Many of the songs I ripped and shared via Napster in the late 1900's continued to appear on legitimate platforms years later.

As a child I was body slammed on a bouncy castle by Weird Al Yankovic.

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.

The Daily Show flew out to my hometown for an investigative report on stolen Crimewatch signs.

I still have mine.

For a long time I was in the first image result if 'London goth' was typed into google.

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.

I'm pretty sure I am Lemmy's most commentest user.

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.

I was among the first hundred people to join Reddit.

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

I was first to crack a code that appeared at the end of an episode of the Adult Swim show 12 Oz. Mouse. They sent me a T-shirt for it.

I’ve made breakfast for LeBron James, Kevin Love and also Denzel Washington. I was the breakfast cook in a hotel they stayed at. LeBron was a dick, never even said thank you. Denzel and Kevin were some of the nicest humans I’ve ever met.

I wrote for 7 or 8 books of a popular role playing game. Won an industry award at GenCon for one of them.

I took a picture that appeared in a Nintendo Power.

I spilled Diet Coke on Ann Coulter.

Ever been in room temperature? I’ve been to that room.

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.

up until Counterstrike went to 1.0, I was in the top 100 players off and on. My TFC clan hosted the first dedicated playable servers when it was released. The ladders would kill you if you jumped off them lol in the initial release.

I ran the second most popular counterstrike skins page for a few years

One week I decided to see how high I could rank in the gamespy/wql leaderboards and I peaked at 16 for the week. I got into the top 10 for the day a couple times. I remember facing most of the best players of that era. or at least the people that played on gamespy or world quake leaderboards reporting servers.

But I stopped playing and then the 1.0 version came out and my days off really took my edge off. I was never able to really get into it again. I've never played the latest version of it.

one time while I dropped acid and played it, I was so in the zone I had a 40+ killing streak. I never cheated but was banned from a lot of servers for dominating so much.

as a joke my friends and I would all play as teen pop stars or we'd pick silly names like mine was often "little yellow flower" lol because it would piss off the hardcore kids when we'd post screenshots of them getting crushed

Obama followed me on Twitter

(He follows 500,000 people but hey…)

I ran into voice actor John DiMaggio walking through LAX, and he was impressed that I recognized him.

I almost smashed into Robin Williams at the only computer store in Northern California in 1982.

I was walking around the game case while staring at the contents with 100% of my concentration only to realize at last second that I was about to suffer an imminent collision with someone. I look up and it's the guy who I watched on Mork and Mindy growing up.

The look on his face was something along the lines of 'who the hell is this weirdo'. I was so mortified.

Bonus, he died on the same day that I was part of a much suckier collision (5 car pile up that left me with permanent injuries).

I have a few very minor commits to some fairly major Linux projects.

Met and had a drink with lady Gaga. I did not believe it was her at first. She had dipped out of the venu after her show and came to a bar in Houston. Someone posted it on socials and the place became a zoo. They had to go into a side room and wait for a decent time to get out.

I wrote a homebrew Floridaman race for D&D that went viral

None of my actual works are ever actually appreciated, but I still see that damn thing from time to time

I once interviewed the former chancellor of West Germany, Helmut Schmidt, on a stage in Hamburg Schauspielhaus in front of thousands. It was also on TV.

I made the turtle subreddits custom Snoo logo.

Rap Battles of History said they liked my idea and used it as an example of a good idea to some other people.

I said "Neil Armstrong vs Jacques Cousteau: pioneers of the final frontiers" or something to that effect.

In the end they did Jacques vs someone else.

Not mine but my wife’s. Rockband 3 for Xbox 360 was basically the first console game that allowed user generated content (i.e., mods, but in this case, songs). There was an indie band that put their song up. Their music video was their singer playing the song in the game.

My wife beat her score. Neither of them held the top spot. The song was pretty decent but I can’t remember it right now. They never got famous.

I won a large online poker tournament (~5000 entries). It was for SCOOP (Spring Championship of Online Poker) and I was sent a very nice trophy and customized hoodie with my username on it.

I was the first white guy to ever attend a studio recording of Tantei Knight Scoop in Japan so they interviewed me on the show

I have a highly upvoted comment in one of Ryan George's "Pitch Meeting" videos. 😎

I appear as an extra in 2 different brazilian movies, does that count?

I once sold a Panasonic 3DO to Harry Connick Jr. I used to do tech support for Glenn Close.

Held the #1 spot on a Geometry Wars leaderboard for like a day.

I've vomited on 5 continents.

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.

ESPN sent some poor intern to film a goofy segment at my college before a big game. People had no idea why he and the cameraman were there and were kind of weirded out by it, so I went up to ask what was going on. I thought I might have to tell them to leave. He explained that they were just trying to film something goofy so I volunteered to help and got a bunch of students in on it. The segment was as dumb as you would expect, but good enough to fill time on the Cold Pizza morning show. ESPN mailed me a tape of the segment to say thanks.

