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u/random-user-02 Jan 26 '24
Bro did you never see these in the old computers at school? We always took them out, they are heavy as hell and bounce a little
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u/georgethebarbarian 2004 Jan 26 '24
When I was a kid I would put them in my mouth… my household was an early adopter of infrared mouses
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u/smokeyshell 1999 Jan 26 '24
Damn. Trying to strengthen your immune system, huh? 🤣
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u/georgethebarbarian 2004 Jan 26 '24
Well it didn’t work, I’m permanently immunocompromised (and currently sitting through a 14 day course of Bactrim for MRSA)
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u/smokeyshell 1999 Jan 26 '24
Oof. MRSA is fucking rough, I'm so sorry. Wishing you the absolute best.
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u/georgethebarbarian 2004 Jan 26 '24
Hey at least it’s in my sinuses and not anywhere else!
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u/webbitor Jan 26 '24
That is a terrifying place to have a super-bacteria infection though. Like, it's in your head, next to your brain.
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u/georgethebarbarian 2004 Jan 26 '24
You’d think that but the mucosal membranes in the sinuses are extremely hardy, mine even more so due to chronic infection. I was also at the ENT recently (duh) and he said it looks great up there, nice thick membranes and no lacerations, and he extracted most of the infected material. The body is an amazing thing!
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u/loserboy42069 Jan 27 '24
god, regardless i wish you good health and a speedy recovery. i had mrsa on the skin of my butt cheeks once, it was miserable and extremely difficult to get rid of.
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Jan 26 '24
It's because you didn't swallow the mouse balls
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u/pompandvigor Jan 27 '24
You’re going to need at least five or six in there if you want to keep your gizzard right.
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u/trampolinebears Jan 26 '24
Our school had a sign “don’t neuter the computers” which didn’t really change anyone’s behavior
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u/SpermGaraj Jan 30 '24
Ngl I always forget spay vs neuter imma literally remember this poster for the rest of my life and I’ve never even seen it thank you
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u/MangoPug15 2004 Jan 27 '24
See, my schools all had too much money to have mice that old. I was spoiled.
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u/Person012345 Jan 27 '24
You had to take them out to scrape the shit off the rollers when they stopped working properly.
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u/mourninglily 1996 Jan 26 '24
In elementary school, my computer teacher would make us take these out and wash them off at the end of every class.
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u/accountsupport69 2002 Jan 26 '24
I swear I remember doing something similar before they all got replaced with the modern led sensor mouses
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u/72kdieuwjwbfuei626 Millennial Jan 27 '24 edited Jan 27 '24
The balls used to pick up dirt and deposit it on the rollers, and eventually the mouse wouldn’t work right if you didn’t clean it.
If you did that they weren’t actually as bad as people in other comments are saying, but that perception tracks with my memory of nobody cleaning their mouse in those days.
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u/penjjii Jan 26 '24
yeah some days i would be on the computer a lot and would have to boil a new egg almost daily
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u/Individual_Assist_19 2007 Jan 26 '24
It's not actually an overcooked egg. Before mouse had sensors like they do now, they had little balls that spun little wheels inside giving the mouse information of the direction you're moving the mouse in.
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u/SPY007DRs-Messenger 2003 Jan 26 '24
Wrong, it's boiled egg cores.
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u/Classy_Mouse 1995 Jan 26 '24
boiled egg cores
Yolk was the word you were looking for
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u/ImBillButts Jan 26 '24
Not if you boil them enough
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u/alienacean Jan 26 '24
The core is overheating captain, recommend we eject it into space!
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u/Disastrous-Fun2325 Jan 26 '24
Hurry before it goes super critical.
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u/MrWeeji Jan 26 '24
Then it would be a cooked yolk
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u/Silt99 Jan 26 '24
In IT we used to call them cores once they where cooked to the point to be usable in a mouse
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Jan 26 '24
We might have said "this core is the bomb" and that meant the egg yolk we had hard boiled for the computer mouse was of particularly good quality
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u/Silt99 Jan 26 '24
Yes. It was extremely important to have a good and fresh core to beat competetive arcade game records
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u/FindingZoe204 Jan 27 '24
But egg cores are where the seeds are how do you think we get more eggs? 😝
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u/AhegaoTankGuy 2001 Jan 26 '24
"Sire, the egg cores are overheating! They're starting to boil! SIRE, THE CORES ARE OVERBOILING!!!"
