Plugging a guitar straight into the microphone jack

Hey guys,
I decided to mess around with garage band by taking a 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch audio jack adapter and plugging my guitar straight into my macbook, then selecting the "internal input" option for the track source. My question is: will this hurt something inside my macbook?
My initial instinct was 'no', because no power comes from the guitar. However, i noticed that sometimes if i were to play loudly, the recording gets all distorted and crackly. It sounds terrible. Is this going to hurt something in the computer?

it shouldn't damage anything,
you can reduce the input signal level and thus avoid distortions

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