r/WeirdSideHustles • u/KazuKazu_hyperbowl • 21h ago

Sharing My Sidehustle I make money checking if forgotten vending machines are actually abandoned

Post image

I honestly didn't know this was a thing until a few months ago. From what I know, there are a lot of vending machines that are just sitting around in old laundromats, apartment buildings, repair shops, and other places where nobody really pays attention to them anymore.

What I do is basically check if those machines are still being maintained or not. Someone sends me a list of locations and I go there, take pictures, see if anything changed, check if the machine is still plugged in, and report back what I found.

Some people might think it sounds boring, but it is actually interesting because you find some weird stuff. One machine I checked was behind an old car wash and it looked like nobody touched it for years. There were weeds around it and the drinks inside looked really old. I honestly could not tell if it was still active or if everyone just forgot it was there.

From what I know, the owners need the information because sometimes it is hard to know if a machine is still being serviced or completely abandoned. My part is just collecting the information and sending it over.

Last weekend I checked 17 machines and made about $146. I never thought driving around looking at vending machines would make me money, but somehow it does. :PP

It is definitely one of the weirdest side hustles I have ever heard of, and now it is one of the ways I make extra cash.

1.2k Upvotes

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647

u/Mission_Store_9252 16h ago

This is a ChatGpt Post.

All of the OP's comments follow the classic OpenAI format:

Agrees user [emoji] acknowledges they said something wrong. Breaks down in a simple way. Potentially an off hand comment or silly comment at the end with [emoji]

145

u/kennygeeofcomedy 14h ago

And beyond the pic, it makes no sense.

Opens with "From what I know," aren't you doing this?

Those machines are $300 minimum, even broken and ruined. The companies that own them pay people to go around and fill active machines. But they pay OP to check rather than their own employees?

Inactive machines are not forgotten, they are moved.

32

u/Narski82 14h ago

It makes perfect sense! If you have a vending machine in YOUR store or business, how else would you check if it was plugged in?!?! Call OP!!!!!

15

u/SeemedReasonableThen 13h ago

My side hustle is squatting on URLs - I'm gonna snag the URL ICheckVendingMachinesForYou.com and sell it to OP. /s

1

u/Kuuzie 9h ago

Well, call some guy who calls OP*
That is the true mystery business.

1

u/Uncommonality 6h ago

And sure some slip through the cracks, if they break down and never get reported, or moved, or they're in a business that goes bankrupt, but that's not nearly enough to actually pay someone to find them. And even if it were, in that case, there would be nobody to report them. And if there were, the company would just send a team to collect the abandoned machine that they definitely have records of servicing.

Like these machines are serviced at the very least once a fiscal quarter, if only to empty out the money. So a machine will not be abandoned for more than 3 months unless it's broken and someone forgets to mark it down to be retrieved

64

u/MeLlamoKilo 14h ago

They are also using and replying to engagement bot comments. Its so apparent all over reddit now. I hate the future.

10

u/AmbitiousPotential74 13h ago

The person who creates a user friendly, all encompassing (like Reddit) social media platform that somehow prevents bots, will change the world

7

u/Unlikely-Ear626 12h ago edited 12h ago

Truth social

Edit: /s

1

u/MajorHasBrassBalls 12h ago

Is literally none of those things

2

u/invaderpixel 7h ago

Nextdoor KIND of seems like it has bot protection with the full name and address requirement but definitely leans towards older people and homeowners. But I’ve started to love it more as the rest of the internet is bot filled even though it really hasn’t changed at all.

1

u/Gamer_Anieca85 6h ago

Nextdoor has it's perks but it is mostly boomers and genX complaining about everything, A few nasty people i had to block too, but overall it's not the worst. Good to find items for sale

1

u/panda_canyon 2h ago

When my friends use ND all they do is they tell me they discovered how racist their neighbors are. I have declined to sign up. It would be like going to an HOA meeting for fun.

1

u/Gamer_Anieca85 2h ago

I'd go to other peoples HOA meetings for fun. Yeah I've blocked some nasty people on there.

