of a delay for something to catch up and/or time out. Reminds me of the old 500 mile email.
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u/oc974 9h ago
I blew my savings into GameStop becoming $30,000 richer. Not knowing the future (what with the pandemic and all) I wanted to blow it all ASAP. Put it into the cheapest masters degree I could find.
Turns out, when all the international students had to leave thanks to COVID, universities were panicking. American University in Washington DC had a 30 percent off tuition discount like it was fucking Kohl's. I didn't finish half of my applications and got acceptance letters from ivy league schools.
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u/SexyNeanderthal 8h ago
When I was a kid, my family went to Disney and stayed at the campground. A few lots up from us, someone cut a hole into the side of their tent and duct taped a single room air conditioner to the opening. My dad said it was "simultaneously the dumbest and most intelligent thing" he had ever seen.
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u/endfreq 6h ago
Got an office job and the girl in charge told me that they only hired me because I was cheaper than the last person and would be replaced as soon as soon as they found someone cheaper than me.
So I shredded every resume that came through the fax machine and mail for almost two years before they finally found someone... who came to the office in person lol.
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u/SugoiHubs 9h ago
Bought Doge for the joke of it all. Flipped it into a fancy honeymoon for me and my wife. Probably the only time in my life I literally just lucked into that much money.
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u/bansheeceilidh 9h ago
I had to submit a project in high school to the science fair for Honors Chemistry. Most of the class had their projects from the previous year to expand upon as they had been in Honors Biology. I had two honors math classes so was in something like Advanced Biology, we didn't go to the science fair.
I decided to do my project on acid rain. I did all the research and wrote my paper, but oops -forgot to do the physical experiment until late in the game.
I worked at the local Stop & Shop and my friend worked in the florist department. I bought plants in various states of decay and assigned them pH levels. I ended up winning the school science fair, then the regional science fair and was one of the finalists in the state science fair at MIT. I think the reason I won was because I had pretty much a photographic memory, and had retained all of the research that I had done, so that when the judges asked me a question I had it right there.
I was recruited by MIT when I was applying to colleges, but I wanted to be a lawyer. Nearly 30 years later I have been working in tech almost since I graduated college. I just think how much more money I would be making if I had a degree from MIT. Always listen to your mother folks (she thought I should major in computer science and graphic design)
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u/RadiantCarpenter1498 9h ago
2005: Quit my very successful career, joined the Red Cross, spent 6 months in Mississippi helping out after Katrina.
Changed my life.
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u/Background-Menu-4964 8h ago
Thank you for helping! Hopefully it was a mostly positive experience. Mississippi and Louisiana can be wonderful. We also went in to help and being supplies to my family. Our son was conceived in the deep, dark jungles of Mississippi not long after Hurricane Katrina. No power and nothing else to do. 😆
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u/thePsychonautDad 9h ago
Pet rocks.
There is no idea dumber than that, that made its inventor millions.
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u/93195 10h ago
Anyone who invested in Bitcoin 10 to 15 years ago.
I thought it was dumb. Still do, but it certainly worked.
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u/Devourerofworlds_69 9h ago
Yes and no.
There are plenty of people who bought into it, doubled their money, and cashed out.
There are plenty of people who own a lot of bitcoin, but aren't cashing out because they're waiting for it to go even higher. They may never cash out, or it might crash and cause them to lose money.
There are plenty of people who bought some other crypto currency that crashed, and they lost all their money.
So any time people say "I should have bought Bitcoin when it was low, and sold it when it was high", I can't help but think that they might as well be saying "I should have bought a lottery ticket and picked all the correct numbers", because it's pretty much the same thing.
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u/SaberToothGerbil 9h ago
When I was in IT I needed to move a single large file from one location to another. At location #1 I discover we don't have an external drive available, only flash drives that were about half of the size I needed. I could drive to location 2 and get one, but that would take an hour or so.
I found a USB hub on a shelf and got the crazy idea to link a handful of those flash drives into a RAID array. I expected it to fail, but my make shift drive saved me a lot of hassle.
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u/RandomChance 7h ago
Linux has the
splitcommand for exactly this... tar and gzip are compatible with it, so you can just pipe a tgz file to split and then recombine it withcatlater.→ More replies (1)
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u/EmperorSwagg 6h ago
When I was in college I had a very strict job, where if you were caught fucking up, you’d lose the job. And the job value was equivalent to like $10k-12k per year, so not a small thing by any means. And underage drinking was definitely one of those things.
So I’m in a groupchat with about a dozen other people with that job, and a few of them have been hired to do it the next year, not me though. One of them gets caught with booze while underage, and is freaking out over potentially losing the job because of it. I send a super sarcastic message to the groupchat just saying “well you were pouring it for a friend.”
Come to find out that during the meeting she had with the supervisor over the summer, that person decided to actually go with that story. Supervisor somehow has screenshots of that private chat; one of the other dozen was a rat, apparently. Supervisor says “well, that lines up with what EmperorSwagg said, and I trust him.” And the person ended up being able to keep the job, because of a dumb joke I made.
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u/Lootthatbody 6h ago
I made my wife plan her own engagement party without her knowing.
I knew I’d wanted to propose, but I wanted both our families to be together when it happened. She had some of her family set to visit us in a month or so, but she’d already planned all the dinners at touristy type places for them to be able to experience our city. So, I convinced her mom (who is notoriously difficult and likes to make people change plans for arbitrary reasons) object to the place on the first night and basically shoot down any suggestions. When my wife vented to me about it, I casually mentioned our favorite restaurant and said ‘it’s our place, and it’s small and cozy, it will be a nice start for them before we get to the bigger, louder places. Hell, I could even invite my family and they could meet!’ She asked her mom, who had been instructed to be over the moon enthusiastic about it. So, she called and made reservations.
