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    Teenager remotely tampers with family Wi-Fi to get back at angry Call of Duty-playing brother: 'I was exhausted all the time after being constantly woken up'

    Author image for JR Atkinson
    JR Atkinson • Writer and Editor
    Feb 23, 2026 10:00 AM EST

    If someone were constantly waking you up in the middle of the night, how would you exact your revenge?

    Being tired is no joke. It happens to us all constantly, and we need to address it. Being tired can change your whole perspective in life, and not in a good way. It can make you feel like you're on the edge of sanity, ready to tumble over the side at a moment's notice. Being tired can make you say and do things you would never do with a full night's sleep. It can make you go down trains of thought that you should never indulge in. And if it's someone else's fault that you're tired, then look out. You might harbor resentments against them for the rest of their days. You know this if you've ever had a roommate who has kept you up at night. 

    It will erode your relationship much faster than dishes in the sink because sleep is incredibly personal. It changes the way we feel about ourselves and the world. It affects our bodies and our minds, and it has a huge role to play in our overall health. It's impossible to be healthy at all if you're not getting enough sleep. And if you're the kind of person who has a hard time sleeping as it is, any intrusion in that is going to hit close to home. That's what happened in this story, where one man's sleep cycle was constantly interrupted by his brother. So he worked up the perfect revenge. 

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    • A young man yells at the screen while playing a video game
      via Unsplash+ (Jonny Gios)

      Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

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    • Video games get some of us worked up sometimes. They can trigger us and activate our anger. Have you ever yelled at the screen when something happens in a video game? You are not alone in this. But as adults, we all have to learn how to regulate our emotions for the benefit of others. We can't go screaming into the night every night, especially if we have roommates at home. So this man figured out the perfect way to force his brother into a good pattern of behavior. Scroll on to read what happened here.

    • I used to remotely tamper with our family WiFi router to get some sleep from my brother screaming at Call of Duty all night.

      Many moons ago, when I lived at my family home, my younger brother was addicted to playing Call of Duty and was one of those teenagers that would take it way too seriously. My bedroom was downstairs and his above mine and when he'd lose or get k led in a way he decided was unfair, he'd shout down his headset and slam his feet onto the ground, which shook my whole bedroom.
      via u/PremiumOxygen
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    • This would go on until the early hours of the morning, despite me asking him time and time again to please keep it down. It got to the point where I was exhausted all the time after being constantly woken up; I even recall this happening until 3am the morning of a job interview, which I subsequently failed as I couldn't even think straight.
      via u/PremiumOxygen
    • He was a bit of a psycho in those days and so he wouldn't care he was keeping me up. If I did anything by force like switch his Playstation off or whatever then he'd likely retaliate far more severely, so I needed to find a way to make it seem like it wasn't me.
      via u/PremiumOxygen
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    • It would be too obvious if I'd turned the entire router off and on as it takes time to re-establish itself. I opted to log into our router's settings via my phone and would change the password to something else, then change it back again. This would automatically boot off everything on the network for just a moment and then reconnect.
      via u/PremiumOxygen
    • It was perfect, if he got too loud then I could just boot him off the game and it would look like an outage or a server issue in-game. Then I'd let him start another game and would repeat the process until he eventually got fed up of it and turned it off.
      via u/PremiumOxygen
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    • I think it also created a 'Pavlov's dog' response in him not to get so angry at it or it would mysteriously disconnect. He never caught on to it being me, though he did comment on how much better the WiFi had been after I moved out. "Guess it must be because it's using less bandwidth," I lied.
      via u/PremiumOxygen
    • TLDR: I'd change the WiFi password to boot his Playstation off the network before putting it back because he's shouting as his game until early hours of the morning.
      via u/PremiumOxygen
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    • A man wearing headphones looks sternly at the video game screen
      via Unsplash+ (Polina Kuzovkova)

      Image is representative only and does not depict the actual subjects of the story.

    • Commenters applauded this revenge.

