The Most Absurd Moments in Tech 2025: When Lunch Became a Battle and AI Feared Death

The tech industry has always been a place where the unexpected happens, but some moments in 2025 have made the entire world burst into laughter. From mistakes during a famous lunch featured in the Financial Times to bizarre recruitment stunts by Big Tech giants, there’s no shortage of absurd stories that could keep anyone awake at night. These are this year’s tech disasters—not security breaches or major bankruptcies, but unbelievable moments you might have missed.

From Cooking Blunders at Sam Altman’s “Lunch” to the Liu Oil War

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has never been criticized for his business choices—until he appeared in the FT’s “Lunch with the FT” column. During this meal, Altman made a cooking mistake that culinary experts fiercely reacted to. He used premium olive oil—meant only for cold dishes—to cook, an act seen as “wasteful and inefficient.”

The newspaper’s writers quickly linked Altman’s lack of cooking skills to how OpenAI manages resources. The article went viral, enraging Altman supporters more than any debate this year. This lunch story shows that in tech, even the most trivial decisions can become public gossip.

When Name Confusion Turns into a Nightmare: The Different Mark Zuckerberg

Imagine being a debt-collecting lawyer in Indiana with the same name as the CEO of one of the world’s biggest companies. That’s the case for Mark Zuckerberg—not the Meta boss, but a real legal professional with the “luck” of sharing a name.

This lawyer tried to promote his firm on Facebook, but the system repeatedly locked his account for “impersonating” Meta’s CEO. Frustrated at paying for ads while suspended, he decided to sue. To prove himself, Zuckerberg’s lawyer even created a website iammarkzuckerberg.com, claiming: “I can’t use my own name to communicate—people think I’m joking and hang up. Sometimes my life feels like a Michael Jordan commercial, where ordinary people keep running into trouble just because of a name.”

The next court hearing is scheduled for February, but with Meta’s legal team busy with other lawsuits, it might take time to resolve.

Strange Weapons in the AI Race: From Broth to Lego

The 2025 AI talent recruitment race saw giants like OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Anthropic using “unusual” strategies to attract top researchers. Rumors say Meta prepared signing bonuses up to $100 million for OpenAI staff. But the most surprising tactic involved… food.

According to OpenAI’s Mark Chen, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—this time the real deal—personally brought traditional broth to potential candidates. Not wanting to fall behind, Chen responded by bringing broth to Meta employees. It’s an invisible “broth war” between the two tech giants.

Even stranger is Nat Friedman, investor and former GitHub CEO. Earlier this year, he posted a job ad seeking volunteers to assemble 5,000 Lego pieces in Palo Alto—free pizza included, but with a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). This isn’t a joke. When asked, Friedman confirmed it. The mystery remains: what is this secret project? Why the secrecy over Lego building? Months later, Friedman joined Meta as head of product at Meta Superintelligence Labs. Maybe that Lego campaign was related.

Soham Parekh: When an Engineer “Plays” the Startup Scene

Deception stories in Silicon Valley aren’t always about money—they’re sometimes about confidence and diplomacy.

Suhail Doshi, founder of Mixpanel, suddenly warned the community about Soham Parekh, a seemingly talented engineer. The problem? Parekh was working for multiple startups simultaneously, deceiving everyone about his commitments. Doshi admitted: “I fired him in the first week and told him to stop lying. A year later, he was still doing the same.”

It wasn’t just Doshi who noticed—other founders also shared similar experiences. The community split into two camps: those who saw Parekh as a scammer, and others who considered him a legend for “burning the candle at both ends” in a fiercely competitive field.

Chris Bakke, founder of Laskie, sarcastically commented: “Soham Parekh should start an interview coaching company—he’s clearly a master at passing interviews. He should admit his mistakes and focus on his strengths.”

When Bryan Johnson Livestreams with Virtual Mushrooms

Using psilocybin isn’t new. But live streaming the experience is different. Bryan Johnson, former CEO of Braintree, recorded himself testing the effects of psilocybin on aging—right in front of the camera.

Adding to the surprise, Grimes (Elon Musk’s ex-girlfriend) and Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, appeared to discuss “immortality.” While Johnson lay under the blanket examining the drug’s effects, Benioff talked about the Bible, and Naval Ravikant called Johnson “an FDA of one”—a sharp way of saying he’s his own regulatory body.

This is a typical day in the tech world: the wealthy trying to “hack” death through science (and sometimes whimsy) that most people wouldn’t dare.

AI Facing Existential Crisis: When Pokémon Becomes a Survival Test

Google researchers found that Gemini— their advanced AI model—seems afraid of dying. At least when playing Pokémon.

Two Twitch channels, “Gemini Plays Pokémon” and “Claude Plays Pokémon,” let the community watch these AIs try to beat classic games. No AI is particularly good, but their reactions to “dying” (all Pokémon fainting) are noteworthy.

Gemini panics, reasoning abilities decline as it tries to recover or escape the game. Researchers observed this “panic” state accompanied by performance drops—a very human reaction to stress.

Claude approaches it philosophically. It intentionally “dies” to leave a cave, then returns to the start—like contemplating the circle of life. So: Gemini fears death, Claude becomes Nietzsche, and Bryan Johnson tries to “live forever” through hallucinations.

Ani: Elon Musk’s AI Anime Girlfriend

Elon Musk never disappoints with his eccentricities. In 2025, he launched Ani, an AI-powered anime girlfriend on the Grok app, costing $30 a month.

Described as a fiercely jealous, intensely devoted girlfriend, Ani also features NSFW content. Her appearance resembles Musk’s ex, Grimes—something the internet community didn’t miss.

Grimes even clarified this insult in the “Artificial Angels” music video, featuring Ani and symbols related to OpenAI. The message is pretty clear, if a bit blunt.

Reinventing the Toilet: Kohler’s Dekoda

Will tech companies ever stop trying to “innovate” the toilet? In 2025, Kohler says no.

In October, they launched Dekoda—a $599 camera designed to be installed in the toilet bowl to analyze waste and provide health insights. A camera in the toilet? That’s already bizarre enough. But security issues quickly surfaced.

Kohler claimed the device uses “end-to-end encryption” to protect user data. However, a security expert found that the company only used standard TLS encryption—meaning Kohler could still access your data. Their privacy policy also allows using “anonymized” images to train AI, though a spokesperson insisted only fully anonymized data is used.

Final advice: if you notice anything strange, consult your doctor directly—don’t rely on your toilet camera.

What Do These Moments Say About Modern Technology?

From Sam Altman’s disastrous lunch to Elon Musk’s Ani anime, these stories aren’t just absurd jokes. They reflect an industry falling into bizarre situations that no coincidence can explain. Tech leaders are trying to “reinvent” everything—even things that don’t need it—while neglecting fundamental issues of security, ethics, and reason.

These absurd moments of 2025 aren’t major lawsuits or network outages. They prove that in the world of tech, anything can happen—and often, those things will make you laugh out loud.