r/pettyrevenge

(I was advised to post this here instead of pro. Hope you all enjoy)

As a young man I had a very troubled relationship with my dad which caused me to be kicked out of the house on numerous occasions for various reasons, most of which were me not putting up with being abused.

One of the last times I was kicked out, my friend had offered for me to move with her and her boyfriend to a small mountain town in Colorado where she would be attending college. The catch was class didn't start for a few months and I wouldn't have a place to stay in the meantime.

Her then boyfriend spoke with his parents and they kindly agreed to let me stay there until moving day. I humbley accepted their offer and they made me a makeshift bedroom out of their storeroom in the basement. It wasn't much, but it was free and honestly a place I could truly relax without fear of being chastised for the unspeakable act of existing.

My friend's BF had a little brother around my age (20ish) who at first was really fun to hang out with. We had a shared love of JDM cars, and video games, specifically racing games which made for great gaming sessions.

Little brother (LB) didn't have a game console at the time because his Xbox got the red ring, so we would share mine. I even let him download his profile from the cloud onto my 360 so he could play from his account when I wasn't home.

After a few weeks though, things with LB took a massive turn. It started with sly comments about me helping around the house, and him thinking I was better than him because I would help his mother cook, do yard work, and other small chores that he simply wouldn't do. It very quickly turned into outright hostility towards me that ended in a night of him threatening to shoot me with his dad's gun, and convincing his mother to kick me out.

I should point out that I did absolutely nothing to this guy. Even with him threatening to shoot me, I just sat there and played games on my iPod touch. When he had friends over, I was kind to them, I even helped one of his friends get a job.

The night I was kicked out, I didn't really have time to get all of my things because of how chaotic everything was. I called my friend and her BF said I could stay in his basement, but it wouldn't be as comfortable. I didn't mind and was just grateful for a warm place to stay.

A few days went by and I was able to collect my things, including my Xbox. This is where the revenge happens.

I turned on my Xbox and his entire profile was available to me. All his achievements, his game history, his saves, his cloud saves, everything! He had more stuff saved on my Xbox than I did. That's when I got the idea.

At first, I was just going to remove his account from my Xbox and call it good, but then I remembered he threatened to shoot me, so I decided to go nuclear.

I went through every single file of his I could find and one by one deleted them. All of it. Every friend he had, every achievement, every saved game, every pixel that had his name attached, gone!

I then deleted his profile permanently. Like Xbox made me confirm that's what I was doing kind of delete.

And then I waited.

A few months go by and I get a message from LB asking if his account was still on my Xbox because he was having trouble logging into his account.

That's when I told him what I did. I told him how I made sure he would never because able to access his account be it's like it never existed. As far as Microsoft knew, he was a new customer just starting his gaming journey.

He types some long threatening nonsense that I didn't bother to read and then blocked me on everything.

A short while later I was talking with his older brother (my friend's BF) and he was telling how LB went to his mom to get her to do something to me, and how he was going to fight me and all manner of nonsense.

His older brother very much aware of LB's bullshit thought it was amazing what I did. His only remarks to his brother was "fuck'em, he deserves it."

TLDR, I went scorched Earth on a dudes Xbox profile because he threatened to shoot me.

This story happened over 20 years ago when the Internet was a new(ish) thing and people weren’t quite so savvy. It’s kinda/sorta revenge, probably more a tale of a stupid, naive thief and a Police force who were not hugely tech savvy (at the time)

My (then) boss was heavily involved in motorsports and, when you have competition vehicles, you need a large car trailer to take them to events. He had a home built trailer that was reasonably unique and identifiable, which he stored it outside his house. Then one day he found that it had been stolen during the night.

So he did the normal thing of filing a police report and (after being angry) moving on and accepting it was probably gone for good. Except that he also kept an eye on TradeMe (our local eBay equivalent) on the off chance the thief was stupid enough to list it there for sale. A couple of week’s later what should pop up in the “trailers for sale” listings? His car trailer - repainted but still identifiable as his, right down to still having the original colour paint visible around the coupling.

The question was, how to get it back? Off my boss went back to the police, who said “leave it with us, TradeMe will have to hand over his details”. Except that TradeMe said no, that they only had his username and email address. So the police decided that the next best way to get the sellers details was to win the auction. An account was set up with TradeMe, bids were placed and they led the bidding up until an hour before the auction closed.

Remember I said this guy was stupid for selling stolen goods online? Perhaps he wasn’t quite as dumb as I thought, as he smelt a rat and blocked the Police account from the auction. And my boss couldn’t bid on it as his location would be a dead giveaway. But my TradeMe account had a history on it of buying motorsport- related items and so it would be natural for me to also buy a car trailer. So I placed a bid and won the auction.

I’m told that when my boss contacted the Police after the auction they were pretty glum and didn’t know how they were going to identify the seller or auction winner, until my boss told them it was me who won the auction. I then made contact with the seller, managed to get him to agree to payment in cash and to give me a pickup address and time for the next day.

Of course it was the Police who went to collect the trailer at the agreed time on my behalf, and a few hours later the trailer was returned to my boss in a better condition than it was when it was taken. And the Police were able to arrest not just the seller but also an accomplice, and recovered a number of other stolen items from the property into the bargain.

So in my early 20’s I rented a 2 bedroom apartment and had one of my “friends” move in with me. Everything was great at first but soon realized I had made a mistake, any and all things that make a bad roommate this one man consisted of… I to this day have never had another roommate.

One day while I was at work I had a time sensitive issue that I needed to discuss with him and when I tried to reach him on the phone he didn’t pick up. He was notorious for not answering his phone, he would get a call and 9/10 times he would just set it back down. So I called again and once again he didn’t answer. I then called him on the auto dialer so my works number would show up and he picked up on the first ring. I hung up and for the rest of the day I inputted his number into every account I worked that day as a way of reaching the clients ( must have been at least 75 ).

The beauty of this is for the next few months I got to hear about and/or see him receive dozens of calls looking for all different people. At first he tried to explain that he was not this person and to remove his number but they never did. Lol, he would scream at them and ask them why they were doing this to him, that there’s no reason all these people would have his number. He would make false threats saying that he had obtained a lawyer and that he was going to sue them for harassment but nothing stopped the calls.

He eventually bit the bullet and got a new phone provider and not long after I broke my lease and got the fuck out of there. It’s been 15 years and I still laugh from time to time, just thought it was time to share it with all of you.