FREDERICKSBURG, VA — A local man reportedly discovered this week that his home WiFi router has been unplugged since 2023, a revelation that sources say has "shaken him to his core" but also "explained a lot."

Gerald Hutchins, 54, made the discovery Tuesday after his teenage daughter visited for the first time since the pandemic and asked why the internet was "giving 2003 energy."

"I just thought websites were getting simpler," Hutchins told reporters from his living room, gesturing vaguely at a laptop running on mobile data he didn't know he was paying for. "Honestly, everything loaded about the same."

Hutchins reportedly spent the last three years believing that YouTube's inability to play videos was "a design choice" and that his email's failure to sync was "probably a Microsoft thing."

The Discovery

The router, a Netgear unit purchased in 2019, was found behind a bookshelf with its power cable neatly coiled — apparently unplugged during a spring cleaning session Hutchins has no memory of.

"I vacuumed back there once," he admitted. "Maybe twice."

Neighbors expressed no surprise at the revelation. "Gerald once called the fire department because his smoke detector was beeping," said longtime neighbor Patricia Wells. "Turned out it needed a battery. He'd been ignoring it for eight months."

The Fallout

Hutchins' cellular carrier, reached for comment, confirmed that his phone had been consuming approximately 847 GB of mobile data per month since 2023, resulting in overage charges that Hutchins described as "the phone bill, I guess."

When asked if he planned to plug the router back in, Hutchins paused for several seconds before responding: "I mean, do I need to? Everything works."

At press time, Hutchins was reportedly trying to stream a movie on his phone using his neighbor's WiFi, which he believed was "just the regular internet."