It's hard to imagine our lives without the apps and innovative features surrounding us. These technologies make things easier – until they stop working, that is. A cell phone or computer glitch can sometimes be so frustrating that it makes us want to live off the land in an isolated cottage far away. But other times, these tech mishaps are so ridiculous that we just can't help but laugh. So keep scrolling to get a good chuckle from real people's hilarious technical difficulties.
"Healthy Living Isn't Available in Your Country"
Fitbits and fitness trackers are all the rage these days, and it's easy to see why. It's always interesting to track your bodily metrics and see your fitness data. But we've never seen a fitness tracker acting this way before. According to this app, "Healthy Living" isn't available in the user's country. But, with the way the error message reads, it almost seems like this person isn't allowed to do any healthy living, app or not.
You don't need a fancy watch to start your fitness journey, but it certainly does help. So this message feels hilariously offensive.
We Know That Dog's Small, but Is It Really Only 327 Calories?
There's a not-so-new movement in AI and technology circles where people use these innovations to help with dieting and fitness routines. In the picture below, you see an interesting system at work where you can take a picture, and the AI will tell you how many calories are in each piece of food that it can see. The only problem is that the app's creators forgot to tell it that household pets aren't food!
We're not sure if this helps, but that dog has got to be way more than 327 calories, right?
No Face, No Service
We've seen some pretty hilarious technology mishaps over the years, but this bus station malfunction is one of the most ridiculous we've ever seen. They probably wanted to tell people to wear face masks, but the person coding the billboard forgot to check how many letters of space he had. So, instead of a helpful covid warning, we have an ominous message that looks like it could've come out of a horror movie.
Who is walking around out there without a face on anyway? Wasn't that the plot of the film, Spirited Away?
Everything Alright in There?
While most of these technology glitches have been pretty funny, this one is actually pretty ominous. We're not sure if this was a user error, a strange prank, or something else entirely. But this bus looks like it could use some serious help. We'd suggest that the guy standing in front of the camera try to go somewhere else, too. This bus depot does not look like the place to be late at night.
There are so many good television shows and movies about talking cars, buses, trains, and airplanes. We just wish the real-life talking ones said stuff that was even half as fun!
When Siri Has a Brain Fart
If we're being honest about it, not all AI was created equal. Some of them are much smarter than others, and here we see an example of the latter. The weirdest part is that the microphone picked up what they said, alright. Siri literally wrote, "It doesn't look like you have an app named 'App Store.' If you'd like, I can help you look for it on the App Store."
Speaking of AI annoyances, does anyone have a friend on their phone whose name you have to purposely mispronounce to get voice control to call them? Isn't that the worst?
Today's Weather: 90% Chance of Raining Hands
This is one of the funniest technology glitches we've seen, and it happened when a local news studio's graphics machine broke during a live broadcast of the weather. As their meteorologist stepped onto the screen to deliver the forecast, the graphics machine began projecting duplicates of her in varying sizes, mirroring the reporter's every move. She started laughing, as did everyone else in the studio and watching at home.
When technology malfunctions, the best thing to do is to keep your chin up and laugh through it. If there's no way for you to fix the problem yourself, forget about it and go to an expert.
A Casual Evening Run
When trying to get in shape, the most important thing to do is set goals for yourself. You want to ensure that you're continuously improving so that your body doesn't get too comfortable and stops its growth process. But we think this user guy might be taking things a little too far. With an average time of zero seconds per mile on this run, we don't see any way they could improve any more!
Clearly, this is a technology glitch. Unless it's not, and Superman just forgot to turn off his Fitbit before a long night saving the world.
Employers Be Like
We think it's pretty stellar when a company asks us for our salary expectations when applying for a job. You often have to go in blind, and then everybody winds up disappointed when their offer is too low, and you two can't reach a deal. That's basically what happened here anyway, as their offer was way too low. Apparently, they're not paying anything for this position at all! According to the computer, "Answer must not be greater than 0."
