Dunno what made me think of this just now. When I worked for IT in a school district way back in the 90s, a librarian told me she kept a supply of mouse balls in her desk because kids would steal them out of the school computers. What I remember about those balls was they picked up dust and crud off surfaces. Pretty soon optical mice came along and they were history.
You can do the same thing with an optical mouse.
https://images6.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED3/515b47490eeda.jpeg
When I worked for a big IT consultant, the internal marketing department (why does that exist?) was tasked with promoting a new touch device. They had the genius idea of making stickers with “The mouse is dead” and a product link. Early one morning, they went around to every desk and put these stickers over the mouse lasers.
It took about 30 minutes for everyone to figure out why every mouse in the building had stopped working. There was urgent work that had to be done. People were furious.
That’s an impressive display of marketing prowess. You’ll never forget it, regardless of how stupid it was.