So I guess I was on national TV.

Clips from my very old Sven Co-Op youtube videos were used in the NoClip documentary about Half Life. One of the friends I played with too has some old clips used.

I wasn't notified at all, I was just watching the documentary and basically did this:

Back in WoW's Burning Crusade days, my friends and I ran one of the most successful guilds on one of the most competitive servers. That was true before and after TBC, but during is when we became slightly known.

We had invented our own loot system in an attempt to make one that was fair. It was designed to be fair not only in regards to accumulating points with which to bid on items, but also to encourage and enable participation of both existing and new members. Anyway, it was complicated and it worked.

Our loot system ended up getting a short article written about it in some gaming magazine. I wish I had a copy of it. My one friend still does. I don't even remember which magazine it was.

I was a disc jockey in radio, not clubs, off and on for several years. I was never a big name or well known.

German indie rock band Guano Apes has an autograph from my wife.

Basically one of the band members was a friend of a friend and she was over once or twice. And he has a door where he collected visitor's autographs.

I don't know if they were already famous at that time. They might have been.

An app I developed was once used by Angela Merkel.

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.

TL;DR- Drunk and with no experience I lead a small group in pretty big parade.

I once led a small marching band in a parade while incredibly drunk, with a flagpole effectively attached to my cock (yeah, just rest the end against your belt, it's fine), and with only 45 minutes of training the weekend before. At the largest fife and drum muster in the US. I had no prior experience at anything remotely related. I had only been to one of the corp's meetings previously. Later that night I kissed my future wife for the first time.

I'm sure there's some wonderful psychoanalysis take away that I thought of the flag as an extension of my cock.

To this day I have no idea why they didn't get the actual marching band member boyfriend of one of the members to lead, because apparently I was pretty awful at it. It got some minor news coverage, so there's a chance a picture exists somewhere.

I was in a TV commercial for an online second-hand store that was broadcast on national cable TV and people recognized me for like a year after.

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.

I was my states chilli eating champion and even competed in the national championship

I lived next to air bud as a kid. My mom hated the dog because the owners would let it roam around and it would shit in our yard.

i dont think this counts, but i got mentioned in the news for a false positive covid 19 test

A member of the German pirate party follows me on Twitter. He killed someone and transported him with a hand truck through Berlin. He then killed himself.

I used to do a very niche job (that does not exist anymore) that required great skill, and I was so good at it, I was likely in the top 10 of all time. There were less than 1000 people qualified to do this job, and I was in the top 1%, AND those ~1000 people were the only ones to ever do this specific job out of the ~8 billion people on this planet.

Now I work a relatively mundane IT job, and no one knows or cares about what I have accomplished, except for my peers.

There is a famous comedian with the same as me.

My Spotify issue/feature request was attributed to bringing back a good version of the full screen view on desktop.

I've since moved away from Spotify but it was cool that that happened (even though they should not have made it shit beforehand in the first place)

Back in high school, I got second place in a state-wide coding competition (there were like 5 entries total)

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.

Unfortunately we didn't get 1st place, but my high school Splatoon 3 team got 2nd place in a national e-Sports competition, so I guess I used to be one of the best teenagers in the nation.

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.

Back in my Reddit days I made a meme for the D&D memes subreddit about how my players decapitated an enemy with a bag of holding

That somehow ended up on the front page of Reddit and I very quickly learned about a TTRPG series called dungeons and daddies that did the same thing

My first follower on Twitter was Stephen Fry.

I won a copy of TerraTopia from a Disney Adventures magazine. I had an Mac and never got to play it, but I know down to my core it would have been the best gaming experience of my childhood.

I once was in the office next to Stephen Hawking.

That is, I was waiting for my dentist appointment, and Hawking and his team were on the next module of the building by the side, on the office across from mine, prepping a lecture he would present the next day at my city.

I have two.

I used to be friends with a youtuber who made guide videos for a popular game. (I'm being intentionally vague.) He liked to end his videos with a certain type of clip specific to the game but was having trouble getting the clip. I'd been playing with him for a bit during this time and managed to get the clip he was looking for. After he failed to get the shot he wanted for a bit longer, he asked if I wouldn't mind him taking my clip and pasting his name over mine. I said of course. Once every few years I watch that video and smile.

I was on an intramural soccer team with Jessica Biel. (I never did work up the courage to say more than two words to her. I get starstruck hard and easily.)

Knelt down by a torpedo tube that wasn't receiving signals from the Torpedo Settings Panel, pulled out a Mechanicus Purity Seal I kept in my jacket, and recited the prayer written on it.