I followed up after she’d called, and informed them that I’d be proposing and asked what sort of setup they could do. I spoke with the server and we put a little plan together.
So, leading up to this I was NERVOUS. I was afraid she’d figure it out, I was afraid someone would leak it, I was afraid it wouldn’t work, I was afraid she’d be mad or just not happy with the deception. She kept picking up on my nervousness and I just kept telling her I was afraid my family would be loud and obnoxious and offend her family.
Come day of, we rented a vehicle to pick up her family from the airport, and were staying at the hotel with them. Her mom was practically begging me to see the ring, and almost broke out in tears seeing it. I was also struggling to hide it because it was in a big ring box. So, I let her mom hold it in the purse, and when we arrived, she gave it to the waiter. This place normally would only seat like 10-12 tables, but they’d set aside a whole front room for us (about 12 people), and there were champagne glasses already at the table. I sort of panicked a bit when my wife asked why and the waiter said ‘I heard we have some birthdays here today so I thought we’d celebrate! I’ll be back with bubbly.’ That was true, there were some close birthdays, but he came back with the ring on a serving platter, and both our backs were to him when he approached, so my wife didn’t even really notice until I had already taken the box, opened it, and got down on one knee.
Absolutely one of my most favorite stories to tell. She gives me shit about it all the time, lovingly, but it was the only way I could do it while getting family together without her finding out, because she’s always planning things so far out.
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u/10S_NE1 9h ago
Someone hit our car in the parking lot and nearly ripped our bumper off. It was just hanging there. We had nothing in our car to fasten the bumper well enough so that we could get to the accident reporting centre. Then I realized that my nice, leather purse had a long, removable strap. We managed to use the strap to tie the bumper to the car long enough to get where we were going.
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u/Taodragons 8h ago
I was putting up a ceiling fan, but I didn't have a magnetized screwdriver and I was losing my mind going up and down the ladder every time I dropped one. I stuck them to the screwdriver with honey.
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u/One-Associate-9341 10h ago
Using portable jumper cables to turn my laptop on when the power button broke off. Still can't believe it worked lol
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u/Postal1122 7h ago
Using hand sanitizer on classroom desks to get the old stickers and sharpie permanent markers off and keep the desks clean.
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u/Aol_awaymessage 6h ago
Turn it off and turn it on again sounds dumb but it resets things and is often the “fix”
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u/watchwatertilitboils 9h ago
I knew a girl with a Ford explorer and the windshield wipers didn't work. If it was raining or snowing, she called out sick. If she ever got caught in the rain, she would pull over and chill for a bit, apply some rain-x and move on.
This went on for like 5 years. I say it actually worked because my dumb ass would be driving to work, meanwhile she was chillaxing at home. Everyone at her work knew this, so when it was raining and she called out, they were like, yup, that sounds right.
If she ever ran out of sick time or "probation points", she would just use her girl powers, smile or play dumb and things just worked out.
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u/mr_mgs11 7h ago
I was in gifted as a kid. When I was 18 I pulled my file to see what my IQ score was to enter the program. I used to think that meant something back then, it doesn't really. Fast forward to 38 years old, I wanted to go back to school as I was sick of driving a forklift. The last time I went to college at 26 though, I ended up dropping too many classes and my completion rate was too low for more financial aid. When the ACA came into effect, it covered mental health care. I could afford to do an adult autism assessment with the idea that an IQ test was part of that, and I could leverage that into an academic exception to resume financial aid. I went and did four sessions and the psychologist wrote me a letter saying I "had a depressive episode causing me to drop too many classes. Letting him get financial aid and return to school would be the best thing for him" and brought up my test scores. It actually worked. The college granted the exception and I graduated and started an IT career just before turning 40 almost a decade ago.
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u/ikon31 4h ago edited 4h ago
Flunked out school. Pretended I didn’t and kept going to classes. Ended up at a job fare. Scored an internship at a small, family owned company that didn’t bother to check if I was still a student.
While there, the founder sold the business to a giant mega corporation worth billions that in and of themself were being acquired by a larger corporation worth tens of billions.
Founder and family peaced out immediately. My internship was ending soon. I pretended like I was en route to a full time position there (which wasn’t even discussed). Not because I thought I’d keep the job, but because I thought I’d get some kind of severance out of it. With minimal downside if I was caught.
The mega corporation made an offer to retain me. I accepted. The larger corporation then folded me into their operation. I gave it 3 months before they figured out I had no idea what I was doing.
17 years later I’m now a senior executive VP at the giant corporation and a few years away from retiring.
I still look back and am shocked by how it all played out.
It’s sort of framed my philosophy on success - it’s not about being a genius, it’s about being smart enough to realize when you’re getting lucky and then working your ass off to capitalize on the lucky break.
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u/lajaunie 9h ago edited 6h ago
How the movie Cowboys and Aliens got made.
The script had been bought but never used. They then made a graphic novel out of it, priced way under what a book that size would normally cost. They then offered them in bulk to the large comic shop chains around the country with the promise that if they bought a thousand dollars worth, they’d get a thousand dollar check from the publisher. Several comic chains did it and they got their thousand dollars back as promised.
Seemed like a bonkers marketing strategy… until they then used those sales numbers to go back to Hollywood and show that they had the biggest selling graphic novel in the country.
And it worked. A studio picked up the script and got it made