This has to be a system error because we're pretty sure it's illegal to make people work without paying them. Wait, never mind. We forgot that internships exist.
Sounds Like All Our Exes
We love when companies show appreciation to us for our continued support. It's not much, especially considering these corporations make millions of dollars yearly, but we still love getting a little coupon or deal every now and again. Still, we're unsure what this food delivery app is driving at with this coupon deal. They're offering a whopping $0 off the customer's order despite them not being a new user because "we still love you." Sounds like a toxic ex.
At this rate, we might as well just eat in the restaurant. It's not like the delivery services are doing us any favors!
This Sim Is Ready for Their Midnight Snack
Video game glitches never cease to make us laugh. From the original batch that popped up on YouTube, like the infamous Laddergoat, to the Fortnite and Apex clips we see today, this tradition is about as old as the internet. Still, in all that time, we're not sure if any game has been as good for fun glitches as the Sims. Take a look at this one and see if you can tell what's wrong!
If you can't figure it out, the Sim is trying to sleep while holding a plate of food. This would be some crazy training for someone who wanted to be a waiter!
Feels Like Apple Maps Had an Agenda
Apple has lots of funny jokes built into the back-end programming for their apps, which is great! One of those jokes back in the day was a feature on Apple Maps, where if you zoomed all the way out of the North American continent, everything became one giant Disappointment Lake. A pretty apt name, don't you agree? What's more disappointing, though, is just trying to use Apple Maps regularly, but that's a topic for another time.
We can understand why the person who posted this picture thought this was funny, but you know what's even funnier? Every year thousands of people actually travel to Disappointment Lake.
This Smartwatch Clearly Wants Its Owner to Kick the Bucket
Sometimes, smartwatches can be so frustrating. Half the time, it seems like the system only operates with half of the information it needs. Like here, where the tech is having trouble reading the person's pulse effectively. It's alright for the device to struggle, but what's not alright is the device not realizing that a living human being is going to need to have a heart rate above 0 bpm. That's pretty basic, no?
AI has been trained to do a lot of things for us, but one of the hardest things for a scientist to teach a computer is a little bit of common sense.
This Would Take Fighting Over the Charger to a Whole New Level
There's a feature on most computers where you can turn on and display the exact battery percentage you have left. That way, you know exactly when you'll need the charger (or how much time you have left if you forgot it). But, due to a glitch in this person's computer, they really know exactly how much battery they have left. Like, really, really. Down to way too many decimal points.
No one actually needs to know their battery percentage this specifically. If you're ever dealing with a display like this, maybe try restarting the computer and seeing if that helps.
And That's How He Learned He Had an Identical Twin
The cameras on most of our phones nowadays are so powerful that it's no problem to snap a quick picture of anything we want. Back in the day, when we were dealing with film and exposure, you never knew how your picture would come out. Still, somehow this guy had an old film trick happen in his new digital camera when he snapped a photo of his family and wound up duplicated!
Even though it must have been shocking to learn that he had a twin, the rest of this picture is pretty nice. This will probably remain a sweet memory for this family, camera glitch or not.
Get It Together, Grammarly
For as long as we can remember, we've had a little person in our computers telling us when we spell something wrong. Microsoft Word underlines misspellings in red for us and, later, even started identifying incorrect grammar. So it's no surprise that nowadays, there are entire programs dedicated to making sure your writing is perfect, from grammar and spelling to conciseness and flow. But what happens when these trusted apps so many of us depend on get it totally, completely wrong?
This happens. We get nonsense like "Everyn't many book" as a suggestion. You really can't trust anyone these days.
When It's Almost 5 O'clock so the AI Decides That's Enough for Today
We cannot stand it when we try to get in contact with a company, and we get thrown into an automated answering system for hours on end. It used to be that you could pick up the phone and get a real person on the other end. Now, you have to be very articulate, calm, and patient while talking with a robot, and even if you do that perfectly, you still probably won't get what you're looking for.