Torpedo tube started to recognize the TSP connection.

I was on TV broadcast across dozens of countries once!

(In a crowd shot)

I reported an error in the documentation of a vendor we use at work.
Error was, that the Agent is supposed to create a windows event entry upon being upgraded. But it gave a event-id different from the one in the docs.
I wanted it fixed because I used it to execute a script.

They acknowledged the error and fixed the event id number.
In the next version they changed something. Now it doesnt give any event-id at all despite the documentation saying it should. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I tried bubble tea a solid 7 years before it took off in the USA, in the USA. The owner of the store unfortunately closed several years before it blew up, and I felt really bad that the dude was ahead of his time.

I also tried Adeni (Yemeni) Chai and Coffee from the first Qawah House only a month after it opened. Now the product has rapidly expanded to the point where several chains are in direct and very heated competition with Starbucks which is cool.

I don't like sharing this because it kinda sounds less like fame and more like I'm being a hipster lol.

I was in a ring pop commercial for about half a second, and it was just my silhouette.

I also started a Smash Brothers tournament for Smash 4 that ended up in the national rankings at one point. I think our largest tournament had 80 people. We had some high ranking players like Jtails come, and even guest commentators like Max Ketchum. I was actually college room mates with one of PC Chris' close friends, and I had the pleasure of getting absolutely destroyed by Chris in Melee a few times in some basement hangouts. My college room mate actually made a brief appearance in the Smash Brothers documentary in the chapter about PC Chris.

Ha, Sway of MTV fame (now he does a show on xm or whatever it's called now) follows me on Instagram. I met him playing poker. Nice dude.

i have a photo on Google maps viewed 3.6 million times.

I was a primary source for "The FAQ Manual of Style" in 1996.

I have precisely the same date of birth as a very famous singer / songwriter who died around a decade ago.

I've sucked the dick of one of the designers of the ATLA ttrpg

I was a participant in what was described as a "tipsy, low-kick cancan line" by a young journalist covering a show for a university's student newspaper when I was a pre-teen (ah, all-ages shows, good times).

I've been censored on the radio on two separate occasions (made jokes about a competing station when calling in for a giveaway).

There's others but they are far lamer, if you can believe it.

A friend of mine and myself invented the word "twat-waffle" and no one ever believes me

I dated a supermodel on the early internet. she was from a few states over, you wouldn't know her.

Got to work on a stage play with the actor who plays the judge in Veronica Mars, Duane Daniels.

I had a small novelty Twitter account that Andrew WK followed at one point.

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.

My great grandfather tailored some clothes for President LBJ. It was after he left office I think.

My buddy's friend knew the guy who painted the helicopter that was used in Rambo III. Oh yeah! I've been drinking free on that one for years (as long as I'm drinking tap water).

When I was in K-12 school, we would do like a jeopardy game in class as a sort of review right before a test. I always have people that want me to be in their group since, in their mind, I'm just know as "that nerdy Asian kid" that knows a lot of the class material, idk if "Model Minority" stereotype played a factor, but like I mean I do have decent test scores, I just get lazy and procrastinate on like homeworks and stuff lolz.

A lot of the times I have the answer and the group always listens to me, basically: it's one answer per group, groups take turns, each groups has like a different person answer each round, but there is a group discussion and if I know the correct answer, the person who's turn it is to answer always listen to me. My answers are correct 90% of the time.

I think 3/4 of the times, my group wins and get the extra credit.

But, anyways, nobody actually wanted to be my friend, they're just using me for their benefit lol.

I once came in 4th place in the world rankings on a Project Cars 2 time trial and used to regularly come in the top 5% on Gran Turismo time trials. I don't really race on PlayStation any more though.

Had my face on a news photo once.

I went to summer camp with a girl that was an extra in Godfather 3, Jacobs Ladder, and some other movies. She was awesome, we were pen pals for years after

Oh, and I worked in a bar with the wife of a B tier country music star. Whose name absolutely escapes me right now as I don’t listen to country music.

Edit!: I just remembered my best one. A local restaurant was featured on You Gotta Eat Here and I was one of the people interviewed for the show. Best part was our very small village had two very small newspapers at that time and I ended up on the cover of both that week!

I was a niche internet microcelebrity once. I ran a shitty facebook meme page (two of them, even) with some 40k followers.

I was one of the very, very, VERY earliest people to ever buy Minecraft. This was late 2009 during the early alpha development.

I bought it because it looked fun and relaxing. I introduced a fair few people to the game, but frankly… I expected it to remain a niche thing due to how it looked and the fact that it didn’t really have set gameplay goals. You basically had to make your own fun.

It was wild to see it become a cultural icon. It was even wilder to go to the cinema and watch a billion dollar movie starring Jack Black based on a dumb game about blocks that I bought from some random Swedish dude’s site 16 years before.

