I’ll go first, to set the tone:

Tay Zonday of ‘Chocolate Rain’ fame used to follow me on Twitter. 💪

  • WibblyMcButternutz@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    I ran in a 10km race and ended up taking a wrong turn. Everyone behind followed me. A small local newspaper interviewed me. I ended up in a quick tv segment and had a small write up in the paper.

    • wax@feddit.nu
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      6 days ago

      Oh man, what happened when you realized? Did you have to stop like Forrest Gump or could you lead them back on track?

    • Thaurin@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Hahaha, that happened to me as well, although nobody followed me. I ended up in the marathon race, for which I hadn’t trained, so after 30 km (!) I had to finally give up and ride back in shame in the car they had at that station together with the others that didn’t made it.

      I did run the marathon a few years later.

  • Dhar@lemmy.ca
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    6 days ago

    I worked with Linus Torvalds, met Carl Sagan, and caught a cold from Danny Elfman.

  • Agent641@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I am responsible for accidentally getting a landowner and big game hunter on the other side of the world investigated by the EPA for something he didn’t do, and a podcast episode was made about it. All I did was post a comment on Reddit.

  • 6stringringer@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    Many years ago I was on a Greyhound bus trip. I was traveling about 3 hours from my home & it was the easiest way to get to my destination for lack of decent air service Otherwise I would have simply flown. I informed the bus driver that a very odd passenger was having some intestinal distress & retreated to the lavatory. I was unfortunately sitting nearby when I knew that the driver should be informed of the potential degree of olfactory danger we were flirting with. It was a stormy night and that driver made the proper call to deal with the issue which caused us a slight delay. However, that little setback saved us from being caught in a landslide. The junkie crapping all over the bathroom was the hero. I was merely the messenger.

  • fiendishplan@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    Sante and Kenny Kimes: A notorious mother-son team who committed a string of crimes across the United States, including robbery, fraud, arson, slavery, and murder. Their story was the basis of the TV movie A Little Thing Called Murder and featured in a Netflix documentary.

    When they were arrested the son had my business card in his jacket. The police interviewed me but we could never figure out how he got it.

    • FinishingDutch@lemmy.world
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      5 days ago

      Shit, that’s definitely the kind of people you don’t want to know your name.

      I imagine you probably gave a card to someone who handed it off to another guy who donated his jacket to Goodwill or something like that.

  • phanto@lemmy.ca
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    7 days ago

    I encoded one of the very first mp3’s ever made, when it was still a “theoretical” model by Fraunhofer. I sung “I will survive” but in my very bad impression of William Shatner, accidentally posted it many years later on Napster, and found that copy following around many years after that on a torrent site. So, if you have a very old, very fake “Shatner” singing “I Will Survive”, it might be me.

  • justdaveisfine@piefed.social
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    7 days ago

    I set up a SteamLink app onto a Raspberry Pi but I ran into a bug and couldn’t get it to work correctly. Valve acknowledged that they were looking into fixing it but after a few weeks of checking, I just put it aside and forgot about it.

    Well nearly a year later, the thought randomly popped into my head that I should check to see if they had fixed it. I went to the Steam Link section of Steam’s forum, and sure enough, one of Valve’s devs had posted a new version that fixed the issue.

    … 30 seconds prior to me checking the forum.

    I’ve never had something like that align so perfectly, but also for something so ridiculous as that.

    • Ugurcan@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I had that with a GitHub repo seemed abandoned, only to get updated first time in 4 years just a minute before I checked.

    • Drusas@fedia.io
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      7 days ago

      I was among the first couple thousand to join gmail.

      People who think that my simple email address is their email address (which I guess is my email address plus some numbers or something) have become the bane of my existence in the years since.

      • Zak@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        I’ve had at least three different people on different continents provide my Gmail address to various services. I’ve ignored most messages meant for those people, but one gave it to his lawyer when he was charged with a serious crime for which his conditions of release forbade contact with children. I took the time to tell the lawyer that’s nothing to do with me.

      • Zak@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        I am, with the obvious username. I mostly only post in /r/flashlight now, as it’s the most active community anywhere online for that niche interest.

    • 4am@lemmy.zip
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      7 days ago

      I have a low-6-digit Slashdot account, and I was user 480 on the Minecraft bukkit forum lol

      • Rose@slrpnk.net
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        7 days ago

        I had a sub-5k Slashdot account. As I recall. Always found it weird how people made a big deal out of low ID users, but I swear nobody ever gave a damn about me.