Here, this person was dealing with an automated answering service in a chat window, which should have been even easier for the computer! But no. After the customer said they needed more help, Amazon's AI wished them a nice day and exited the chat. Savage.
This Train Isn't Letting Societal Expectations Hold It Back
A lot of futuristic movies that have computers becoming sentient make the computers out to be incredibly smart and malicious. But, here, we see a train struggling with its own sentience, except it can't figure out what it really is. It doesn't think it's a train; it actually thinks it's a pie, which doesn't make much sense. But, hopefully, it gave all the passengers on the train a good laugh.
And we wholeheartedly believe this train can be whatever it wants to be as long as it doesn't involve taking over humankind and the world.
Workplace Red Flag Number 1: Mixed Messages
This workplace wants future employees to know that, around here, you need to be way better than perfect to pass. This person was taking an allergy awareness test to gain certification for their workplace, and they wound up failing the class. The required score to pass was an 80%, but for some reason, they were told they failed even after getting a perfect score. But at the same time, they were also congratulated for passing.
Hopefully, these employers were understanding and didn't make the person retake the entire course. That just sounds like a lot of unnecessary work.
We Have More Time Than We Thought Until Computers Take Over
Some technologies are incredibly helpful, and then others are just creepy. For example, stuff like facial scanners and even lock screens that use Face ID is awesome and practical but also a bit eerie. There's just something intrusive about a piece of technology being able to distinguish between different human beings. Although, then we see images like this one, and we realize that there's still hope for the computers to stay dumb after all.
Maybe there's more time than we thought until computers rule the world.
We'd Choose "po"
We make it a habit to try to be honest in our day-to-day lives. So, if we saw a survey from a company asking us to evaluate their website, we would give them an honest answer. Now, if this was the website, we don't know if we could give them an honest answer. The lowest rung on this survey is that the website looks very poor, but in reality, it honestly looks like trash.
Thousands of website developers available for hire on the internet could do a better job than this. Hopefully, this survey taught the company what it needed to know.
When the Pilot Takes a Wrong Turn
It must be so much fun to drive an airplane. There are no rules of the road or lanes to follow, so you can really just enjoy yourself up there. Admittedly, there are actually lanes you're supposed to follow, protocols, and things of that nature. But, you'll never be flying an airplane and miss your highway exit. At least, we didn't think so until we saw the image down below.
It looks like this very standard Western Hemisphere flight has taken an unforeseen detour to the Southern coast of West Africa. Not exactly what you want to see if you're rushing to a business meeting.
Romania Decided Not to Leave 2020 Until Things Get Better
It seems like we all keep saying the same things to each other year after year. Next year will be better; next year will be better. Well, here, they just decided not to move on to the next year. Things can't get any worse if they don't change, right? That also means they can't get any better, but they can address that later. For now, let's just pretend December has more than 31 days.
This isn't the worst thing to happen, but it reminds us of that Parks and Rec episode where April schedules all of Ron's meetings for a date she doesn't think exists. Guess what happens, then?
The Glitch Did This Model Dirty
If you work in the marketing or advertising field, you have to figure out what will grab people's attention and make them want to buy your product. Sometimes, that's a catchy jingle or a good-looking model in the advertisement. Here, the tactic seems to be to scare the heck out of the user and to hope that it motivates them to act. What do you think, though, is it working?
That's probably not actually what this company wanted. This looks more like a glitch than anything, but it's a glitch that gives us a lot of ideas for a new horror movie villain, you know?
That Emoji Is Definitely Possessed
A few years ago, we were all still using the actual keypad to send emoticons to each other. Then, we had emojis, and now we've got bitmojis and Snapchat filters and all kinds of other fun ways to send messages back and forth between friends. But, this technology, like any other technology, can still malfunction. Here, we see a case where someone's thumbs up bitmoji has suddenly become a thumbs up the devil bitmoji.
There's something incredibly satanic about that cartoon face, even though we're pretty sure it's supposed to be cute. Honestly, though, the second one isn't that much better.
