“I am a real person” (laughs) That’s the scariest shit I’ve ever heard.

Meanwhile, in Germany, we had a different approach to that problem: - Step 1 : Making that Robocall bullshit illegal in the first place - Step 2 : Not thinking about it anymore

The " say I am not a robot" call reminded me of when I was calling for a state health study and this guy would NOT believe I was NOT a robot. I insisted I wasn't a robot and he insisted that I was. Finally, I said, "Sir, I am NOT a robot." and he shouted, "That's just what a robot would say!" and hung up on me. I went home that night, had a drink, and an existential crisis.

I'm disappointed the giant finger wasn't the middle finger.

His tone on "It's ringing! I think it's for you!" is filled with such gleeful spite. I'm so glad we stole this man from Britain.

The devil works hard, but John Oliver works harder

The thing that I love most about John is that he isn't all talk. He actually fucks with people that desperately need it.

gotta love the irony of generations of people who made prank calls in their youth being terrorized by robocalls as adults

"Hey Tom, could we set up robocalling to spam the fcc? We have a 5000$ budget. - It would take 15min and 10$ a month. - f**k, what are we to do with the rest of the money, build a giant finger to give them?"

I picture a bunch of HBO lawyers smoking nervously in a conference room waiting to hear John's next idea for an episode

This aged well after watching the USPS one where he actually sells stamps lmao

Legend says that, even though the calls ended long ago, Ajit Pai still hears them in his head every 90 minutes. The laugh, the pause, the bagpipe music; it all haunts both his nightmares and his waking thoughts.

I firmly believe John Oliver is the most powerfully chaotic neutral human being on our planet.

I love this petty man and all of his petty antics so goddamn much

would love an update on this i'm losing my mind

Robocalls are so frustrating when you’re looking for a job. Your phone goes off: is it a job interview? Or a robocall? Sometimes a robocall happens while your actively setting up your interview

And this is why Last Week Tonight keeps winning Emmy awards.

It gives me so much life whenever John dumps ass on his parent company.

John Oliver and his team are the definition of chaotic good

"you like that business daddy? Johnny's acting up again" lmfao

Watching it live the Moby Dick chapter was on screen, but the upload removed it so the FCC can't just pause it. Thank you John Oliver.

I work at a relay call center. It's our job to help deaf people process phone calls. When a client calls us and wants us to connect them to someone else, we have to give the receiver of the call a standard introduction, which usually sounds like this: "A person who may be deaf or hard of hearing is calling you through the (state) relay." But thanks to robocalls, there are a lot of times when people think they're getting a robocall from us since we, the operators, are required to adhere to scripted language set up by the FCC. So then they just hang up on us. Sometimes this prevents our clients from being able taking care of important business, like setting up a ride or refilling a prescription.

That bit about “never buying stamps” is infinitely more hilarious knowing that he started selling Last Week Tonight stamps in 2020. I mean, it was for a good cause as I remember, but still.

John: I need a finger. Producer: How big? John: Yes.

In another life, John would have made a phenomenal super villain.

"We made real progress towards solving a problem, then we blew it." America in a nutshell, right there.

Those weird, boarded up mailboxes he was talking about are called relay boxes. A letter Carrier traveling on foot can only carry so much mail. Those boxes do not allow you to drop any further mail into them. Instead they are like lockers bolted to the concrete along a mailing path. Trucks deliver mail to those boxes So that the letter Carrier can unlock them, take out the mail and continue making deliveries without having to go back to the Post Office. It's kind of like a a resupply point for on foot letter carriers.

6:52 I've never seen someone facepalm so hard they tore the elbow of their shirt, or tore anything at all, until now.

The robocaller saying, "There is a live person here", really makes it sound like that robot has a hostage bound and gagged right next to them who could technically still be considered "alive".

