This is something that makes me chuckle every time I think about it.

Back in the mid-90s, I’d use a friend’s account to go into AOL chat rooms and establish a little rapport, then say “Press ALT and F4 at the same time, and something cool will happen.”

Of course this is the command to close a window in Windows, so half the people in the chatroom would then disappear.

A few minutes later (everything about the internet took way longer in the mid-90s) they’d come back and indignantly say something like, “You said something cool would happen if I pressed ALT and F4 but it kicked me out of AOL!”

And then I’d respond, “Something cool did happen. All the idiots left the chat room as if by magic!”

Griefing AOLers shouldn’t really have been as fun as it was, though looking back it seems a little like taunting a 6-month-old for not being able to walk.