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The ‘Purposefully Bad Volume Sliders’ Meme Is the Stuff of Nightmares

Evil begins in the most innocuous of ways.

The infinite-monkey theorem states that if a monkey randomly taps away at a keyboard for an infinite amount of time, it’ll almost surely end up typing out a great work of literature, like William Shakespeare’s Hamlet or something. And along those lines, if you give a group of users at a seemingly niche subreddit like r/ProgrammerHumor enough time, they will eventually produce something that’s actually universally hilarious.

While it may not be Hamlet, you’ve got to give it up to the redditors over at r/ProgrammerHumor, as the latest meme to rise up out of the sub’s depths is actually pretty damn funny — no Python or JavaScript experience necessary. The joke in question first started with a post from user PM_ME_YOUR_WATERMELO, who attached the seemingly innocuous question “Who can make the best volume slider?” to this horrifying excuse for a control:

What followed was a descent into levels of UI hell so deep that even Dante himself (R.I.P., bro) probably would have been impressed. Redditors immediately flooded the sub with their own posts, each of which transformed the standard volume slider into an increasingly nightmarish instrument of frustration.

“Launch a 90dB volume slider over 300 metres”

“Another volume not slider”

“Advanced Newtonian physics-based volume slider for mobile devices”

Other notable mentions within this sea of sadism include a volume slider that sends you a notification for each and every numerical change you make between level 1 and 100.

… And a volume slider that gives the user an extremely precise measurement of its exact volume level, but only accepts whole-number entries.

Very strict and precise volume slider.”

And then there’s this one, which requires you to enter your volume as a … well, “volume.”

‘Purposefully Bad Volume Sliders’ Is the Best Worst Meme