Ask Lemmy

Couple of fairly unethical Craigslist hacks, first if you see an item you want and it’s in a city that’s farther away I will tell the seller I live in a city where my actual city would be a little closer to them. Essentially telling someone I’m driving a few hours to meet them but of course I’m not leaving my home city, while they travel a few hours . Second, if you send someone a really low ball offer from one account and then from a different account send a more reasonable low offer and chances are higher they accept or at least counter. Third, if you post an identical item to what you’re looking for at a lower price you can sometimes drive down the price of the actual listing you’re after.

You can go to a big box home center and rent a battery powered angle grinder. You can then go back to that same store in the middle of the night, use said angle grinder to cut your way in through an emergency exit, and pilfer thousands of dollars worth of cash and merchandise. They'll literally lend you the tools to rob them!

If they ever ban renewables, keep them anyway and tell no one. Hide your bike set up, connect it to a power device directly.

If doing local work like mowing the lawn, or any such job where you recieve money in cash, don't fill in your taxes. Those taxes will just go to fund the next ballroom.

Never commit a misdemeanor while committing a felony.

Tell the truth all the time, be the most honest person everyone knows. That way when you really fuck something up they'll believe you when you say it wasn't you

Need a phone charger? Walk into any hotel, say you stayed here a while ago, and accidentally left your phone charger in your room. You’re finally back in town, and decided to swing by to see if they have a lost-and-found box. 99% of the time, they’ll just pull out a cardboard box full of chargers and let you pick one. No questions asked, no follow-up, no verification. They get left behind in hotel rooms all the time, so the hotel’s lost-and-found is almost always full of them.

I used to freelance, and used this all the time when I was between gigs and just needed to chill for a few hours. If I had taken the train downtown and didn’t have my car charger, I’d just find whatever hotel was closest after my gig, and stop there. They’d let me grab a charger, and I’d pop over to a cafe to sit and watch TV/YouTube on my phone for a while. And then when it was time to leave for my next gig, I’d just leave the charger at the cafe for someone else to find later. I didn’t worry about keeping track of them, because I never intended to hold onto them in the first place. My car charging cable is from a hotel. My bedside charging cable is from a hotel. My desk charging cable is from a hotel. I haven’t actually purchased a USB-C cable in literal years.

Pirate everything, block ads, guillotine billionaires

Not a lifehack, just a reminder that legality is not an indicator of whether something is ethical

Fake stupidity or ignorance, just a little. Otherwise, you risk getting people on their defensive sides (e.g., doctors, lawyers, architects).

If you really want to piss people off, treat every individual with compassion and dignity. Even (especially) if they don't treat themselves like that.

Also, corporations are not people, my friend. So use the above to help guide your social engineering tactics.

Not unethical or illegal, but avoiding a barrier, if you have a problem that a company won't solve using regular customer service means, spend time to find their email formula (FnameLname or FLname or FnameL @company.com) do some online searching, and then email your unhelpful CSO person and start to CC senior people in the company "to bring this error to their attention."

If the unhelpful CSO person hasn't messed up, then it's no heat on them and their supervisor will just say "ugh, just get rid of this guy," and solve your problem. I've used this method a dozen or so times, works well.

I wouldn't recommend it, because its an asshole move, but go into basically any mcdonalds and complain that you placed an order and it was missing (whatever you want). You may have to act the cunt here. They will just give you whatever you want for free. Sometimes you may need to escalate to a manager. They do not get paid enough to deal with it, and dont want your negativity affecting the other customers.

I bought a pair of boots from a lokal store, then I moved and the zipper broke. I bought the same pair from Amazon and send the broken pair back.

For the US: The Supreme Court has ruled that flashing your lights to alert other drivers of an upcoming speed trap is protected by your First Amendment rights.

Flipping off a cop is also protected, but that's less helpful to others.

Torrent everything. If it's legal for a company to cancel my subscription then torrenting isn't unethical.

Use the free tier if you are low-income. Privacy and security shouldn't be for those with money.

I'm not sure about unethical, but blocking ads is a big one for me. The WWW is unusable without blocking ads.

If you get junk mail with a return envelope, it's automatically paid by whoever sent it, so you can mail back whatever you want, like vulgar imagery or blank forms

When I wanted to start using contact lenses, they gave me a pair of those that last one month for free to try them out, I didn't find them entirely comfortable so they gave another pair of another brand, and a third one. Then I started again on another place, and another, I think I went a full year without paying for contact lenses.

Keep a reflective umbrella in the passenger seat. When an asshole with death beams tailgates you, have the passenger open it across the back seats

None, I strongly advocate for ethics in all things.

Now if we want to talk about illegal lifehacks, that's a different ballgame.