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Comment by washadjeffmad | Hacker News Reader

Back in the 90s when the web was non-commercial and fun, I added a "Don't Click Me" link that loaded a 'browser test' page (after a series of "are you really really sure?" dialogs) that exploited every historical browser bug I could find. Infinite popups, inescapable dialogs, ActiveX quirks, various hangs and crashes, the works.

If it didn't crash your computer, it eventually displayed a single popup that said "Congrats on not using Internet Explorer!". I wish I still had the hate emails.

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I remember when `alert` would lock up the entire browser UI. So if you put it on an infinite loop, that was it. You had to kill the browser process to shut it off.

I remember in the 2000s, Dattebayo fansubs had a custom 404 page (for anyone trying to download an episode before they published it I guess), that would do similar. Endless popups, a really bad full volume audio loop, and every other trick to make it impossible to close the page. Was quite the jumpscare.

there was a common "shock site" called "last measure" that did this. it loaded all sorts of offensive images, blasted a loop of a guy yelling something offensive about pornography, and then proceded to lock up your machine.

Oh man I had forgotten about last measure. I remember multiple times scrambling for the power button.

And also the more innocent “You Are An Idiot, hahaha hahaha” page that would sing those words and spam pop up windows with white and black text blinking, that would float around the screen. Every time you click close on one window, two new ones pop up.

With that one, Ctrl+Alt+Delete, Task Manager, kill iexplore.exe was usually all you needed to do thankfully. No hard power off necessary.

I was just talking about that one with someone a few days ago! Amazing hahah XD I still remember the song and was singing it while laughing profusely at how obnoxious that site was!

Were there multiple of these sites?

If not, I have fond memories of using yours!

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