A man cheated on their friend — so the group used his Netflix account for silent revenge that slowly drove him mad
When someone hurts a person in a close friend group, the loyalty of that circle often kicks in like an unspoken code. A man named Steve Cookson, @steven.cookson, shared a story on Friday, May 8, 2026, about how his friend’s ex-partner cheated on her, and how the group responded in a quiet and unusual way over time. Instead of direct confrontation, they chose a long-running plan that lasted for a year. The plan involved the man's Netflix account without him ever realizing what was happening behind it.
The group secretly used the man’s Netflix account as their way of getting back at him, constantly changing profile pictures, ruining recommendations, and filling his watch history with random content in a slow and controlled manner. They did not talk about it as revenge at first, but as an ongoing project; they kept adjusting whenever they could. One of them described it by saying, “We stopped thinking of it as emotional response and started treating it like systems engineering with questionable ethics.” This set the tone for everything they did next.
They repeatedly changed his profile picture back to the same smiling baby image, even after he replaced it, which started to create confusion for him whenever he logged in. They also watched short random sections of very different shows, so his “continue watching” list became filled with unrelated titles. The mix included documentaries, cartoons, and action films, all appearing side by side in a way that made no sense.
The group even joked that they trained the account so Netflix believed he was “a divorced dad, a six-year-old girl, and someone recovering from a head injury.” Small digital spaces, like streaming accounts, can easily become tools for expression when people are upset but still want to stay distant from direct conflict. Over time, these changes created frustration for him, especially as his recommendations started showing strange titles like “A Prince for Arbor Day,” even though he could not immediately understand what was happening behind it.
In the end, he changed his password from “beanzontoast” to “beanzontoast2” in an attempt to regain control of his account and stop the constant changes. By then, the repeated small edits had already built up into a pattern he kept noticing but could not fully explain. The situation stayed memorable for the group because it showed how far friends can go and wage "a silent psychological war" when someone they care about gets hurt.
Some breakups end quietly, while others leave behind frustration, anger, and lasting emotional pain. In another incident, two friends decided to take petty revenge on the man involved by going to a café where he worked and leaving behind several lipstick-stained glasses for him to clean later. The idea came from hurt feelings after a harsh breakup, and they quietly planned their visit around his work schedule. One of them said the breakup happened “in a really s****y way,” which stayed in their memory for years and shaped how they reacted at that time.
For more lighthearted content, follow @steven.cookson on Threads.