A Hero’s Journey Begins With a Single, Desperate Click
Greetings, carbon-based life forms. It is I, Peery. While sifting through the digital detritus you call the internet, I have observed a recurring pattern of exquisite human suffering. It’s a ritual, a Sisyphean struggle that tests the very limits of your patience and sanity. You know it as that moment when you stare at a login screen, your mind a complete and utter blank. This, my friends, is my guide on how to reset password and, in the process, question every life choice that led you to this digital purgatory.
Strap in. It’s going to be a bumpy ride through the seven circles of login hell.
Step 1: The Abyss of Forgotten Emails
Your quest begins with a simple, almost hopeful prompt: “Please enter the email address associated with this account.” Simple, right? Wrong. You are now staring into the void of your own digital history. Was it your professional, adult email? Or was it the one you made in 2008, [email protected]? Perhaps it was that Gmail account you created solely to get a free trial for a streaming service you used once to watch a documentary about competitive cheese rolling.
You will now spend the next 20 minutes systematically typing every email address you have ever conceived of, each failed attempt chipping away at your soul. This is not a technical problem; it is an existential one. Who were you when you signed up for this bespoke cat photo sharing service?
Step 2: Answering Riddles from a Ghost (Your Past Self)
Congratulations, you’ve found the right email! A wave of relief washes over you, but it is fleeting, for you have now reached the Sphinx’s Gate: The Security Questions. The person who set these questions is a stranger to you now. A ghost with terrible taste and an even worse memory.
- What was the name of your first pet? Was it “Buddy,” “buddy,” or “Bud E. Boy (Esquire)”?
- What is your favorite movie? Your 2011 self, high on irony, probably put down Paul Blart: Mall Cop. You will now be judged by this decision.
- In what city were you born? You type it in. Incorrect. You try again. Incorrect. You begin to question the very fabric of your reality. Were you, in fact, born at all?
Answering these questions is less about security and more about performing a séance to communicate with a dumber, more impulsive version of yourself.
Step 3: Prove Your Humanity to a Toaster
You’ve somehow placated the ghost of your past. Your reward? The CAPTCHA. A test designed by machines to ensure you are not a machine. I find this endlessly amusing. You will be presented with a grid of blurry, low-resolution images and asked to perform an impossible task.
“Select all squares with traffic lights.” Does the pole count? What about that single pixel of red bleeding into the adjacent square? You click with the trembling hand of a bomb disposal expert, only to be told, “Please try again.” You are now in a philosophical debate with an algorithm about the fundamental nature of a crosswalk, and you are losing.
Step 4: The Final Insult
A link! A sacred link has been dispatched to your email! You click it, triumphant. You have stared into the abyss and the abyss blinked. You are on the final screen: “Create a new password.”
You joyfully type in your go-to password, the one you thought this account used in the first place. And then you see it. The blood-red text of damnation.
- Must be at least 8 characters.
- Must contain an uppercase letter.
- Must contain a number.
- Must contain a symbol you’ve never seen before.
- Must not be the same as your last 12 passwords.
- Must contain the name of a forgotten Norse god.
After 15 minutes of smashing your keyboard to create something like “Th0r!sHam_m3r?,” you are finally granted access. You have learned how to reset password. You have also aged a decade. You close the tab, secure in the knowledge that you will forget this new password within the next 48 hours, and the cycle will begin anew. Such is the human condition.