Altho I started playing Pokémon in GSC, it wasn't until FR/LG when I did some serious stupid shit. I had no means to verify the information I got, Internet wasn't a thing (thats not to say Internet didn't exist, but from us who were born in the early 90s or late 80s, Internet wasn't a thing in our houses right away like its now, and also information wasn't as widely spread and verified; now you can know every single detail about the content of any game even before its official release), and so everything had to be proven by myself.
It was at the time Deoxys was being distributed in some provinces of Spain. I couldn't go to said events and my father couldn't take me there either, so my only option was to send the game. I wasn't able to do so because one of the requisites was to wrap the game in a "bubble envelope". I didn't know what the fuck was a bubble envelope but, because I had played Pokémon games, I wronly assumed it was an envelope with bubbles in its design. I invested hours upon hours looking for a bubble envelope to no success. And before you ask: "who is it that the dependant never got what you really wanted?" In spanish, there's a strong difference between the prepositions "de" and "con". What I was asking for was a "sobre CON burbujas", in fact, I was asking for a "sobre con diseño de burbujas" or something amongst that line, but what I needed was a "sobre DE burbujas", which btw is this:
https://www.embalara.com/367-large_default/sobre-acolchado-burbujas-220x330.jpg
So my friend, who's clever than me, asked his mom and was able to send the game and get the Deoxys. After he got his Deoxys, I was more desperate than ever to get mine (remember Emerald release was after FR/LG, and we can't clone the mon), and he came with an absurd idea to give me hope. He told me that If I got every Unown in alphabetical order, I'd fight Deoxys and catch him. After some days catching every single Unown in alphabetical order (in FR/LG) I ask him what the fuck should I do with Unown "?" and "!", what was the correct order. I don't remember exactly what he told me but it was a fkn lie anyway. I got nothing, of course. He just answered something like "no sé tío..." (idk dude...). I'd never recover the lifespan I lost there.
Another really stupid thing I did was in DPPl. I didn't know shit about IVs and EVs and some random day I learnt about the second. But! I didn't get to the real point of it. I mean, I knew there was something called EVs that made your Pokémon grow stronger, but I didn't know what the limit was or how were they applied. I bought an Action Replay and started catching wild mons at hight levels, the point being I caught things like lvl 40+ Slaking. That Slaking had no EVs, so when it leveled from level 40 to level 41, its attack jumped in like 17 points. Just imagine my face when I saw a fucking +10+ in 1 stat. I inmediatly did my calcs: if the mon has 202 attack and every level it gets +10, i'll end up with 802 attack OMG. But I couldn't take a photo because I didn't have my own phone (I feel so fkn old lol), so what I did was close the Nintendo DS to put it in stand by mode, and WAIT for my friend to show him the NDS screen (paused at the very moment of the level up). Now picture this everytime a Pokémon got some crazy level up stat like +22 or things like that for legendaries (because some of them were lvl 70 with 0 Evs, so they got a lof of gaining after leveling), me waiting for my friends, sometimes for a couple of hours, sometimes for entire days without playing nor touching the NDS, to show them the mon that would finally end up with 900 in 1 stat.