A woman has been using Tesla’s dog mode for years and always thought she used the mic to talk to them, until she heard Darth Vader say ‘Bad Girl’

For years, a TikTok user named Nikki (ohhelloitsnikki) thought she was talking to her dogs through the Tesla app while the car was in Dog Mode. In a video with almost a million views, she said an outdoor meal made her realize she had been accidentally shouting at strangers in parking lots instead. Nikki explained that when her chores ran long, she would check on her dogs, Willow and Arwen, through the Tesla camera on the phone app.

“Occasionally I’ll use the microphone next to the app to talk to them and say, ‘Good girls!’ Or if Willow’s chewing on her leash, I’ll be like, ‘Bad girl,’” she told her viewers. She said she had done this for three years, even making “kissy noises,” although her pets acted like they never heard her. The day before her post, Nikki said they stopped for lunch and left the dogs in the car to keep them from being overstimulated.

When she checked the camera, she saw Willow chewing on her leash, opened the app, and used the microphone to say “Bad girl!” She heard her own voice booming across the patio and realized the car had been broadcasting her voice to everyone outside for years. As she put it, “So every time I’ve been at Whole Foods and said, ‘Good girl,’ I hope a good girl was not walking by the car because Darth Vader just yelled good girl as they walked by.”

The parking lot broadcasts turned into a running joke in the comments

In the post’s comments, one user noted, “girl you’ve been traumatizing the entire parking lots for years and you didn’t even know it.” Another commenter remarked, “Some poor old person probably thought they finally had lost it walking by your car!” Some viewers unfamiliar with Tesla’s features wondered why the car has an outside speaker at all.

Dog Mode keeps the cabin at a set temperature while the car is locked so pets stay comfortable while owners are away, according to Motorpoint. Tesla’s Boombox feature lets owners play sounds outside the car through an external speaker, which is mandated in electric vehicles for pedestrian safety, per Bimmer Tech. Tesla later added a megaphone option that broadcasts the driver’s voice through that same speaker with voice effects layered on, Electrek reported. Tesla rolled out the megaphone in a software update, and Elon Musk has also teased flight capabilities for the Roadster.

After multiple requests for a demonstration, Nikki posted a follow-up video recording what her voice sounds like through the speaker. One viewer who watched it urged others to go see it “because it’s so much worse than you think.”

Nikki said, “Hello,” and “Good girl,” only to be met with a loud, distorted broadcast from the car. She admitted, “I didn’t think it was going to be that loud,” adding that she was surprised she had not been banned from local stores.

In her original video, she had told her viewers, “Creepy is the best kind of feeling to be and to be described as, but like, on my terms. These were not on my terms. I don’t like to be accidentally creepy.” She signed off her caption with “Sorry Ladies.”