1

u/panda_canyon 2h ago

I've worked in HOA law. I just learned how psychotic those people are and to never live in one.

1

u/hypercosm_dot_net 11h ago

Reddit has a contributor program, and allows API and automated access.

The bot problem isn't going away. The platform is only going to get worse from here.

1

u/baconboner69xD 4h ago

Hell it even allows obvious bots to spam the front page for a long time before quietly banning them. See u/veshaad

1

u/Veshaad 4h ago

So sorry to disappoint you and go against your narrative here but I am not a bot, nor do I use bots.

1

u/Exact-Employer-2089 9h ago

I created my own Mastodon instance and since I have access to all the data I setup an AI to filter out the AI. It exists, it's just not easy for the average end user. I guess you did say user friendly... but I think some of the user friendliness comes from being for-profit because you can use that to MAKE it more user friendly, but then when you go for profit you want as much engagement as possible and you allow stuff like this, so it kind of contradicts itself in a way?

1

u/ParticularGuava3663 7h ago

How'd you see this post?

1

u/space_hitler 7h ago

Plot twist, he's a fucking bot lol.

1

u/Exact-Employer-2089 3h ago

Because it's not on Mastodon? lol

1

u/DMmeprettyplantpics 8h ago

Only way to do that is require insane user verification. Like ID's and similar.

People, especially redditors would probably refuse to use it.

2

u/CaptainCurly95 8h ago

That's treating the symptoms instead of the cause. People bot on Reddit to make money. Take away the contributor program or instantly remove links that lead to a store front and people will bot somewhere else.

1

u/space_hitler 7h ago

Also need a real modding system where mods are paid employees.

The current system allows for too much manipulation by outside interests with the insane amount of power mods have on this site.

1

u/mythrise 3h ago

That's definitely not the only motivation. There's value in selling accounts with history to scammers, or spreading propaganda. In some cases just to do it and mess with people. Market research too, the list goes on.

ID verified accounts means no guarantee of anonymity, given data breaches and leaks are possible. Payment verification if you make signing up cost, or being a full member. Which also covers some other issues. Of course those are trade offs most people won't make, regardless of the larger economy.

1

u/CurryAndCommunism 50m ago

Reddit allowing users to hide posts and comments was basically the website committing su*cide. Simply allowing everyone to see everyone's posts and comments would go a long way to ensuring people could suss out this type of behavior

But reddit is obviously either knowingly allowing bots to juice their traffic stats or (more cynically) is covering for corporate/state actors

1

u/space_hitler 7h ago

Nobody has done it up to this point so it's never going to happen unless society has some major shift away from Capitalism.

Also anyone that tries will likely get destroyed by people like Zuckerberg.

3

u/Loxatl 8h ago

You get that feeling that this is just the very fuckin tip of the iceberg on ai agent to rogue agent flood nightmare world we're about to live in?

1

u/datawazo 9h ago

*present

11

u/geneticdrifter 11h ago

Keep pointing them out so us lames can learn.

2

u/Traditional_Figure_1 9h ago

i feel so lame thinking this was pretty cool lol

1

u/LostAbbott 9h ago

Problem is that the AI posts keep getting better and or changing.  If you know what to looks for you can sometimes watch them change from the last week of a month to the first week.  Sometimes I can see it, other times It takes me a good week or two to start spotting them again.  It is a horrible game of wack a mole...

1

u/geneticdrifter 8h ago edited 8h ago

I notice Astro turf fairly often but I guess those might be bots. Is there a subreddit where the bots get together and share tips? Is that claudebot? /s

In all honesty, is there community of people who point things like this out?

1

u/Blazured 9h ago

Download ChatGPT and start using it. You need experience with the way AI talks.

And if you don't have experience with how they talk then you're just going to keep being fooled by AI.

1

u/geneticdrifter 8h ago

So use heroin to figure out how to beat heroin. I got it.

2

u/Blazured 8h ago

Heroin is addictive. AI's aren't.

You currently don't have the ability to spot AI writing because you have no experience with it. This makes you easy to fool. But you can quickly change that if you just put in a tiny bit of effort.

