That last bit reminds me of a prank that my friends and I used to play in high school in the 90s. We would make a Beigebox, which is just a normal landline phone with alligator clips on the cord instead of the normal connector. You could use the alligator clips to attach the beigebox to someone's phone line from the exterior of their house, at the phone junction box. We would do this, take the phone off the hook and hide it. Their phone would be tied up until they found and disconnected it. Sometimes it would take them days (or contacting the phone company from another line) to find the issue. If we were feeling particularly malicious, we would dial internationally or a 900 number instead of just leaving it off the hook.

Reading this back now, I feel like to Gen Z this prank reads like "In the previous century, I would play a naughty trick by filling the chamber pot of mine enemy with adobe so that it cannot be cleaned."