Please Consult a Doctor Immediately
If there's one bit of technology we really want to work correctly all of the time, it's medical technology. These are the systems and algorithms that are supposed to keep us alive, and if they malfunction, how are we supposed to get a proper reading and develop a proper diagnosis? That's why this parent was probably exasperated when they got their child's health test results back. There is no way that the kid actually has a BMI of infinity!
Maybe the doctors planned to send this out as a mock test and a sick burn before providing the real results. Then again, those would be some questionable doctors.
When You Don't Do Apple's Software Update
We buy technology with the express purpose of using it. So, if it stops working, you're naturally going to be a little frustrated. That's why this person was so surprised when they saw their sibling using their phone like this. The kid apparently has no problem maneuvering and doing everything they need, but we don't know if we'd be as forgiving. Can you imagine yourself using a phone that's tilted at an angle like that permanently?
We can't imagine this is a permanent problem either. The kid is probably just too lazy to head to a phone store and get it checked out. Or he doesn't want his mom to find out he broke it.
Next Run Will Be Through the Bermuda Triangle
If there's one thing people love, it's speed. We're always building faster cars, sleeker planes, and setting new world records in running. But, we're having a hard time believing this was a human's doing and not just a computer malfunctioning. This Fitbit screenshot says the wearer went on a three-minute morning run, crossing the Atlantic twice in the process and going through at least three different countries. We just have one question: What was in that guy's coffee?
There have actually been reports recently of companies hacking into fitness data and using that information to track customers and create even more tailored ads and content. Spooky stuff!
The PC Had a Long Night
It's always annoying when you want to use the computer, but you need to wait for an update to finish going through. It's even worse if it's a long update, like the type you might have to wait all night for. Luckily, this guy thought ahead and started the update right before he went to bed to maximize computer time. But, when he woke up, the only thing maximized was his frustration.
Something crashed during the night, but we're not sure how he could've prevented it from getting worse. Still, this has got to be a nightmare for any computer owner.
When Your Computer Starts Using Hieroglyphics
The whole point of keeping a wristwatch is so that you always know what time it is. Most people don't need that anymore since they have their phones in their pockets or their computer clocks to check whenever they need to know how late it's getting. But this person, unfortunately, has lost their computer clock. So, they will be having a little bit of trouble telling the time on their computer from now on.
This is another one of those glitches that we feel could be dealt with after a quick reset. But, we're not computer experts, so don't take our word for any of that.
We Love When Our Technology Keeps Us in Suspense
We love when we're having a problem with our computer, and a stranger on the internet is able to perfectly explain how to fix it for us. For some reason, those unqualified internet strangers seem to be much better at that kind of thing than the computer manufacturers themselves. If you look here, you'll see someone who tried to use their computer's internal help bot and wound up getting just about as much help as you'd expect.
This is why every company needs a customer service line staffed by real people! Pay a living wage and do good service, and everybody's happy!
Crashed Cursor Creates Cursed Cottage
Sorry for the alliteration above, but this is a pretty cursed image. Wouldn't you agree? This guy's PC started crashing, so his mouse toggle was duplicated all over the screen wherever he moved it. So, before shutting the system down and fixing things, he decided to have a little fun and create this piece of art. To us, though, this seriously looks like something you would see during the climax of a horror movie.
Of course, there are other programs and ways for a person to draw than to force their PC to crash. Still, we can't imagine this guy doesn't do this every time the computer starts freezing now.
French, the Language of Love
Learning a new language is hard. You need to constantly practice new words and rehearse the old ones you already know while still conjugating new verbs and finding ways to understand larger snippets of conversation, all at once. That's why apps like Duolingo are so popular. But, even the infamous Duolingo isn't perfect all the time. In this case, they're asking someone to learn a word that we're pretty sure is completely made up.
We're not fluent in French or anything, but we took it in school for a few years, and we've realized that the ampersand, hashtag, and semicolon don't have sounds in that language.