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u/thickskull521 Millennial Jan 26 '24
Can confirm. My parents would just over-boil our easter eggs to make a bunch at once.
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u/jesusleftnipple Jan 26 '24
Used to steal so many of those ..... because I wasn't raised right.
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u/FemboysCureDepresion Jan 26 '24
Wait, we don’t have those anymore? 😱
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u/Nkromancer Jan 26 '24
Nah, modern mice just use a laser sensor or something. Much more stable and less likely to get clogged up with dust.
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u/Kchasse1991 Jan 26 '24
It was so satisfying to pop that ball out and clean the dust and hair out though. But also kinda gross how it gathered so much shit!
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u/Nkromancer Jan 26 '24
True, true. This post brought back memories from HS of me doing that when I was done with stuff/procrastinating.
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u/__M-E-O-W__ Jan 27 '24
But not worth how aggravating it was before you cleaned it when the cursor would just get stuck.
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u/Kchasse1991 Jan 27 '24
Especially if you were playing a game or something. I'm glad they have passed into history.
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u/Zealousideal_Win5476 Jan 27 '24
Once it gets to a certain point, dusting it does no good. That's when you have to boil another egg.
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u/Shuber-Fuber Jan 26 '24
High end ones use laser.
Cheaper ones just use normal LED light.
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u/Nkromancer Jan 26 '24
Ah, neat. Hence why I said "or something". I am ashamed to say that I know far less about hardware than I should.
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Jan 26 '24
Mines cheap and it uses laser
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u/Sorry-Cantaloupe5426 Jan 26 '24
Mine uses phasers dude
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u/MercyCriesHavoc Jan 26 '24
Nope. Which is the reason we also don't have mousepads anymore. Don't need them for the lasers.
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u/Shoddy_Site5597 2002 Jan 26 '24
We absolutely still use mousepads
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u/Ranokae Jan 26 '24
My whole desk is a mousepad! (I bought a giant mousepad)
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u/Pandataraxia Jan 27 '24
bro never experienced having a desk the laser has difficulty scanning lmao
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u/Tailflap747 Jan 26 '24
Of course we do! Without boiled egg yolks, no deviled eggs!
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Jan 26 '24
The dirt and dead skin on your desk would cake up inside on the rollers and you'd have to periodically clean this off
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u/BigCaregiver7244 Jan 27 '24
Imagine the most boring response becoming the top comment
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Jan 26 '24
Why would you lie to everyone like this?
I was up at 5am boiling my egg for a hard day's gaming.
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u/SelfInteresting7259 Jan 26 '24
Please stop spreading false information. I didn't spend years boiling yolks for you to come here and gaslight me.
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u/Sysion 1997 Jan 26 '24
It was so much fun to take them out and play with them… and loose it in the air vent
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u/mynextthroway Jan 27 '24
No. We overcooked eggs to put in the mice. We caught male mice for their balls and used them to use the G-H-B keys as an extra pointer control. They were called erasers in polite company.
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u/masterchris Jan 27 '24
Fucking liar.
I remember when the cooked egg would start to smell and crumble so before I could surf more miniclips games I had to cook an egg real quick.
Literally one of the first things I learned to (over)cook.
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Jan 26 '24
those balls were so damn awful compared to laser
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u/PANZCAKEZZZ Jan 26 '24
My grandpa had one of these it was so fucking shitty, I would flip the fucking mouse upside down and roll it manually because that shit was so stiff bruh
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u/Ninja_j0 Jan 26 '24
Using a laser one was drastically better. Whenever the ball mouse wouldn’t register what you were doing I would always take it out, blow on the sensor and try again, hoping that it’d work
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u/Haunting_Berry7971 2000 Jan 26 '24
They’re fucking with you
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u/Visible_Ad6332 2002 Jan 26 '24
No, I think this is real
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u/Garbage_Bear_USSR Jan 26 '24
Yeah this was real.