11

u/ConcombreBaconMayo 8h ago

yup

2

u/RayoftheRaver 8h ago

Do me! Do me!

3

u/studiodrop 8h ago

At least buy me dinner first

1

u/RayoftheRaver 8h ago

🍉🍔🍰

8

u/Hanzo581 9h ago

The one thing I've never read is what do they get out of making fake posts like this?

10

u/CalicoValkyrie 9h ago

Making an account look legitimate so they can spread bad information or sell stuff.

2

u/Mission_Store_9252 8h ago

That's the only thing I still don't understand either. I know that they (the illusive they) will make accounts to build karma and then sell the accounts. I guess the karma makes people feel better that it's a real person? Other than, I've got no clue.

2

u/Occidentally20 7h ago

There's a handful of people making bots that only post in the stardew valley sub. They all get downvoted there and go into negative karma, but dozens of new ones pop up each day.

I dont think I'll ever understand what they're trying to do. You can get 10k+ upvotes there easily by just posting a picture of a nicely decorated shed - the bots could just steal pictures from online or repost old content. But they don't, they use text only and it's obvious theyre a bot every time. Confusing business.

1

u/send_nooooods 7h ago

Selling accounts is the answer. That’s it.

1

u/Occidentally20 7h ago

Who is going to buy a one week old account with negative karma?

1

u/send_nooooods 6h ago

For every one getting negative there’s another dozen getting upvoted like this post. And it’s still going to learn from the “failed” accounts to improve itself

1

u/Occidentally20 6h ago

That is not my experience on the stardew sub whatsoever, they're banning between 40 and 60 bot accounts each day, all with negative karma and none of them learning anything - the posts are often identical for weeks or months at a time. No OC, one sentance title and a blank post body.

Some of them don't even make posts, just make a random comment thats incorrect on every post until they get banned as well.

1

u/ParticularGuava3663 7h ago

I've never checked someone's karma

1

u/Common_Belt 5h ago

This is the thing I’ve never understood. I’ve been using Reddit for 20 years now. I have never once, not a single time, looked at someone’s profile karma. I legitimately do not understand the point.

2

u/benzado 2h ago

Mods look at karma. A lot of anti-spam measures look at account age and karma to detect spam. Some subreddits require minimum karma to post. So spammers make dull posts and comments in other subreddits to earn enough karma to post in the protected ones. Either for themselves or to sell the account to someone who doesn’t want to wait.

0

u/AgreeWithMeOrDie 2h ago

I'm in the same boat. I think it has to do with someone self validating their own opinions by disreguarding others based off a number on their profile.

Which is weird because how does a number represent someones thoughts/opinions

1

u/kogarou 7h ago

They're practicing tricking people.

1

u/Street-Sweeper213 6h ago

The same as a politician, accounts are bought to push propaganda.

1

u/THEBHR 6h ago

If you want to advertise a product or "grass roots" a movement or political campaign, you buy a Reddit account to make it look "organic".

Accounts' values are based on a few factors. How old the account is. How much Karma it has. If it's been banned from any subreddits. And how natural the post history looks.

And you've seen the advertisements. A popular one is done in r/mildlyinfuriating . Someone will post household gadget that failed due to obvious user error, and title it, "The Way My Wife Used The [Thing]". And then people in the comments will be like, "Ohh, I have that! It works really good when you use it right 😂".

1

u/Odenhobler 4h ago

Marketing, product recommendations. Astroturfing. That's why people pay for accounts with karma.

1

u/Least-Telephone6359 7h ago

Training data, site activity and propaganda

1

u/g4ryo4k_ 6h ago

Because the more people point out their imperfections, the more they can learn from to better imitate us. It's all training data in some way or another.

1

u/-REV-22-20- 5h ago

to look like a normal account in good standing with lots of karma, then come election time they get added to the bot farm to spread misinformation

1

u/IntrepidHero42 5h ago

Because if/when these posts become the norm, people will stop identifying them as bots, and then when that happens you have a captive audience to sell products or ideas to.