      • SwingingTheLamp@piefed.zip
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        6 days ago

        There’s a blast from the past! Thanks for the reminder. I have a 5-digit user ID account, and I just checked to find out that it’s still active. I probably hadn’t logged in for about 15 years, and it still has an email address that went away 25 years ago.

  • Tedesche@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    I have improved the lives of many people in small ways via my job as a therapist. The best part is that I know this for a fact by seeing the improvement over time. Therapy is, in some respects, about re-parenting people; the damage you help heal is intimate and permanent. You help people grow, literally. Very rewarding, again, in the long run.

  • baatliwala@lemmy.world
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    5 days ago

    I did a photo shoot for Johnson and Johnson as an infant lol for one of their products.

    And also was one of the IRL kids on Teletubbies.

    • punchmesan@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 days ago

      Were the Teletubbie as creepy to be around IRL (in full costume and character) as they were to watch? I was a bit old for the Teletubbies target audience range when it was out but I was still a kid and they gave me the heebie-jeebies.

      • baatliwala@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Haha I wish I could answer that but I wasn’t on the set itself.

        I don’t remember the context exactly as it’s been a while since I watched, but IIRC every episode they used to show learning activities that kids did as a “peek” into the IRL world, sometimes individually and sometimes as a group. Example: https://youtu.be/AgC1CFISch8?t=4m41s

        I was in one of the episodes where kids did some group activity. I don’t really remember it much though, I would have been less than 5 years old.

        I still haven’t managed to find which episode the one I was on; it should actually be sort of easy to find it for certain reasons but it’s… Teletubbies. I’m not arsed enough 😂

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
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    5 days ago

    The FAA had to alter IACRA because of me. Well, to be honest it was their own damn fault.

    IACRA is the system where you apply online for pilot’s licenses and such; instead of filling out an 8710-11 form and mailing it to the local FSDO or whatever, you do that on the internet.

    I was applying for my light sport instructor license. One of the prerequisites to become any kind of aviation instructor is to demonstrate knowledge of the Fundamentals of Instruction. They accept four things:

    • Scoring a 70 or above on the FAA’s FoI knowledge test within the last 24 calendar months
    • Proof of employment at an accredited college or university as a professor
    • A state-issued teaching certificate for grade 7 or higher
    • Any other FAA issued instructor certificate, logic being is, if you’re already an instructor, you’ve presented evidence of one of the previous three.

    I took and aced the FoI test fairly early in my CFI training…so early that the test result was threatening to expire. So rather than take it again, I decided to take the test for Basic Ground Instructor, which essentially made the test score permanent.

    The day finally came for my CFI-SP checkride, I start filling out the IACRA form…and the website will only accept a knowledge test score. I call the examiner, she pulls it up, goes “Huh. Well, looks like you get to fill out a paper 8710 and I get to call Washington.”

    So if you’re the web developer the government hired to make and/or fix that form, I was that guy! And since it’s a US Government website, I bet you did it in the most bullshit unusable way possible.

  • punchmesan@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 days ago

    Short answer with no context: Bill Clinton touched me appropriately.

    Back story for those interested:

    In 2012 I worked for the Obama re-election campaign as a Field Organizer, and typically the job was just leading and organizing volunteers in activities like phone banking and voter registration and such. I was in a swing county in a swing state, so the campaign made a stop in our area. Obama and Biden were supposed to swing through along with Bill Clinton and others. Biden was even supposed to come to our office so we all had to get vetted by the Secret Service. But the candidates canceled thanks to Hurricane Sandy forcing them back to Washington. The rally continued on, though, with mostly just Bill Clinton and some local politicians.

    On the day of, I gather up my group of volunteers and we head to the rally venue. I was originally assigned to pass out water bottles to people waiting in line, but then we learned we didn’t have enough barriers around the tents where the candidates and Bill were (supposed to be) hanging out and I volunteered to be a human barrier to fill the gap. The job turned out to be kinda fun, a skateboarder tried to get past me and into the tent area because he was trying to cut through to get to another building and when I stuck my arm out to stop him I accidentally clotheslined him. He looked at me super pissed, then noticed the Secret Service right behind me and left with a quickness.

    Anyways, Bill gets on stage, says his thing, then comes to the fence like to shake hands. Well, I was also a part of the fence and the people swarming me started to overwhelm me. Until two Secret Service agents swoop in and push the throng back, that is. As Bill passed by he pats me on the back and heads to his tent.

    And that was the time I was touched by Bill Clinton in an appropriate manner.