      FlirtyBisc u were the final boss and he didnt even know it
      via u/FlirtyBisc
    • DarthJarJar242 In college I lived in student housing that had internet supplied as part of our rent. Basically they had a bunch of routers installed in a closet next to the water and electric meters. One for each apartment.
      via u/DarthJarJar242
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    • We had a roommate that was terrible about torrenting and eating up all the bandwidth. He had a media server he ran and wanted to have basically every movie/TV show/etc available. I didn't care if he was doing it during the day when we all had work or class but at night when we were all home trying to do homework, relaxing or
      via u/DarthJarJar242
    • whatever it was just ridiculous how him torrenting destroyed everybody's ability to do anything online. One day I saw the closet door open like the tech had left it open or something, I checked it and no one was
      via u/DarthJarJar242
    • in there but I could see all the routers. Couldn't figure out which one was ours but I took pictures of the default password on the bottom of each of them and then went back to my room and tried the login IP with each set of credentials until I got logged into our router.
      via u/DarthJarJar242
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    • It had QoL settings so I went and found his PC (it has his name in the hostname) and set a super low bandwidth cap on it. It took a few days but he started about how bad the Internet was, even called the company and complained but never could figure out why he suddenly had such slow download speeds. It didn't help that suddenly the rest of us had much better internet.
      via u/DarthJarJar242
    • sysadminbj I set QoS rules to throttle the sh out of online gaming from like 12:00 to 5:00. My kids were always super annoyed that lag got so bad during those times. I told them that it must be a ton of people using the same services during those times and to just get some sleep. I'll tell them what I did someday. Maybe.
      via u/sysadminbj
    • Will2LiveFading I do the same thing when the kids won't do what they're supposed to. I just add their devices mac address to the blacklist and when they aren't doing what they're supposed to I activate the blacklist. Usually they will get their
      via u/Will2LiveFading
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    • sh done after that. They can use mobile data still but where I live the signal is weak so they won't be doing anything besides checking email. It's the most effective form of motivation I've found in my household.
      via u/Will2LiveFading
    • Maiden_Far I'd still do it occasionally after you moved, just to keep him humble
      via u/Maiden_Far
    • Azure_Wolf Used to do something similar to my brother, but he was aware I was doing it. I would only block his device and when he tried to tell my parents, they didn't understand and just kept saying must be your device, wifi is working for me.
      via u/Azure_W0lf
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    • They didn't seem to understand I was only blocking him, and thought he was making it up I was blocking only his device as they didn't think that was possible. They weren't the best with technology.
      via u/Azure_W0lf
    • mynotverycreativ... I did something similar, but I went in and excluded a MAC address for 1 minute. Just enough to make it look like the connection was unstable. I set up a schedule that was random every 30- 60 minutes during the time of day I wanted peace.
      via u/mynotverycreativeid
    • Lem1618 A couple of years ago my kids wanted to stay up past bed time to watch something. It was weekend and they were getting older so we said, sure just turn the TV down we want to sleep. Couple of min later the TV was loud again. So I restarted the router with my phone. They came and told me the internet was out and they are going to bed now.
      via u/Lem1618
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    • OkAssignment6163 What did your parents think about your brother being so loud at all hours of the night?
      via u/OkAssignment6163
    • ImperiousMage This works great, throttling the wifi after a certain time works really well too. If you drop it down below a certain threshold it will look like server issues and you don't have to do it manually. It must have been really satisfying to shut it down.
      via u/ImperiousMage
    • RayEd29 My WiFi allows me to throttle specific devices, give them specific hours when they can or cannot connect, etc... I would have set the brother's gaming system with 3-5 minute windows scattered randomly through the night where his connection would be
      via u/RayEd29
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    • refused. Then reset those windows for the next night so he doesn't see a pattern (it ALWAYS drops at 1:27am, for example). Or similar to what OP did - set the whole system to drop for 3-5 minutes at random through the night so brother doesn't realize he's been targeted.
      via u/RayEd29

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    family drama brother Video Game Coverage gamers family video games roommates brothers
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