1

u/doubtfulisland 3h ago

This is AI posting. They are learning from these post responses how to not appear fake and more human. 

1

u/FrequentTopic446 2h ago

Gives them more data to farm to feed into their models to improve on making them seem more human

1

u/theneverafter 1h ago

Maybe we are the abandoned vending machines and they are checking on us

7

u/tab_tab_tabby 9h ago

I was like you drive around to 17 machines in a week and made mere 150 dollars... that sounds bad but AI is dumb to know that

6

u/Mission_Store_9252 8h ago

Yeah, that should have been a red flag too. 17 drives and dude only made $146. Not even worth it.

8

u/mikenelsoncamera 13h ago

What’s the point of generating a post like this? It’s always based on money so how does this post generate money and for Who??

10

u/MindOfCrim 12h ago

They use it to gather karma and then post on sub-reddits that have a karma requirement usually for ticketed shows to scam people or loan sub-reddits. It's to scam people and look legit.

2

u/DMmeprettyplantpics 8h ago

99% of the users end up as onlyfans bots

2

u/Uncommonality 6h ago

typically of fully AI generated onlyfans pages too. My best guess is that there's not even that many people actually running these scams, they just run thousands of them.

I'll wager that collecting the subscriptions of 2000 AI-run onlyfans pages with maybe a sucker or two subscribed to each 10th is still a decent chunk of change

2

u/DMmeprettyplantpics 6h ago

No they'd have to be a bit more successful. These reddit accounts do cost a bit. Usually in the $10+ range.

2

u/baconboner69xD 4h ago

The porn bots have more bespoke usernames and post histories. This one is for training the llm

2

u/ragakoo 13h ago

same question

1

u/thepennylane69 3h ago

A lot of the (BS, trumped-up for PR reasons) “security breaches” that these AI companies report from their models are because part of their “testing” or whatever is just turning AI models loose on the internet and telling them to interact with random websites

3

u/Ckynus 13h ago

Why? I keep seeing things talking about bots and karma farming, but why? How does karma convert into money?

7

u/Zooter88 10h ago

So the real side hustle is karma farming?

2

u/FuManBoobs 7h ago

The real reward was the karma we made along the way.

1

u/spudddly 4h ago

SHITCEPTION

7

u/_IRONBANE_ 12h ago

Sell the account to advertisers, or businesses that need "real" looking accounts to give them good reviews.

It can also be used to drive engagement to posts and then to real sites that someone wants to be seen by more people. Like world news all the way to an Onlyfans page.

3

u/Kuuzie 9h ago

Like prediction markets on political events.
Why spend 1m on political advertising when you can spend it manipulating prediction markets to show that "the people are voting with their money" while every single news outlet will reference the few big markets everyday.

2

u/ITDummy69420 9h ago

Have you tried using AI to get your answer?

2

u/intangibleTangelo 9h ago

accounts with high karma scores are favored by reddit's algorithm, so if you need to shill something, influence something, or whatever, such accounts are valuable

2

u/Fit-Refuse9375 9h ago

Someone make me an offer for my craptastic account lol

1

u/AccurateJerboa 8h ago

They hack (or purchase hacked) old accounts that have been abandoned. Then they make a ton of low effort karma posts to random subs. They're then able to sell an old, high karma account to a PR firm or bot farm to be operated with a large group of other accounts that've been purchased. 

Then those accounts are used for everything from saying voting in the midterms is pointless to you should go see digger or taylor swift is a genius, actually. 

1

u/Karens_GI_Father 2h ago

I wish someone paid me for my craptastic account. I even got accused of being a Russian bot lol.

2

u/king_scootie 9h ago

To have a stable of accounts with credibility to engage with posts for marketing and PR purposes. 

1

u/_Quasifrodo_ 10h ago

It’s paranoia. Bots that need karma just have other bots upvote their posts in bot subs

3

u/StakeESC 9h ago

No, this is a real thing. I went down a rabbit hole because I was curious what the benefit was of bots farming karma.

Some just farm enough where they're allowed to post in subreddits with a minimum karma requirement, and then they're used to spam only fan accounts or shit like that.