I get IRS calls... and I'm in Canada

There’s just something hilarious about John Oliver saying “Goober” 😂

Them: **laughs** I'm a real person Me: **chuckles** I'm in danger

"That's right business daddy, you inherited a problem child... Let's dance" 😄🤣😂

John Oliver is definitely getting nuked when Skynet goes online

HBO: Here's your budget for the week. John: Thanks, but we're actually done. We only needed (tech guy name here). HBO: Oh, okay. You can still have it. Do what you want with it. John: *creates a large hand and button*

A scammer called me and I Rick rolled him.

I sure love posting human comments, as humans do. Please respond with “yes” to agree.

“AT&T won’t hear you at all unless you call on T mobile. That’s right, you inherited a problem child. Let’s dance.” ... “That man is dead now.”

listening to him rant about stamps while looking at the john oliver stamps to my right bc that aged well

I gotta say, the way Johnny keeps roasting AT&T, I got some respect for them taking it on the chin and going with it, Johns roasts are out of this world

"you've inherited a problem child..." I'm dying

me every day: (laughs) I am a real person!

"can you hear me okay?" *NEVER* say yes... They get you to say "YES" into your phone as they are recording you and now they have YOU saying "YES" in YOUR own voice on tape. They can use this to access your technical devices with your own voice giving permission/access to anything with VOICE control/access on it. NEVER say yes

I work tech/customer support in a call center and I had one guy insist that I was a robot throughout the whole call and that I needed tell him one personal thing about me so that he could believe I was real, now I understand that my "customer service voice" is pleasantly bland but the angry insistence that I wasn't a real person was getting to me particularly since we're not supposed to reveal personal information to callers so I gave him one that I was fairly certain I wouldn't get in trouble for sharing, that I'm a retired marine, he thanked me for my service, stopped asking annoying questions and let me do my job and help him with the question he called me about

A man of words and a man of action. Every single episode.

John Oliver saying "Business daddy" is weirdly erotic.

Two things that will never die with Johnny O: him mancrushing Adam Driver and giving it to Business Daddy

I never laugh more than when John roasts AT&T.

One thing i really admire about this show is how they do not just inform and complain about certain issues like so many already do, but they actually take action and annoy the shit out of those responsible. And I know for a fact that people will agree to a lot of things just so that their whiny kids will shut up. So yeah, good luck.

Ugh I love it when John is EXTRA sassy on the main topic

As an ex-Walgreens employee, I’ve actually had people call and ask if we have stamps 😂😂😂

Whenever I get those, I pick them up and answer in Spanish Well, one time it was a real person and she asked really kindly if I needed a Spanish translator I felt bad and hung up, and then got another call later in Spanish😬

It warms my heart to see John using HBO’s money on ridiculous stunts for the greater good.

I get calls all the time for lowering my student debt. I never went to college.

"Don't answer calls from numbers you don't recognize." Yeah, when you are job hunting, that is just not a fucking option.

This is on my sleep playlist and I frequently wake up to that I Am A Real Person (Laughs) convo and it’s not not frightening

Watching this from Germany I might ask: wtf is going on America?

60% of the calls to the FCC are to complain about robocalls. The other 40%.... Robocalls asking for the FCCs moms ssn.

This has to be one of the most beautiful episodes of all. Just beautiful. I love it.

"Mom, what's your social security number, real quick?" "No need to talk to me like that, I just asked!"

John Oliver, you should not call them every 90 minutes. That is not the right thing to do. You should call them every 90 seconds.

Robocalls? Never heard about it. Regards from the EU.

Back in uni, we were working on an app that would pickup a phonecall without ringing your phone, in the background and apart from checking where the number is calling from and if it was flagged as a spam number, it would also ask random automated simple questions to determine if an actual person is talking. After that the phone would ring. We had a crude prototype but mixed results. Perhaps we should restart the project 🤔

Omg. John Oliver literally is an international treasure.

The only thing that is messed up about this is when people actually believe the person on the other end.

Ahhh just watched this after the USPS episode, where he tries to help save the post office with custom stamps 😂

I started getting way, WAY less robocalls when I started telling the scam artists I was dead. I'd wait till they transferred me to an actual live person and tell them, "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but she passed away a few days ago. I'm just hanging on to her phone for a couple days in case her friends who may not know try to call her." It works like a charm. They actually remove the number from the list. They can't scam money from a dead person.