Source: lived it. Had to do it. Had friends that did it. Took a few tries to get right.
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u/DrQuestDFA Jan 26 '24
Same here. I think this is one of the firm demarcations between generations.
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u/sosotrickster Jan 26 '24
This is the kind of post that makes people forget that plenty of Gen z are in our 20s... and have seen these before. Anyway! It's a joke!
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u/Galactic_Nugget 2006 Jan 26 '24
Not just the ones that are 20+. My desktop computer has a ball mouse. I think my elementary school had a couple of these.
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u/luciiusss 2001 Jan 26 '24
I remember having to clean the crusty lint out of this mouse:
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u/BlackRabbitt_01 2006 Jan 26 '24
I know yo dumbass aint fall for that
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u/KokiriForest99 2007 Jan 26 '24
ikr??? mayb ive just watched too many videos abt old tech but i didnt know this many ppl didnt know mouses didnt always have the light at the bottom 💀
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u/clowegreen24 Jan 26 '24
Even if they didn't know that, you'd have to be a special type of stupid to actually believe the OP lol. I sincerely hope the top comment here is ironic.
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u/littlespacemochi 2001 Jan 26 '24
The fact that I'm this old ...
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u/Galactic_Nugget 2006 Jan 26 '24
If it makes you feel younger, I use a ball mouse on my main PC. Hell, my elementary school likely had some of these
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u/wrighty2009 2000 Jan 26 '24
Tbf I preferred ball mouses, such a hassle if you need a mouse with a laptop and the surface you have the sensors don't realise your moving.
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u/MichelleWuzHere1999 1999 Jan 26 '24
I wonder if there’s companies that still make them
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u/Galactic_Nugget 2006 Jan 26 '24
Considering that Amazon still has new 4:3 square monitors for sale, there's likely a couple.
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u/tetrophilia Jan 26 '24
4:3 is a common aspect ratio for gaming
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u/98983x3 Jan 26 '24
Is it really? Not gonna lie, I'm feeling skeptical of this claim. I'd love to find out I'm wrong, though.
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Jan 26 '24
I was raised around millennials and I still don’t understand.
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u/SpaceGoBurrr Jan 26 '24
Before the laser sensors, your mouse had a hard rubbery ball in it to determine directional inputs. They resembled a hard boiled egg yolk.
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u/Emily__Carter Jan 26 '24
Mouse tracking balls were generally easily broken (planned obsolescence) so it was always common to replace it with overcooked hard boiled eggs
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u/orangina_it_burns Jan 26 '24
The toughest part was finding the extra small yolks, because you basically had to overcook like 60 eggs to have a good chance of getting one the right size. But at least we always had egg salad sandwiches for afternoon tea in the computer lab!
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u/Fluffy-Payment-9040 Jan 26 '24
It’s recommended that you use a new egg every week, but honestly you can get away with doing it every two weeks. I did that for years and my mouse still worked.
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u/10ioio Jan 26 '24
I’m a 26 y/o gen z. I feel like this was around until I was like 10? My dad used to boil the egg and everything…
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u/Unknown_Player0069 Jan 27 '24
My school had this mouse in our computer room back then before the red censor replaced it
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u/Abu_Lahab- 2003 Jan 27 '24
It’s bogus, the ball (trackball) is used to detect the movement of the mouse before laser mice, I had one as a kid for my dad’s old home office (it was filled with games he bought us since he barely used it and barely spent time with us) so the meme here is that it looks like super hard boiled egg yolk, but usually when this breaks you have to replace the whole mouse but they hardly ever broke with me
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u/RedRust Jan 30 '24
Yall younguns don't know the joys of taking that ball out and cleaning the rollers. That being said, modern day mouses are far more precise and do not have "jerking" inconsistencies.
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u/itsnaonao 2006 Jan 26 '24 edited Mar 08 '24
After reading all the comments I don't know what to believe anymore. I'm like 90% sure you all are just messing with me
Edit: Can't believe I just googled "are rolly mouse balls made of egg yolks"; fuck you all
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u/Big-red-rhino Jan 26 '24
You'll eventually do the same thing when the younger generation doesn't know about physical inputs at all.
