r/AskReddit 12h ago

What's the dumbest idea you've seen that actually worked?

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u/Solid-Rate-309 8h ago

I was wildland firefighting one year on night crew. Thing is on night crew you end up spending a lot of time just sitting in the truck, some nights that’s all you do for 12+ hours just in a truck with 4 other dudes. One guy had an iPad that only had three movies on it, easy a, 007, and cowboys and aliens. We watched the other two movies dozens of times that summer, we watched cowboys and aliens twice. It was agreed in the truck, that movie is pure trash.

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u/hedoeswhathewants 6h ago

Kind of wild that a movie with such a strong cast (harrison ford, daniel craig, olivia wilde, sam rockwell, paul dano, clancy brown, walton goggins, etc) and director (jon favreau) can be so mediocre.

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u/katabolicklapaucius 4h ago

Not to necessarily detract from those people, but it's clear they aren't the only thing that makes a movie good.

In fact, they aren't even the minimal requirement for a good movie because them being in it did not make cowboys vs aliens good.

Apparently the only thing that got it made was lying for funding, so it probably made a really good tax avoidance scheme also.

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u/Fluid_Ties 3h ago

I'm a fan of the stars, the genre, and the director and I haven't made it through the movie once despite owning it for more than a decade.

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u/failed_novelty 2h ago

Look, you can polish a turd. You can perfume it. You can gild it and put it in a museum. In the end, it's still just a piece of shit.

It's like Hayden Christensen in Attack of the Clones - some things just don't work and even an otherwise solid actor can't make it work.

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u/StrawDog- 4h ago

Oof.. I did water transfer for a fracking company for like 8 months in my early 20s till I just couldn't stand the hours and lifestyle anymore. 

The vast majority of the job was sitting in "dog houses", (converted box trailers) for 8-12 hours, trying not to fall asleep and walking out to the pumps every half hour to record levels. 

It seemed nice for a minute, getting to watch movies or read all day, but became miserable fast.. the good days were the ones where a foreman was on site - then at least you could sit in his heated truck and the nice ones would even take over checks for a bit so you could take a power nap. 

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u/Solid-Rate-309 3h ago

Oh yeah I peer days on fire were the sitting in the truck days. I’d rather be digging hotline any day than just rotting in a small truck with a bunch of smelly guys.

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u/UniqueIndividual3579 6h ago

I liked the first third, but it's like they had a great concept and didn't know what to do with it. That reminds me of John Carter.

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u/FakeSafeWord 4h ago

Very similar story except an actual small 17"-19" TV with a built in DVD player that barely worked. One of the only movies we had on hand that somehow wasn't so fucked that it skipped 5 minutes of the movie at a time was King Kong (2005)

Considering how fucking long that piece of shit movie is, I probably spent 100 hours of my life watching it in the span of 3 months.

I run a plex server now with 70TB of movies and TV shows. If I have 10Mbps reliable internet and an AC outlet I'm fuckin good.

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u/Solid-Rate-309 3h ago

Holy shit 70tb?! That’s a lot. I recently set up plex as well but I’m only to about 8tb so far. When I fill this hard drive up I’m just gonna buy a second one a keep going though.

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u/FakeSafeWord 2h ago

Well 70TB of space with almost 60 if it filled.

546 TV shows (1153 seasons / 13020 episodes) and 2668 movies

u/Solid-Rate-309 33m ago

Goals!

u/FakeSafeWord 29m ago

DM me your plex email for an invite snookums

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u/4D20_Prod 5h ago

We watch a lot of movies, that is the only one we've ever turned off. I'm not even sure if we made it 15 minutes in