reverse engineering

Aamer Rahman of Fear of a Brown Planet delivers a stand-up routine on so-called reverse racism, arguing about power imbalance and why criticism of a dominant group is not equivalent to racism.

The earliest filmed version of the Turbo Encabulator technical-jargon parody, shot in the late 1970s with narrator Bud Haggert. It deadpans a stream of meaningless engineering language.

A spoof industrial promo for the Rockwell Retro Encabulator, a deadpan stream of technobabble about an imaginary machine. It is a classic engineering in-joke.

A comedy video in which a salesperson demands that a web developer fix a down website, with the two talking past each other. It won a Webby award.

A short comedy video of the Turbo Encabulator, a piece of technobabble nonsense describing an imaginary machine in deadpan engineering language.

Kitboga baits tech-support scammers into believing they will get $3,000, wasting hours of their time while he plays along and screen-shares. The scammers become frustrated as it becomes clear the money will not reach them.

A bizarre, tongue-in-cheek video in which John McAfee himself supposedly shows how to uninstall McAfee antivirus. It is known for its NSFW sex and drug references.

SANS ICS Security's parody video of the HyperEncabulator, a spoof of the Turbo Encabulator technobabble videos.

A short CSI clip in which characters try to track a killer's IP address by writing a Visual Basic GUI. It is a famous example of absurd TV hacking.

The scene from the 2001 film Swordfish in which Hugh Jackman's character is forced to hack while under pressure. The clip is widely known for its absurd depiction of hacking.

A short satirical video, originally titled Broccoli Man, in which an engineer who only wants to serve 5 terabytes gets tangled in Google's internal resource and production processes. It is the source of the phrase about forgetting how to count that low.

A one-minute clip of Scotty from Star Trek giving advice to engineers about managing expectations in estimates. It is a comedic bit of workplace wisdom.

A comedy sketch of a business meeting in which an engineer, the expert, is asked to do impossible things like draw red lines with blue ink.

A short KRAZAM comedy sketch in which engineers explain an absurdly tangled microservices architecture to a manager. It parodies how backend complexity gets justified with jargon.

A short Simpsons clip from Who Shot Mr. Burns Part 1 in which Mr. Burns declares the sun his enemy and plans to block it out.