(Originally from [here|http://www.isomedia.com/homes/blutz/previous/sledge44.htm]). 

  

 In a more idyllic time and place, computers were the exclusive domain of people who actually knew how to use them. Anyone else who dared to challenge the beastly machines was quickly rebuked by the missive of "Syntax error." This was usually enough to convince them that they needed to go find something more productive to do, and they usually did. There were the few, however, that typed in something else, which usually crashed the entire system, with plenty of users on it. Even in these extreme cases, a mob of angry geeks would run this [Luser] out on a rail, and peace would once again be restored to the land. 

  

  

 Pretty soon, the geeks whipped out some of these things (some of them decided to name theirs after fruits, which prompted the others to consider them fruitcakes. the others, deciding to use acronyms for the names of these things, like they do for everything else. This ended up turning into a ReligiousWar which still exists today.) and started selling them. People were gullible enough to buy the things, thus falling into the apparent trap of the geeks. There were plenty of new errors on these things to keep the lusers happy, and could find literally millions of new and creative ways to crash the suckers. When they did, all one had to do was flip a switch and everything would be back and ready for the users to crash again. All this, and the users would be willing to pay thousands of bucks for these things... Not only would they get the lusers off their precious machines.... Things were going perfectly. 

  

 Then something unexpected happened. The lusers were actually trying to find productive uses for these things. Of course, they fulfilled their original function flawlessly, which was to crash left and right. If you're using these things for something useful, you don't tend to want it crashing left and right, no matter how brainless. Of course, those so brainless as to be found possessed of recent simian ancestry may crash the system left and right, but at a hardware level. (This primitive behavior has also been observed in higher mammals at times. It is not uncommon for these two forms of crashes to be found in close proximity to one another.) All this crashing had a strange tendency to create ill will toward the geeks who created the things. Pretty soon, these geeks, lounging comfortably in the piles of money created by their twisted scheme, found themselves suddenly at the business end of a whole lot of pointy things. Quickly, one of the more resourceful (and sadistic) geeks came up with something called "technical support" to appease the users. Basically, they beat some of the weaker geeks into submission (how one would determine who the weaker geeks were is anyone's guess) then put them on a phone line where the lusers could whine about how their computers crashed left and right. These technicians would then try to help the lusers, who were stupid enough to buy these machines in the first place. When on the phones, the lusers reacted in such a way to make one long for the simplicity of the stone age (and wonder how they ever managed to get past it in the first place.)