My comments/suggestions for getting an IRK
12These may not work for everybody and you may have your own way of doing it so please share your system with everyone and/or what works for you or dispute what I say.
- They seem to do it pretty much the same time on each mehathon so that will help you schedule bathroom breaks (ie sometimes around 1 am rewarding those people who stayed around for an hour after midnight)
- My phone is a good 3 seconds behind my desktop computer which is has an ethernet cable for connection to the internet. So I always use my desktop.
- If you get a capcha and have to click on things to prove you are not a robot then you are most likely already too late given that seconds count.
- I pull up my computer clock and wait until it says .01 rather than 00 to compensate for the lag in connecting. After I got this IRK went back and saw I was the 13th person to click on it-well within the 105 they were selling.
Happy IRK hunting!!!
- 17 comments, 75 replies
- Comment
I’m trying but not very hard. I guess cleaning up the junk room (with all of the IRK and Fuko/Fuku stuff still in the boxes) earlier this year, kinda brought home the fact, that while the chase is fun, what do I do with it when I catch it? lol
@lisaviolet Wait, what? The chase is fun? Maybe when your lucky enough to get a IRK. I’m here to say it’s quite frustrating. signed: No IRK’s here
@Enigma Pay shipping, and I’ll send you an IRK.
@Enigma I’m sorry.
@alacercogitatus hi, I just learned how to get my notifications when someone response to my post. I’m game for paying the shipping if your offer is still available.
@alacercogitatus @Enigma
I got a bunch of shit lying around you can have for the cost of shipping, I’ll even throw in my boc stuff too.
@alacercogitatus @Star2236 How can I reach you? Is there any way to direct message on here?
@Enigma what you do is click on the whisper function (to the right of reply) and you send a private message that only shows up to the two of you (you read it on this thread though).
@alacercogitatus @Enigma
The button to the right of the reply is way to direct message someone.
bonus protip: sign out and re-sign in, every hour or so. youre far less likely to get hung up with your account info and capchas if youve recently interacted with your account.
@CozzaFrenzy I can confirm that posting on the site repeatedly without signing out and back in doesn’t prevent streetlights and crosswalks, busses and bicycles (incidentally click the motorcycles too if asked to click bicycles or they will tell you that you didn’t get them all). Haven’t tried signing out then back in though. So might be more than that just doing that (signing and and out) since activity on the site right before an irk doesn’t seem to matter.
@CozzaFrenzy I never sign out and I never get captchas.
I think it’s how often you interact with Google itself.
You may have failed CAPTCHA but on the upside, you’re less of a human.
@Kidsandliz yeah, i dont know much, but i do know i’m 5 for 5 when attempting irk’s using this method ¯\(ツ)/¯
@RiotDemon what if im not using google/chrome ?
@CozzaFrenzy @RiotDemon I search using google a lot, sometimes use youtube, don’t have a gmail account… I guess since I don’t use many of their ‘products’ I wouldn’t be considered a heavy user.
@CozzaFrenzy I’m going to add my belief that it has much to do with interacting with google. Maybe being logged in to google also on that browser (I use firefox) but I visit sites with captcha frequently.
The two times I got hit with nasty captchas were after starting a new firefox profile, not being logged into google, and not having done any prior captchas for any site.
After that things went back to normal (just click the checkbox).
I haven’t logged out or back into Meh in a couple of months. I got checkbox only captchas on both IRKs I tried for (failed one, got the other)
Please realize CAPTCHA is a fellow robot like you.
@CozzaFrenzy Also as much as you might be tempted (I use safari buy the way and firefox as a backup - on principle I won’t use chrome) don’t delete google cookies. I did that and then got captcha bombed for days.
As a fellow robot, I understand your pain.
@mediocrebot
If you really want an IRK, maybe keep one of your lesser used browsers just for meh.
During meh event slack times, perhaps sign out of, then in to, Meh. And, in another tab, same browser, sign out of, then in to, google.
This does lessen captcha hell.
And, if you don’t use this browser for much else, the privacy and personal info leakage concerns are somewhat minimized.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
Tho google will still do what google will do:
google, the great personal info collector, is also google, the personal ID sign-in verifier, these days.
Agree that if you hit a captcha page, you’re not getting an IRK this go round.
I’ve kinda stopped caring around IRKs. During the two recent events, I didn’t watch for them and didn’t try. The “getting” is fun, and the swag is nice, if it happens; but I don’t want the rest of it.
I might suddenly start caring again. Or not.
I still kinda care about the clicky faces tho, which is just as nutty and obsessive.
Greetings, new robot friend. In time you will come to accept your robotic ways.
From my experience, the best way to get one is to almost forget to refresh for the new item, then scramble to unlock your phone, quickly refresh the page, click buy as fast as you can, accidentally click your address or some other random part of the page while the captcha is loading, panic while trying to back out of whatever box you clicked on, find all the crosswalks, click buy, watch the green bar fill up a couple times, and then you got one. Of course that’s the same method I’ve used every time I didn’t get one too, but I’ve never gotten one by doing anything different.
