Ask Lemmy

Story time!

I forget the origin of the beef, but I remember a guy who grew up with another dude who was just a complete tool to my friend. It wasn't outright bullying, but general arseholery and making his life difficult when it really didn't need to be.

Anyway, my friend has a long memory and a longer grudge streak. I was finishing college at a time when print media was still king but social media was exploding in popularity.

My friend has decided "fuck this, I'm going to ruin this dude's life for a bit". He put an advert in the local paper or freeads (for non UK spuds: the freeads or classifieds is a newspaper-style private advertisements in one place - like a print version of a snapshot of Facebook Marketplace or Vinted for a local area).

Free TV. Call 07000100100 for details.

Anyone to this day knows that anything advertised for free attracts the most annoying, persistent, and unhinged type of people on earth. The freeads was published the following week. I didn't socialise with the guy on the business end of my friend's wrath on account of him being a massive cockwomble, but I understand his phone started to go wild with texts and phone calls asking about a free television - bear in mind that cheap consumer TVs weren't really a thing and a TV purchase was a "buy it for life" thing at the time, so a free TV was just an amazing deal.

It would appear the demand for a free television was too much for the guy. In true mid 2000's fashion, a social media message went up from the clearly annoyed guy, to the tune of:

Hi all, I've started to get loads of prank calls, so I've changed my number. It's 07000200200 now.

With the internet and social interactions online still in the wild west era, this was fairly common. My friend chuckled to himself. The plan worked. Not satisfied with that though, he put another advert in the following week's freeads:

Free TV. Call 07000200200 for details.

The publication date rolls around a few days later, and tens of thousands of this newspaper gets delivered to stores across the region. Obviously, mere hours after the thin yellow paper booklets are released to the public, the idiot's phone starts going banzai. Dozens of calls a day from all corners of society, relentlessly asking about collection and delivery of a television at no charge.

The guy was livid.

Livid, but not smart. He had gotten pissed off with the calls, and was unable to stop the barrage of bargain hunters hitting his digits to get a gogglebox gratis. He went back to his phone network operator and makes the appropriate changes. Not one for releasing his number in a private, carefully controlled manner - the gist of the following was posted to social media a few weeks later:

Not sure why I'm getting so many prank calls, and my mobile network are useless. My new number is 07000300300. Let me know if someone asks you for it because I'm getting annoyed.

Most normal folk wouldn't have risked being burned a third time and released their number in person or by SMS message. That said, I suspect the Venn diagram of twats like this guy who had spent an elder childhood making people's lives difficult; and those who don't appreciate the drawbacks of one-to-many communication, aren't far off a circle.

My friend sees this status update or whatever it was called back then, cuts out the reply slip of the freeads, enclosed his payment, and sends in the following for publication the following week:

Free TV. Call 07000300300 for details. Shout "camel" when I answer so I know you're genuine.

Hilarity likely ensued. My friend found immense satisfaction that the guy who tried to socially ostracise him and physically manhandle him for "fun" was now getting Guantanamo Bay levels of psychological torture, and 90% of calls that he answered started with someone hollering the name of a type of Saharan quardraped species.

The guy never posted anything after that. Not his new number, not any angry rants, nothing at all.

I respected my pal for that stunt. So much mental torture for so little effort. I lost touch with the friend but I still think of him now and then, and I hope that he still chuckles to himself with that prank under his belt, because I certainly do.