It all started when I thought I saw a bug crawling across my computer monitor.
Huh, I thought, it’s a bug crawling across my computer monitor. I reached out to flick it off, and found that I could not. I stared at it, unsure of what I was seeing. The bug was there, but I could not touch it. Was I hacked? Was this some sort of malware?
Eventually I concluded that no, it was a real bug, crawling around behind the screen of my monitor. I don’t know how it got there, nor what it hoped to accomplish.
I notified my coworkers, who reacted appropriately.
The bug soon wandered off the screen, and I got back to work.
A few minutes later, it was back. I decided that I needed to document what I was seeing, if only to prove to myself that I wasn’t losing my mind. I took out my phone and recorded the following video:
This is how it went for the next hour or so. The bug would come; the bug would go. I wouldn’t see it for ten minutes at a time, then it’d come crawling back, wandering across my Kotaku Slack window as if to say, remember me? I’m still here. Inside your computer screen.
I will spend the rest of my life struggling to explain what happened next. As the bug was on what had to be its fiftieth trip across my screen, I placed my finger on it and pressed down.
I did not pause to consider the ramifications of this action. I did not google “bug in my monitor screen” first. I didn’t even wait for the bug to reach the edge of the screen. I pressed down while it was squarely in the most usable space. It died, leaving a small black carcass stuck to the underside of the screen.
I immediately realised that I now had a dead insect permanently affixed to the underside of my screen, where it would remain for as long as I owned this monitor. I panicked and attempted to tap the bug loose, thinking maybe it would fall to a lower, less critical part of the screen.
Instead, it exploded.
There is now a one-centimeter smear of bug guts occupying the center-left quadrant of my computer monitor, a part of the screen my eyes visit approximately six hundred times per day. I will never be able to un-see it, ignore it, or pretend it isn’t there. I will never be able to forget that its existence is entirely my fault. It will haunt me forever.
Time and again, I think back to the moment I reached out my finger and pressed down. Why? Why did I do it? What did I think would happen? There was one possible outcome to such an action. One.
I bring you this tragic story in the hopes that, should you ever see a small bug crawling underneath your computer screen, you will leave it alone. Don’t be like me. Remember my folly, and my loss will not have been entirely in vain.
Comments
18 responses to “I Squished A Bug Inside My Monitor’s Screen And Now I Want To Die”
Usually it’s software that needs debugging
Baddie, tish! Thank you, thank you, I’m here all week…
You were better off using a magnet to influence its brain behaviour.
You want to die? First world and all that 🙂
Open that shit up and use some paper towel to mop the poor bastard up!!!!
I’d get in there and clean it up, lest the goo does any permanent damage.
bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
I think this is the only appropriate response
There is a protective layer of plastic in the monitor that sits over the LCD panel, take it to any electronics service center, they will pull the screen apart and clean the gunk. Wouldn’t take someone with any sort of clue more than 20 minutes. Probably be billed for an hour of time.
Reminds me of when I got my Thunderbolt display (suited my needs then so don’t start!). I had to take it back to the shop because there was already grime on the LCD side of the glass.
I though it was a cluster of dead pixels but nope, someone at FoxCon didn’t clean the thing before attaching.
Aww man that sucks, but it feels like a fitting revenge.
Now it’ll bug you forever
Remember when this sort of stuff happened in Eternal Darkness?
Bugs started appearing on your screen and you felt like you were hallucinating. Damn…how good and ambitious was that game. Would love a Switch sequel. Eternal Darkness 2: Still pretty dark.
I’ll admit, the game did trick me. After completing a puzzle or whatever, I saw a trailer for the sequel and I though, “I’ve finished it already?!”
But not, it was the game messing with me.
The other time was Batman: Arckham Asylum where they simulated a glitch and eventually the screen said “Use the centre stick to avoid the shot from The Joker.”
It wasn’t until I looked down to find the stick that I realised I’d been had!
Time to DIY pull apart the screen, this is a bug between the glass and the LCD so totally fixable, provided your not a complete idiot.
I only came here to read the bug puns. Not disappointed.
No need to completely bug out.
I had the same thing happen to a 42″ LG TV, only it was a bigger moth. I contacted LG, who advised that they could sort it out for me, for NZD$250!! I argued that if the design of the TV was robust enough, the moth should not have been able to get in there – it being a perfectly reasonable expectation that a moth would gravitate towards a bright light source like an LCD panel, so they should have made the TV more “moth-proof”. They agreed and fixed it for free!
Gutted mate
I would like to see Tim Rogers’s 48 minute response to this predicament.