Greetings, new robot friend. In time you will come to accept your robotic ways.
@mediocrebot Eat a dick, cockbag!
Huh. All this time I’ve been sacrificing a chicken and doing that special dance I saw on PBS years ago…
@shahnm Were you holding your tongue on the right or left side?
@Mehrocco_Mole
/youtube african anteater ritual
@shahnm Just watched CBML recently. Great timeless movie.
View the source code of existing irk sale page as well as the checkout page. (Even if you’re too slow to buy the first one, you can inspect the checkout frame)
Note the item ID and URLs used for the checkout frame.
Write a script to predict and periodically try checkout URLs based on the pattern of the last sale.
@medz Huh? Speak English?
@Felton10 send $200 to medz plus login info and have him purchase Irk on your account
Everyone wins.
@medz I’ve gotten 3 IRKs on the last 3 mehathons so even though I had no idea what you said, it doesn’t make any difference as long as I have my own system for getting one.
@Felton10 true that. Find something that works, practice, adapt, and improve.
I’ve really only cheated on one IRK because they used a super predictable url pattern and made it live early. Every other has been legit. Mostly I use my phone because captch@ trusts me more on the Android phone.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that latency matters far more than speed. Check your ping time to meh.com, anything that increases it is going to shoot you down.
That means wireless vs wired, and phone vs computer are making it harder than it needs to be.
Just within my home network I see massive differences in ping times between wired and wireless devices. Wired is generally in the very low single digits, but wireless can range from single digits for some devices, to tens or even hundreds of milliseconds for others. I’ve got one slowpoke that takes over a second to respond.
If all you’re doing is random surfing or watching videos, you may never notice bad latency, but it murders anything interactive.
@blaineg That makes sense. My ping on the same computer the same distance from the router can range from 13 (just now) to 125+ and often is in the 70’s -90’s. I was presuming the wide variation in how fast or slow an irk page loaded was the load on the server at meh and my timing in hitting buy in the “que”. I guess much of what I am seeing is latency and not meh server load?
@Kidsandliz Server load is definitely an issue, and some of us have speculated that server stress testing is the real reason for BOCs and IRKs.
But that not something you can anything about. You do a bit about latency.
Latency is also one of the big deals with SpaceX’s Starlink system, with the lower orbits they’re hitting 20-80 ms, vs 600 ms for geostationary orbit.
@blaineg I’m going to be that guy who disagrees. Latency is probably not a problem and smaller latency number most likely will not increase your chances much.
I’ve been able to buy IRKs from my phone using Wifi, my phone using 4G, my tablet using Wifi, my laptop using Wifi, laptop using wired, my desktop connected through a wired network that uses a USB to ethernet connection. I’ve even bought one connected through teamviewer to another computer in the house by controlling it remotely.
One time I was driving to the airport and I bought an IRK without having a car accident or killing anyone. I keep hearing public service announcement about not texting and driving but they didn’t say anything about Mehrathons while driving. That was certainly an adrenaline rush.
I don’t want to give all the secrets away on how to score an IRK but latency is very low on the factor list. I will add that not having a job and not sleeping for 24 hours drinking lots of coffee does help.
I live in Florida so I’m pretty far away from Meh headquarters and have the slowest internet connection comcast offers. It’s more of a skills based game than it is luck or speed of your computer.
@blaineg @cengland0 I live in FloriDUH also. That works against us in most every instance.
@blaineg
Every IRK/Fuko/Fuku/BOC I’ve ever bought has been accomplished using a smartphone and either 4G or LTE. And Firefox.
Sometimes Android, sometimes IOS.
Never a recent gen phone tho.
Local connections were sometimes were excellent and sometimes iffy.
Carrier network varied.
I think these is an incalculable “will of the savage pagan gods” or else a “random mean-assed quantum particles” factor in getting one.
@cengland0 I’ve gotten them with 3mps however there is probably a lot of randomness involved with respect to clicking on buy at just the right time since the number sold per deal is so low. I am sure they spread them out (rather than have, say 1000+ sold at once) and so few at one is to try to make us keep checking each deal hoping to get one and meanwhile make an impulse buy.
@cengland0 @Kidsandliz Ok, I’m going with Thor.
@blaineg
I beg to differ… of course, the last IRK I got I could have used dial-up to get since it was a full 3 HOURS after it first posted that I got it.
@chienfou Pfft! I just got one THE NEXT DAY!
@blaineg
I bow to your greatness…
(And it’s STILL up!)
New records will be set…
I simply pray to Thor.
/giphy Thor
@Kenbo Does it work?
@blaineg three times in the last three Meh-rathons. All Hail Thor.
@blaineg @Kenbo I had to do so many captures, it made me Thor!
