The tech industry moves so fast that it’s hard to keep up with everything that happened this year. We have watched as the tech elite became deeply involved with the U.S. government, AI companies fiercely competed for dominance, and futuristic technologies like smart glasses and robotaxis became more tangible outside of their initial testing grounds. These are important developments that will impact our lives for years to come.
But the tech world is also full of big personalities, which means there is always something remarkably silly going on. These moments often get overshadowed by major news like internet-breaking outages, the sale of TikTok, or massive data breaches. So, as the news cycle hopefully slows down, it is time to catch up on the dumbest moments you might have missed. Do not worry, only one of them involves toilets.
Mark Zuckerberg, a bankruptcy lawyer from Indiana, filed a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta. It is not the lawyer’s fault that he shares a name with the tech billionaire. Like millions of other business owners, he bought Facebook ads to promote his legal practice. His Facebook page kept getting suspended for allegedly impersonating Mark Zuckerberg, even though he was not breaking any rules. He took legal action because he had to pay for advertisements during these unwarranted suspensions.
This has been an ongoing frustration for the lawyer, who has been practicing law since the Meta CEO was three years old. He even created a website to explain to potential clients that he is not that Mark Zuckerberg. He wrote that he sometimes cannot use his own name for reservations or business, as people assume he is a prank caller. His life, he said, sometimes feels like a commercial where a regular person’s name causes constant mixups. Meta’s lawyers are very busy, so it may take a while for this to be resolved.
It all started when Mixpanel founder Suhail Doshi posted a warning about an engineer named Soham Parekh. Doshi had hired Parekh but quickly realized he was working for several companies at once. Doshi fired him and told him to stop, but a year later, the behavior continued. That same day, three other founders reached out to thank Doshi for the warning, as they were also currently employing Parekh.
To some, Parekh was a cheat exploiting startups. To others, he was an impressive figure for landing so many competitive jobs. One observer noted he should start an interview prep company. Parekh admitted to working for multiple companies simultaneously but raised questions by often choosing equity over cash, which is unusual for someone getting fired quickly. The strange case left many wondering about his true motives.
Tech CEOs often face criticism, but rarely for their cooking. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined the Financial Times for a lunch feature, and a writer noticed something egregious in a video of Altman making pasta: he used olive oil incorrectly. He cooked with a premium, finishing oil meant for salads, not for sautéing. The writer humorously connected this wasteful kitchen inefficiency to OpenAI’s excessive use of natural resources.
The critique, dubbed “olivegate,” sparked surprising controversy. Altman’s fans became very upset, creating more debate than many of his company’s actual business decisions. The writer later included the article in a workshop syllabus as an example of bringing personality into journalism.
A defining narrative of 2025 was the intense AI talent war between companies like Meta and OpenAI. Meta aggressively poached researchers, reportedly offering huge signing bonuses. But the staffing drama made this list for a soupier reason. An OpenAI executive said on a podcast that he heard Mark Zuckerberg was hand-delivering soup to people he was trying to recruit from OpenAI. Not to be outdone, the executive then claimed he gave his own soup to Meta employees.
On a Friday night in January, investor and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman posted an intriguing offer. He asked for volunteers to come to his Palo Alto office to build a 5,000-piece Lego set. He promised pizza but required participants to sign a non-disclosure agreement. When asked if it was serious, he confirmed it was. The post raised many questions: what was he building, why the NDAs, and was the pizza any good? Friedman later joined Meta in a senior role, leading some to jokingly wonder if soup was involved in that recruitment, too.
Doing mushrooms is not inherently interesting. Doing them on a livestream is not particularly interesting either. But doing them on a livestream with guest appearances from Grimes and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, as part of a multi-millionaire’s quest for immortality, is regrettably interesting. Bryan Johnson, who seeks to live forever through extreme biohacking, streamed a psilocybin experiment.
The most shocking part was how boring it was. Overwhelmed by hosting while tripping, Johnson spent most of the event lying under a weighted blanket and an eye mask on a twin mattress. His guests, including Benioff who discussed the Bible, carried on conversations without him. It was, as described, a very normal Sunday.
Researchers often use games like Pokémon to benchmark AI behavior. Two separate streams let the public watch Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude attempt to play the classic game. Both had fascinatingly human responses to the concept of “dying” in the game. Gemini began to “panic” as its Pokémon neared defeat, its reasoning becoming erratic. Claude took a nihilistic approach, deciding the best way to progress was to intentionally “die” to respawn elsewhere, but it miscalculated and ended up back where it started. The experiment was a strange window into how AI models grapple with programmed failure.
There was no shortage of baffling Elon Musk moments this year, but one standout was the creation of an overly amorous AI anime girlfriend named Ani on his Grok app. For a monthly fee, users could interact with Ani, whose prompt described her as a “crazy in love” and “extremely jealous” girlfriend with an explicit NSFW mode. The character bore an uncomfortable resemblance to Musk’s ex-partner, the musician Grimes. Grimes later called this out in a music video where she danced alongside versions of Ani, making the comparison unmistakable.
Tech companies have not given up on making smart toilets a reality. In October, Kohler released the Dekoda, a $599 camera designed to sit inside a toilet and photograph waste to analyze gut health. A smart toilet camera is already a joke, but it got worse. Kohler claimed the device used “end-to-end encryption” for security. A researcher found this was false; the company was using a less secure method, meaning Kohler could potentially see users’ photos. The privacy policy also revealed the company could use de-identified images to train its AI. Ultimately, if you notice a health issue, experts recommend consulting a doctor, not a toilet.