Why is 2019 America a cyberpunk dystopian nightmare but without the cool outfits and holograms?

his relationship with at&t reminds me of my relationship with my stepdad.

John you glorious bastard... You, my friend, are without a doubt and by far the best thing any source of media has to offer.

Not surprised that Ajit Pai is continuing to be a tool. John Oliver, you are a saint.

"There is a live person here" Just made me think of a robot who cannot lie that has a person tied up in the back so she could satisfy her programming.

Meanwhile me in germany i had exactly two robocalls in my entire life. The first one was from the national bureau of statistics and the second was from the robert-koch insititute, both were real people on the other end of the line, both were for the purpose of statistics, both opened with a very polite "do you want to participate in this study?", both ended with "do you want your number erased from our database?"

This is one of my favorites. This was a spicy jar of hilarity.

John truly is Chaotic Good and I love it!!

Bout time I should get some sleep..... * new Last Week Tonight piece pops up in my feed * Who needs sleep?

lol my phone got 200+ robocalls a month. It was a large reason why I refused to pick up the phone at all. Most of them were informing me about my car's warranty expiration date (cute, I don't have a car), but some of them were pretty freakin' scary to listen to the voicemail with. Sure, I knew they were robocalls, but when it's 10AM and you're just having a nice breakfast it's pretty startling to get a voicemail that was saying that I was required to go to court because of a federal offense I'd apparently committed and they needed my social security number. Damn guys feckin' CHILL.

My gosh it’s been YEARS with multiple years and I still guffawed when he said, “That man… is a goober.”

john oliver coming for AT&T is my new fav thing

You like that, business daddy? Johnny's acting up again.. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

John's rant about stamps is even funnier when you see the amount of cash-filled letters he sent during the Televangelist episode. Can't imagine how angry that made him.

I received a robo call right in the middle of this video. It was timed so perfectly. Thanks for the laugh robo caller!

His anger at buying stamps was so real I couldnt even laugh at it. I felt it

*legend says that man is still asking the robot to say "can you please say I am not a robot."*

HBO: "So, you only need money for a medium sized button?" John Oliver: "Yea, no need to overspend this tim..WAIT A MINUTE!"

John and the team - amazing content as always. A concerned European citizen I want to ask for an update on how this robo-prank play out and what were the consequences. Thank you

Robocalls get even more pleasant when you're interviewing for jobs. Naturally, you're expecting calls from companies you applied to and then you end up picking up calls from scam numbers you've been avoiding, thinking it is a potential employer.

John keeps throwing shade on his network’s parent company like there’s no tomorrow!

*robocall* me: "Hello, you have just inadvertently reached a crime scene...the RCMP are monitoring this line and will call you back shortly" *hang-up*

"I would rather get millions of spam calls rather than go out and buy a stamp." 2020, made his own stamp design sheet.

Can you imagine being one of the guys at the FCC watching this and your phone starts ringing right as he presses the button?

John Oliver - the hero we don't deserve, but have

It’s been 3 years and I STILL can’t believe whoever made that giant hand DIDN’T have it use the middle finger to press the button.

The ominous ringing over the swelling music at the end is a cinematic masterpiece

In Europe we dont have that. These people would be in jail so fast, its not even funny. I feel sorry for you guys.

When I get these calls, I always follow the directions and go to the operator who is supposed to sell me the scam. "Hello, my name is-" I cup my hand around the microphone and shout REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! I've heard a 3 headsets be thrown off and one woman was sent backward in her chair. I feel a little sorry for the people but I gotta do what I gotta do. Edit: Make that 4 headsets.

God, I laughed so hard at the 'goober' line. The delivery was impeccable. 😂

They actually put in an address...the love I have for this is unmeasurable

Ajit Pai: "Excuse me, gentlemen, it appears that I may have won a cruise" Let's be honest, folks. The only cruise offers he gets are from ISP lobbyists.

To John and all his staff: You are absolutely fantastic!