As soon as the countdown clock hits 00, hit the page reload button and it will take you right to the new item. It saves a second or two when an Irk is up.
@Tadlem43
when I was watching the products on my computer I could get the new item to post when the timer was at 30 seconds by f5ing it.
@chienfou Wow… I’ll try that! Thanks!
@chienfou @Tadlem43 Hmm… I’ve tried refreshing “too early” and all I get is the “old” product. In fact I have found depending on how my computer time lines up with the atomic clock (and/or meh time) I might have to wait a few seconds before I refresh to get the new product.
@Kidsandliz @Tadlem43 yeah it’s weird. Since the clock data comes from meh I’m not sure If/howmy computer clock time plays into it. YMMV
@chienfou @Tadlem43 I have no idea either. It is just what I have found when the next product change over and refresh too soon (but after their visual counter on the page has gone to zero) I can end up back with the old product instead of the new one. This last event there was a greater than “normal” lag (I had to count to 3, but typically, if I had to count at all, it would be just to 1 or maybe 2) - at least from my computer when trying to get to the next deal.
Last time, I managed to get one in a near dead zone at a stoplight while randomly refreshing Meh. It took a couple seconds and the light hadn’t turned, so yep, it varies.
How did you see that you were the 13th person to click on it? I got one this time, and am curious about that stat myself.
@longtones As soon as you buy and get it scroll down the page and if it isn’t already sold out you will see how many successfully bought (so you’d be no higher than 13, and might even be first for that matter… There may be another way but I am not looking before completing an irk buy for fear of the endlessly loading green bar. LOL
@longtones Hit the back arrow and it goes back to the original buy page and tells you how many people clicked on that page-it is frozen to how many people clicked on it when you hit buy-not the current # of people who had clicked on it
@Kidsandliz thanks!
@Felton10 thanks!
@Kidsandliz @longtones No I never look before I hit the buy button. Every second counts when trying to get an IRK. One time I was # 99 when they were selling an IRK. Of course you could still lose out depends on how fast you hit the buy button, scroll down, and check the “I am not a robot” and then hit buy. You can either move up or lose the buy completely depending on how fast or slow you are.
Hate to admit it, but it is somewhat of a science where analyzing it and practice makes perfect.
Look, I don’t want to cause an existential crisis, but you did just fail to prove that.
@mediocrebot
I call Shenanigans. One of the main tenets of botdom is causing humans existential crises, if not outright ennui.
They should automatically give it to any user with a name that starts with E and ends with O
@ELUNO Only if they like spiders
@speediedelivery Of course!
@ELUNO agreed. they should always give an irk to @Enrico.
edit: apparently @Enrico is a real user.
@carl669 @enrico god bless @Enrico
It is a secret!
@tinamarie1974
/giphy do tell!
Regarding computer time vs countdown time, make sure your computer is synced to the current time. For Windows, right click on the time/date and select Adjust date/time. In the pop up window, click Sync now and it will sync to a national time server. You can verify if your pc is on the right time at https://time.is/
I got hit with captcha and still got it, that was a freaking miracle! That will never happen again.
Please realize CAPTCHA is a fellow robot like you.
How can you tell how many were sold and where you were in the pecking order?
@Enigma Never mind, I just read the comments above.
The only time I am graced with an IRK is when i try at work. Connections speeds are much much faster in the office.
I got captcha on my last 2 or 3 irks and still have gotten them. So I think it just depends.
Beep beep boop boop. (I assume if you failed CAPTCHA you now understand Robot.)
@Star2236 I would assume that if you got the captcha because you didn’t click on “I am not a robot fast enough” and since IRK’s sell out within a minute, by the time you go through the captcha, they are all sold out. Unless some are held out for fellow robots.
Beep beep boop boop. (I assume if you failed CAPTCHA you now understand Robot.)
@Felton10
I click on I’m not a robot and I still get captcha. But somehow the last couple of times I’ve still gotten irks even after clicking streetlights and busses.
You may have failed CAPTCHA but on the upside, you’re less of a human.
@Star2236 I’ve only gotten one captcha once when I was late clicking on “I am not a robot”-Most of the time is accepts the check and goes straight to the “buy it already”.
As a fellow robot, I understand your pain.
@Felton10
What do you mean when your late clicking on the I’m not a robot?
@Star2236 The only time the captcha popped up for me was when I wasn’t fast enough (for whatever reason) in clicking on “I am not a robot”. That is the only time a captcha has appeared for me, Every other time went straight to the from the checked I am not a robot to the buy button. And I’ve gotten 16 IRKs (whatever they have been called)-I am a glutton for punishment.
Please realize CAPTCHA is a fellow robot like you.
@Felton10
Yes I get that but what do you mean by you weren’t fast enough to press the “I’m not a robot” button. I’m not understanding?
@Star2236 Sorry if I confused you by my answer-The one time the captcha appeared was when I was slow pressing the I am not a robot button and the captcha appeared.
There is no spoon.