What Is Going On In This Fallout Game
We know that the Fallout games are about a world after nuclear war and the apocalypse occurs. But is this really what we should expect when all of that goes on? What happened to the rest of that person's body? They're just eyes and a shirt! Come to think of it - maybe this is a cheat code that someone found in the game where you can make everything but your eyeballs invisible.
There are loads of exciting cheat codes in different video games that let you do things like this. Still, seeing it for the first time in a while is always creepy.
Exactly What We Want to See Before a Horror Movie
Some people love horror movies, and others hate them. We fall in the hate camp, to be honest. You have to be pretty measured in order to make a horror movie that doesn't just depend on cliches or jump scares. Still, if you had a whole theater working with you to scare viewers before they start watching the movie, just like they're doing here, it would be way easier to scare the pants off everyone.
People who are going to see a horror movie are usually already on edge, so doing something like this is a great way to really push them to the limit.
This Feels A Little Passive Aggressive
If we do something good, we want to be congratulated for it. But, if we do something awful, we don't want people rubbing it in our faces. We're not sure what this popup is from, it may be a video game minigame, but it gives off "rubbing it in our face" vibes. Why not just say, "Sorry, you lost," instead? That feels like it would be a much nicer way to celebrate that someone lost the game.
At the end of the day, this is just a game. But, the more we think about it, this video game is really art imitating life, huh?
The Greeks Knew What They Were Doing
When we talk about ancient societies, we're usually so impressed with how much they were able to do with the limited technology of their times. The Ancient Greeks are one of those societies. Now, the current-day Greeks have made some pretty incredible inventions too, and they've got some beautiful scenery in the country. Still, though, Google Maps probably isn't the place you want to go to see that scenery though, or else this is going to happen.
This happens anytime you take an image from directly overhead and try to terraform it onto a 3-D model. But, you can zoom in at all different parts of the globe and see fun stuff like this, which is pretty awesome.
Even the Emergency Alert Is Panicking
Emergency alert systems, like the ones that warn us of amber alerts or incoming earthquakes, are vital in keeping people calm and safe. But, we want you to imagine something. If you were on the receiving end of this emergency alert message, would you be able to stay calm? We're trying to read between the lines here, and it sounds like there's lightning coming, and people need to stay out of the water, but we're honestly not sure.
A few years ago, a US defense alert system told people on the island of Hawaii that a ballistic missile was incoming, which was a false alarm. So, at least this glitch wasn't that bad.
Is This Some Type Of Test?
Do you remember those apps that are supposed to improve your brain function by making you do little tests? There's stuff like click the word, not the color, and then they give you an assortment of blue, red, and green written in all different colors. That's basically what's going on here, where we've got company titles and completely different logos connected to them. In our opinion, Wendy deserves much better than that.
If we had to rank the fast-food restaurants listed on this test, you already know that Subway is coming in last. Dominos is second last. Pizza Hut, it depends if it's 90s Pizza Hut or now Pizza Hut.
When the Planetarium's Computer System Gets Hacked
Seeing these error messages on a computer for the first time was so scary back in the day. This technology was already confusing enough, and we thought we had broken it all of a sudden. Luckily, a quick reboot will take care of this blue screen mess most of the time. Unfortunately, the people in this situation didn't really have time for a reboot. They had a planetarium full of kids to entertain ASAP!
We used to love going to the planetarium. But, they also always made us really sleepy. Was anyone else trying to catch naps during those school field trips to see the stars?
Trying to Read This Hurts Our Brains
Spelling isn't for everyone– it's incredibly hard sometimes! There's a reason there's a nationally televised spelling bee competition every year. Still, we can't imagine it's just lousy spelling that made this receipt look like this. Either this person is under the influence, or the computer is seriously malfunctioning because something is wrong. The only thing spelled remotely close to right is the one place they wrote "McDonald," and that's about it!
As poorly as all this is spelled, we bet it still tasted amazing. There's something about that sweet, unhealthy, unsustainably farmed poison that we just can't get enough of.