Strawberry Recall Best Plant-Based Bacon Unplug Energy Vampires Apple Watch 9 Rumors ChatGPT Passes Bar Exam Your Tax Refund Cheap Plane Tickets Sleep and Heart Health
Want CNET to notify you of price drops and the latest stories?
No, thank you
Accept

Grandad tries to fix frozen computer with hairdryer

Technically Incorrect: Real or fake, the video of an older gentleman trying to blow dry his computer into action has enthralled millions.

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


hairdryer.jpg
I'm not sure a hairdryer is the best method of curing a frozen computer. Acerting Art/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Science likes to be literal.

It claims things to be fact. It gives names to things that everyone will understand. Like telephone, television and iPad.

So if someone who isn't too au fait with science hears that his computer is frozen, it's surely natural that he will try to gently, scientifically unfreeze it.

In a video that has already enjoyed more than 5 million views since last Sunday -- it was first posted to Snapchat -- a grandfather is seated at his computer.

He is waving a warming hairdryer all over its screen. Why on earth would grandad be doing this? A caption helpfully adds: "I told him it was frozen."

The Telegraph tells me that the video was shot by Jeremy Hernandez, 23, from California.

It may well be that it is entirely staged. However, its perfunctory nature suggests that grandad may not have been in on the gag.

These days techies, in their keenness to dominate their environment and everyone who lives in it, like to invent new words for things.

Try asking grandad about doxing, pwning or even phablets. He may not have a clue and, when you explain it, he'll likely not care.

Computers are there simply to work for many people. It seems perfectly reasonable that if something's frozen you should warm it up, right?