I was the manager of, and sole employee of, a custom frame shop and just before closing one night I finished up a large signed jersey with Rose Bowl memorabilia, tickets, pin, lanyard, programs, pictures, the works, from this couple's trip there that meant a great deal to them. The silicone still had to dry, so I left it on the back counter ready to wrap in the morning. The shop got robbed that night, for the flat-screen out front, but they saw that jersey and took it too. Guy was devastated bc it was irreplaceable stuff. I was like "We'll see about that!" I called the Rose Bowl committee and told them what happened, they replaced everything, including the last lanyard they found on the floor behind the shelves they had been on. I emailed the sports team and told them what happened, and the player signed a new jersey with the customer's name on it. Guy was crying actual tears when he picked up the new shadowbox. So being a momentary hero is my "claim to fame" 😂

I'm 2 degrees of separation from Elon Musk, Max Levchin, and Tim Walz.

I am allowed to hop on stage with Red Grammar (Andy Grammar's Father) and make any song he sings a duet. I got this privilege completely by accident, when I was 7 or 8.

A Microsoft employee stared one of my GitHub repos. Not sure they are even still an employee.

1. i ended up in a strangeaeons video once. i stopped watching her content when i started high school and didn't find this out until about a year or two after it occurred.

2. a bit later in my high school years, i became a top 100 global champion for a handful of week-long events in the mobile rhythm game "bang dream", of which there were usually about 10,000-30,000 players per event. not very high level, but, having an essential tremor and issues with motor coordination due to autism, it was a way for me to train my hands

Ratboy Genius said he liked my music

I interviewed Robby Van Winkle for my university's newspaper back in 1990.

He actually was a pretty interesting person to talk to. Shocking I know.

I set the world record on a Ballistic.NG track about a week after the leaderboard wipe

My parents used to buy vitamins from Neil Gaiman's parents

I got caught playing hooky from school to be on the radio for an unapproved fundraiser, my house league hockey won the district championship and needed to raise money for the State tournament. The day I played hooky was a a day where the school would be outside for an activity, listening to the radio... station I was on.

Needless to say I was called to office to explain myself and scolded. Told them I didn't care and a better use of my time. I received a 0 for any activities and homework that day, there was none, and an after school detention which the admin let me leave early so I could make hockey practice.

My comment ended up in a Tinkernut video back when he was all the rage in the Youtube tech space

I was in the top 10 in gms maplestory for 6+ months back when Scania was the only server. I was level 100 when third jobs were first released.

Years back when Clash of Clans was running ads using player submitted footage they used my submission for an ad (the one where several giants get taken out by spring traps)

This makes me realize my life is rather boring in comparison to other Lemmy users.

I think the closest I've had is in maybe 1st grade local news came in one day because for some film of who they sent reading to us. Pretty sure it was the one day each year that was basically mostly focused on encouraging reading. Was a nice person from what my pretty foggy memory tells me.

Absolutely zero clue if that footage exists outside maybe an archive of local footage. And if it does and didn't make it to the news, I kinda hope it doesn't get out because I'm paranoid people would be able to use it to link me to a specific city back then.

Johnny Pemberton once said I was a living angel.

It was The Who’s 1st last world tour in Toronto at the CNE back I think in the 80’s. 

I get a call from a crazy friend (female) saying she got back stage passes to meet The Who and can I drive her to the CNE. I took her down and she told guys guarding the gate that I was her security. I was 6ft, 300lbs, big red beard almost to my waist and a huge Afro so I sorta fit the bill.

Once back stage I, star struck, met Pete Townshend and asked him did he hurt his visibly hand wrapped loose bandaged hand doing his signature hand swirl or smash a guitar. His reply, no I had a fight with my wife and punched the wall. I realized he was also just a guy as well as a star. I never looked at a famous person the same way again. More just like another person doing extraordinary stuff.

I saw Entwistle but did not speak with him. I did not see the other band members at that point. I also did some “illegal” substances with “certain” people. Had lots of fun. Got silly and stole the Argos golf cart helmet drove it around and got chased by security. I remember getting away but for some reason I cannot remember much after that point. I do remember it was a great night.

A petition I started motivated a group of rich people to buy a really important music venue and save it from being demolished.

Missed a flight same as Shane MacGowan and we both got on the next one, not together obviously.

Sat on the other side of a couch to Bono and his dad in his nightclub and stopped a crazy American from climbing over to him, everyone else politely ignored them.

I meet a certain songwritter on Wurm Online, distanced a bit when I found out I was in the pressence of someone who's boots I was not worthy of licking, caused Unicorn drama, then went on to defend some mountain from bullies, where I gave my character to a friend. That friend was shocked with what I did with the character, and went overseas to tear several metric tons of asses.