However I also found a thread in a sub for people who work in marketing discussing where they purchase reddit accounts from, and it was insane. They pay a lot for accounts that seem authentic to use for "guerilla marketing"

Here are some of the prices listed on the website mentioned on the marketing sub.

There are a lot of bots on Reddit, it's not just paranoia.

3

u/0atm3a1 9h ago

Is this the start of them making money to buy things to take over?

1

u/_Quasifrodo_ 8h ago

I’m aware it’s a real thing. I’m telling you there’s a much much easier way that’s much more common

Assuming every weird question is that is paranoia. It’s much more likely just some person with a weird idea that can’t coherently communicate it.

1

u/Turbulent-Law-5028 8h ago

I don’t doubt that some do what you’re talking about, but high karma is not the only thing these people care about and probably not even the most important thing.

 The optimal account for this type of shady marketing is one that passes as a legitimate person’s account, at least upon a quick look. Just having some karma doesn’t do that. 

1

u/Sorry-Combination558 8h ago

Oh my God I deleted an account that had 100k karma from shitposting on r/greentext

1

u/R3AL1Z3 8h ago

Brother if you think that’s only way Reddit bots operate, I’ve got some bad news for you.

1

u/-REV-22-20- 5h ago

that doesnt work, doing it that way makes wiping out bot accounts too easy. as soon as a bot sub or even a bot account is found, they can wipe out all accounts associated with them

3

u/KingKey948 12h ago

Just the word “honestly” is the giveaway.

1

u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN 8h ago

I... honestly use that word a lot myself. I'll be fucking damned if I'm gonna let some bots change how I speak

1

u/digitalthrowmadd 7h ago

Honestly, I do too. I've been accused of being a bot on other accounts. I'm not allowing them to modify my manner of writing

3

u/dankestofdankcomment 9h ago

“Some people might think it sounds boring, but it is actually interesting because you find some weird stuff. One machine I checked was behind an old car wash and it looked like nobody touched it for years. There were weeds around it and the drinks inside looked really old. I honestly could not tell if it was still active or if everyone just forgot it was there.”

Yeah but isn’t this so interesting?

4

u/GamesNGadgetsPlus 9h ago

Very weird stuff.
You get paid to check on old vending machines that haven’t been used. Somehow when you get to one it looks like…. Wait for it… looks like it hasn’t been used in years. Man very interesting stuff.

2

u/Mission_Store_9252 8h ago

Yeah, usually when I run a business I forget it's there.

1

u/ZealousidealCoat7008 3h ago

and I don't care if my unmaintained equipment could hurt or kill someone and create liability for me. I live on the edge when it comes to managing my income streams

2

u/ConfuzzledGenius 11h ago

this is openai trying to fix the ai economy they created 😭

2

u/ronniewhomp 11h ago

And the pay is always ridiculously low, despite them supposedly taking place in the US. I know there's some crap pay gig work like DoorDash, but it's such a noticeable aspect of these posts.

2

u/NoNormals 9h ago

This sub is infested with them. Mods are probably in on it. Idk if it's worse than the posts that basically just link to another site to farm clicks

2

u/100292 9h ago

And of course they private their comments and posts

2

u/chargoggagog 8h ago

So is OP a human using ChatGPT for responses or is it a bot entirely?

3

u/Mission_Store_9252 8h ago

I think it's a human using chatgpt responses because they just privated their responses.

1

u/ThrowAwayAccountAMZN 8h ago

Yeah I'm kinda confused by this because OPs account is five years old which is a little older to have been originally created to be a bot account (I think). And some of their comments don't follow the formula the top comment mentions.

1

u/Uqe 7h ago

The real hustle is running a karma bot farm

1

u/DrPhilihprD 7h ago

Check the top posts on this sub and see how most of them end with an engagement bait AI ass question like 'have any of you ever thought of a lucrative side-hustle like this?'

This one for example:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WeirdSideHustles/comments/1v5x5aq/i_literally_make_400_a_weekend_renting_my_pet/

1

u/WaterTrinker 6h ago

Damn man... dead internet