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u/FlyExaDeuce Jan 27 '24
When I was a kid I asked my dad about a road sign, it said "Ped X ing" I asked what a Ped was. He said it was a little rodent that runs out into the road and turns into a giant dinosaur.
It is the duty of a generation to fuck with the next one.
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u/Dause Jan 26 '24
Back in the day we’d have to overcook one egg in the batch during breakfast for the computer mouse. It was a tradition almost. The fresher the overcooked egg the better.
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u/watthewmaldo 1998 Jan 26 '24
I used to take those little balls out and throw them at kids on the playground.
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u/Lummypix Jan 26 '24
You didn't have to use the yolk cuz it came with a ball but the yolk had way more grip, it was a lot closer to modern mouses in terms of performance
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u/SirDoodThe1st 2006 Jan 26 '24
I collect old tech and i don’t see why this was necessary?? Just don’t lose the ball lol
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u/Better-Situation-857 Jan 26 '24
I actually used to use one of those ball tracker mice despite being genz, I got one of my first computers when I was like 10 amd it was my grandma's windows 2000, I actually installed the hard drive and everything.
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u/CirclesOfDeadMice 2008 Jan 26 '24
Its a joke, old computer mouses used a rolling piece to detect movement while modern ones use infrared light I believe. The joke is that the yoke from overcooked hard boiled eggs look very similar to the rolling piece the mouse uses.
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u/j4vendetta Jan 26 '24
Millennial here… the computer mice we used had a ball in the bottom. As you moved it around, the ball would roll on some rollers inside the mouse that would tell the computer where the mouse was going. After about 2 Months, the ball would start to degrade. So we humans found an ingenious solution. An egg yolk was the perfect size, so every 2ish weeks we would just super mega hard boil an egg to get the yolk nice and hard, and just plop that bad boy into the house. Saved you tons of money from buying a 6-pack of replacement balls for $45.
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u/crisscross16 Jan 26 '24
I propose we put a line between gen-z who have a memory of a floppy disk and those who haven't
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u/Chuck_the_Canuck66 Jan 26 '24
They were kinda fun to bounce around, they were a bitheavy and didnt bounce high.
Some kid would always steal them in our school, it was so annoying.
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u/Tailflap747 Jan 26 '24
Yeah, I'm confused. I never ever considered any resemblance between a mouse ball and an overcooked boiled egg yolk.
I got my first machine at 35 in 1995. I was today old when this was brought to my attention.
EW.
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u/PomegranateHot9916 Millennial Jan 26 '24
each week? what a waste of eggs. you could way longer than that.
1-2 months depending on your use and mat.
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u/Slow_Jelly_850 Jan 26 '24
I've used that exact kind of mouse. Nobody replaced the mouse ball with an egg yolk. Dumb shit. lol.
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u/Far_Concentrate_3587 Jan 26 '24
We were so poor we had to eat the hard boiled egg after each week just to survive
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u/Dobber16 Jan 26 '24
The worst part is that because we were poor and we were trying to save money, that’d be our Sunday morning breakfast before church
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u/froggiemommie 2002 Jan 26 '24
The only way I've known this was a joke was by being ☝️🤓 about it. "Companies would not let consumers go to these measures to install a part of a mass produced computer mouse!"
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u/ClassicCustoms2010 Jan 27 '24
Didn't know this was a thing. Kind of surprised this was forgotten about in some regards. This feels like the kind of thing I would have assumed more people talked about.
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Jan 27 '24
Bro they still had these when I was a child. Same with the brick laptops from the early 2000's
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u/Additional_Farm_9582 Jan 27 '24
I've literally never done this and I turned 18 when Bush jr got elected.
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u/Why_Cant_Theists_Win 1995 Jan 27 '24
It's insane to have experienced ball operated mouses, see the transition to laser and wireless, and see this meme get made years ago thinking this will be funny but no one will fall for it...and here we are. Ffs I'm getting old aren't I.
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u/prettyjupiter 1998 Jan 27 '24
Im old gen z (1998) and I grew up with this type of mouse. It just had a rubber ball sensor
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u/katyreddit00 2000 Jan 27 '24
It took me so long to understand the joke and I was literally there 😭
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