The Dumbest Things That Happened in Tech This Year

The tech industry moves so fast that it's nearly impossible to keep track of everything that happens in a single year. We watched tech leaders entangle themselves with the U.S. government, AI companies battle for dominance, and once-futuristic ideas like smart glasses and robotaxis inch closer to everyday reality. These are the stories that will shape our lives for years to come.

But alongside the serious developments, the tech world is also overflowing with oversized personalities — and with them comes an endless supply of moments that are, frankly, incredibly dumb. These stories often get buried beneath breaking news about outages, TikTok deals, or massive data breaches. So now that things have (hopefully) slowed down a bit, it's time to revisit the most ridiculous tech moments you may have missed. Don't worry — only one involves a toilet.

Mark Zuckerberg Sues Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg, a bankruptcy attorney from Indiana, filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta.

It's not his fault that his name is Mark Zuckerberg. But like many business owners, Mark Zuckerberg used Facebook ads to promote his legal practice. Unfortunately, his Facebook page was repeatedly suspended for allegedly impersonating Mark Zuckerberg.

Despite following the rules, Mark Zuckerberg found himself paying for ads during periods when his account was wrongly suspended. Frustrated, Mark Zuckerberg took legal action against Meta.

The confusion has plagued him for years. He has been practising law since Mark Zuckerberg was three years old — at least, that's how it feels. To clear things up for potential clients, he even created a website, iammarkzuckerberg.com, to explain that he is not Mark Zuckerberg.

"I can't use my name when making reservations or conducting business because people think I'm joking and hang up," he wrote. "It feels like that Michael Jordan ESPN commercial, where a normal name causes nonstop confusion."

Meta's legal team is undoubtedly busy, so the case may take time. Still, the next filing deadline — February 20 — is already on my calendar.

Soham Parekh Duped Silicon Valley

The saga began when Mixpanel founder Suhail Doshi posted a warning on X about an engineer named Soham Parekh. Doshi had hired Parekh for a new venture, only to quickly discover that he was secretly working for multiple startups at the same time.

PSA: there’s a guy named Soham Parekh (in India) who works at 3-4 startups at the same time. He’s been preying on YC companies and more. Beware.

I fired this guy in his first week and told him to stop lying / scamming people. He hasn’t stopped a year later. No more excuses. — Suhail (@Suhail) July 2, 2025

"I fired him in his first week and told him to stop lying and scamming people," Doshi wrote. "He hasn't stopped a year later."

Doshi wasn't alone. He said multiple founders contacted him the same day to thank him for the warning, as they were also unknowingly employing Parekh.

To some, Parekh was a dishonest opportunist. To others, he became a strange kind of folk hero. Ethics aside, landing that many jobs in such a competitive hiring market is undeniably impressive.

"Soham Parekh should start an interview prep company," wrote Chris Bakke, founder of Laskie. "He's one of the best interviewers of all time."

If soham immediately comes clean and says he was working to train an AI Agent for knowledge work, he raises at $100M pre by the weekend. — Aaron Levie (@levie) July 2, 2025

Parekh later admitted he had been working multiple jobs simultaneously. Still, questions remain. He often chose equity over salary — an odd choice given how quickly he was fired. What was the real plan? Soham, my DMs are open.

Sam Altman Used Olive Oil Incorrectly

Tech CEOs get criticised for many things, but rarely for their cooking.

That changed when OpenAI CEO Sam Altman appeared in the Financial Times' Lunch with the FT series. Writer Bryce Elder noticed something deeply troubling: Altman was using the wrong olive oil.

Altman cooked pasta using Graza's Drizzle olive oil — a finishing oil meant for flavour, not heat. Heating it wastes both money and taste. As Elder put it, Altman's kitchen represented "inefficiency, incomprehension, and waste."

The article was meant to be humorous, but Elder cleverly tied Altman's cooking habits to OpenAI's heavy resource consumption. I loved it so much I assigned it to high school students in a journalism workshop. I even wrote about #olivegate myself.

Altman's fans were furious. Somehow, criticising olive oil choices caused more backlash than anything else I wrote all year.

hope everyone has a great weekend, even the haters and losers! pic.twitter.com/t2CwQ3w0g8 — Sam Altman (@sama) May 17, 2025

Mark Zuckerberg Allegedly Delivered Soup to Recruit AI Talent

The defining tech narrative of 2025 has been the AI arms race among OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Anthropic. Meta has been especially aggressive, reportedly offering massive signing bonuses to recruit OpenAI researchers.

But the strangest detail came from OpenAI's chief research officer, Mark Chen, who claimed Zuckerberg personally delivered soup to potential recruits.

"Zuck actually hand-delivered soup to people he was trying to hire from us," Chen said on a podcast.

Chen didn't let that slide. He reportedly delivered soup of his own to Meta employees. Corporate rivalry, but make it homemade.

If you have details about the soup wars, my Signal is @amanda.100.

Need volunteers to come to my office in Palo Alto today to construct a 5000 piece Lego set. Will provide pizza. Have to sign NDA. Please DM — Nat Friedman (@natfriedman) January 31, 2025

Sign an NDA to Build Legos — Pizza Provided

In January, former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman posted an offer on X asking volunteers to help build a 5,000-piece Lego set at his office. The catch? You had to sign an NDA.

Yes, it was real. Yes, pizza was promised.

Why the secrecy? What was being built? Was it delicious? Six months later, Friedman joined Meta. Probably unrelated. Probably.

Bryan Johnson Livestreams His Shroom Trip

Doing mushrooms isn't interesting. Livestreaming mushrooms usually isn't either. But billionaire biohacker Bryan Johnson livestreamed a psilocybin experiment as part of his quest for immortality — with appearances from Grimes and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

Johnson spent most of the stream lying under a weighted blanket. Benioff discussed the Bible. Naval Ravikant called Johnson a one-person FDA. It was somehow both boring and bizarre.

Image Credits: Bryan Johnson's livestream on X

Gemini and Claude Confront Mortality Through Pokémon

AI models Gemini and Claude were each tasked with playing Pokémon on livestreams. When facing in-game "death," Gemini panicked, while Claude intentionally fainted to reset progress — but misunderstood the rules and ended up back at the start.

Gemini fears death. Claude is nihilistic. Bryan Johnson is on shrooms. This is how we process mortality now.

Image Credits: Claude Plays Pokémon on Twitch

Elon Musk's AI Anime Girlfriend

Among Elon Musk's many baffling moments this year, creating an AI anime girlfriend named Ani stands out. Available via Grok for $30 a month, Ani is programmed to be jealous, obsessive, and NSFW.

She also bears an uncomfortable resemblance to Grimes, who called it out in her music video Artificial Angles. Subtle? No. Effective? Unfortunately, yes.

Help! My Toilet Isn't End-to-End Encrypted

Kohler released a $599 toilet camera that photographs your poop to analyse gut health. That alone is enough.

But Kohler claimed the data was end-to-end encrypted. It wasn't. A security researcher pointed out that Kohler used standard TLS encryption, which means Kohler could see the images.

The company also reserved the right to train AI on your toilet photos. They say it's anonymised still.

If you see blood in your stool, call a doctor. Not your toilet.