I worked with a guy that would tell people that coax needed to be "released to ground" occasionally, by unhooking the cable and putting your thumb over the end. That's how he made sure people were disconnecting and reconnecting the cable from the back of the box. He also told someone that "data might be trapped in the Ethernet cord" and advised they unplug it from both ends and swing it around their head in a circle to "loosen the stuck bits and clear the line"...
I think the idea is that average people have no clue what color they are. So they'd be forced to take it out to check and thus have to restart their PC. It's a trick!
Altho, maybe I'm misunderstanding something because all the pins of all the electrical cords I've ever seen have been silver?
I'd make up some BS about an old version of the product using brass or copper, and newer versions using aluminum or iron, so knowing the color will help me know how to fix it