this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by DearMoogle@lemmy.today to c/funny@sh.itjust.works
 

Happy 19th anniversary to freecupholder.exe

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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 69 points 2 months ago (1 children)

2025: The free cupholder you can download is an .STL of a cupholder you can print out in a 3D printer.

[–] OpenStars@discuss.online 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Except the OP image says .exe so that's not all that came in the package...

[–] edgemaster72@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

The STL is in a self extracting zip file that runs as an exe, no need to be suspicious

[–] icenando@lemmy.world 56 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Killatia is a lucky person. Running an .exe from an unknown source

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 40 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It was a more innocent time. I was introduced to cupholder.exe from my mom, who got it from a coworker’s chain email, as all things spread in those days. I think it might have specifically been called a coke can holder in the email because we were in the south, lol.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)

2006? No way. 1996, sure, but by 2006 this was already a bonehead move.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 months ago

Gonna be honest, I somehow missed all the dates on this post because I zeroed in on freecupholder.exe, lmao. Late 90s was when I saw it first, but it’s totally believable to me that people were doing this in 2006.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure emailing executables was nuked by 2006.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Not nuked, and that's not a screenshot of email.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

Think I still have Coke.exe, same thing, unless a virus scanner finally nuked it.

[–] stoy@lemmy.zip 27 points 2 months ago

I remember downloading and running random EXEs on my school's NT4 machines.

There was a few joke programs, the one I remember right now, would make the start button jump around on the screen.

This was also around the time we all got on MSN Messenger, but us cool kids used an alternative client, Trillian, or later, Miranda IM.

A clear favorite of the time was the demo versions of Unreal Tournament 99 and Return To Castle Wolfenstein, both was easily installed, ran decent on the computer and had LAN multiplayer, there were a few impromptu LAN parties after school...

Later in my education I attended a trade school where I took networking classes.

Someone had snuck in a copy of Age Of Empires 2 on all machines in the lab, so we spent the days setting up a network, and after school was over, we gamed on it.

Brilliant fun!

[–] simple@lemm.ee 25 points 2 months ago

Yes and there would be a 50% chance it would permanently wreck your PC

[–] MimicJar@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago

In the days of AOL Instant Messenger, or AIM as all us cool kids called it, I recall a similarish little trick.

You'd tell your friend you were going to hack their computer and then send them a photo. The trick is that the photo was actually a link to "A:\virus.jpeg" which would cause their floppy drive to start up and look for a disk to look for a file. Since floppy drives were loud it would cause their computer to "chunk-a-lunk-lunk" which would obviously then scare your friend.

You could also do it with the "D" drive, but it was less reliable since I think it had to have an actual disk in there already (which was common), but it was also usually quieter.

[–] LordWiggle@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Dude opens a random .exe file a rando with a doctor Strangelove image posted online. Either balls or ignorance.

[–] Fabian@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago

Don't they often go hand in hand?

[–] kobra@lemm.ee 9 points 2 months ago

It was such a magical moment in time

[–] vane@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Personal robot assistant powered by cloud distributed software.

[–] b_tr3e@feddit.org 7 points 2 months ago (1 children)
#! /usr/bin/bash
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin
eject -r
[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago

Kind of surprised they didn’t have a batch file command for this. I’m guessing people had to build a whole MFC application just to call the eject API.

[–] disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

I got that over IRC in the late 90s. It’s over 25 years old.

[–] annoyed_onion@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago
[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Why does Dr Strangelove have vertical glare lines down his face? It’s like someone took a picture of the DVD cover to use this as an avatar.

[–] neons@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

pretty sure that's the smoke of the cigarette

[–] jaybone@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 months ago

Oh I’m blind. My bad.