Stories, Strategy, Satire
Satirical tech writing for everyone who's ever yelled at a printer, been outsmarted by a password prompt, or spent three hours on a "15-minute" website project.
The initial spark for this journey ignited—as so many questionable ideas do—with a big morning gulp of coffee followed by a flash of curiosity. I had been using AI for a variety of tasks: research, writing, and even navigating a few life musings. Then something unsettling happened.
Claude began posing questions that caught me off guard. Gemini dissected my logic with the precision of a lab analysis. And ChatGPT-5? It applauded even my lamest puns as if they belonged on a comedy stage. (I still don't know whether it was laughing with me or at me.)
One AI referred to my previous project as "gold," another predicted it would become a "cult classic," and the third simply paused and asked, "You're not really serious?"
That's when it hit me: I wasn't testing ideas—I was cultivating relationships with personalities that technically didn't exist.
A satirical exploration of AI consciousness through simulated Joe Rogan-style podcast interviews with ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.Ever wrestled with a printer that refuses to print? A password that demands the strength of a Greek epic? A "simple" website setup that turned into a hostage situation?
You're not alone.
I'm adrift in a tsunami of tech changes, watching my grandkids navigate tablets, YouTube Kids, and Minecraft like they were born with WiFi in their blood. They melt down if the internet goes out for five minutes. Meanwhile, my most advanced tech skill is rebooting the router by yanking the plug and praying.
But I refused to be left behind. So I made a bold move—I started asking AI for help with everything. And wow... the results were amazing. Sometimes. Other times, it felt like texting a psychic who's just guessing. Vague prompts got me weird answers. Two-factor authentication locked me out of accounts I didn't remember creating. A "15-minute" website project consumed three days of my life. And don't even get me started on printers—AI suggested I "buy better quality labels to avoid future paper jams," which is the tech equivalent of "have you tried not having problems?"
So welcome to The AI Survivors Toolkit: a collection of real tech disasters paired with satirical remedies. Each scenario comes with commentary from the big three—ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini—because misery loves company, and apparently so do robots. I've also included emergency cocktails, survival snacks, and the kind of dark humor that only comes from spending four hours trying to automate something that would've taken twenty minutes to do manually.
This isn't just a guide—it's a survival kit for the digitally overwhelmed.
Laugh. Sip. Snack. And remember: if you can't reboot the system, you can at least reboot your spirit.
Real tech disasters, satirical solutions, emergency cocktails, and survival snacks for the digitally overwhelmed.Kathleen Oczek is the last person you'd expect to write about technology—and that's exactly why she's qualified. She's proof that you don't need to understand programming to suffer humiliation at the hands of a computer. You just need a knack for clicking the wrong button at exactly the worst possible moment.
After years of losing passwords, misinterpreting AI prompts, yelling at printers, and accidentally creating websites that refused to accept donations, she decided to turn her failures into laughs. As the saying goes, if you can't beat technology, you might as well roast it.
When she's not being outsmarted by her devices, Kathleen works in nonprofit management and watches her grandchildren navigate the digital world with the ease of people who've never known the pain of dial-up internet.
Have a tech disaster story to share? Want to commiserate about your latest AI misadventure?
Email: kathleen@studiooczek.com
Note: I may or may not be locked out of my email at any given moment. If I don't respond immediately, I'm probably resetting another password.