Beware the scams. They are everywhere, especially on the internet these days. We've all done it, we've been a bit naive and made a purchase or participated in an investment that went nowhere. And in hindsight was really too good to be true. Normally, we know it's too good to be true. In our gut we feel it. Go with your gut is the lesson of life.
Redditor u/thatdrunkchef wanted to hear from everyone out there about the times our judgement was definitely off by asking... What was the biggest scam you ever fell for?Three months ago I ordered a fabulous, over-the-top, dramatic robe to just lay about the house in. It was seventy percent off, so of course, I bought two. And where is it? Who knows? They keep telling me the order has been shipped. Then they have the audacity to thank me for my purchase. I want my stuff, or my money! I knew it seemed shady.
Student Debt
Charles Dickens Money GIF by INTO ACTIONGiphyThere was a company advertising that they would help people wipe out predatory student loans. Long story short I blew $800 on a company that got shut down by the Gov't for fraudulent practices and was denied a refund.
What's Up Doc?
Spent $250 on Talkspace (got $200 back because I demanded a redund). They (their therapists) waste a week of your time to reply once and reply with a canned response of, "oh that sounds stressful, how is your sleep schedule?" I cannot stress enough how much of a waste of time and money that crap was.
being 20 in London...
These people called me with one of HMRC numbers telling me I didn't pay some taxes, saying they sent lots of letters to my old address to which I never responded.
I didn't know they could make me see the number they wanted. After a quick check on the government website I saw that the number was the same and I believed them. I was 20 yo and living in London on my own. I gave them 1000£ and never felt so stupid in my life.
The Download
angry man GIFGiphyI downloaded all the cool new mouse cursors and my parent's computer was never the same again.
Edit: To those asking/lending a helping hand, this was before even the word "iPod" existed.
Losing Pennies
Not too bad I lost 35 bucks. I fell for those stores on Instagram.
I was just getting on it so I didn't know most were scam stores. Because I followed some small retailers that I already bought from.
I thought it was the same thing. Website was or looked legit but I never got my boots.
Smart too because I got it from them because they were 15 bucks cheaper. Not some crazy amount that made you question it.
Luckily I paid with PayPal. It could've been worse if they had my credit card information.
Yeah see, we all have to be a bit smarter when shelling out our coins. Think longer and harder. And don't get me started on the scam that is student loans in general...
The Who's Who Debacle
When I was in high school (early '70s), my English teacher announced that a publisher was having a poetry contest, and the best entries would appear in a poetry journal. Several of us in class submitted our work and anxiously awaited the results.
Surprise! ALL our entries were accepted -- the good ones and the really bad ones. At first we were ecstatic. Then we found out that each of us had to pay to get a copy of the journal. What a scam. Even our English teacher got snookered.
The Who's Who publications worked the same way.
In Yen
I wouldn't say I fell for it but while walking around Tokyo I was stopped by this monk who explained that he was traveling the country on foot and asked for a monetary donation. When it was clear I'd help him out, he pulls out a money book and shows me what people generally give him and to write my name down next to them along with the money amount. It was full of big numbers clearly going into the hundreds and thousands of dollars. It's implied that I should match those donations otherwise I'm clearly not a good person.
Realized it was an immediate scam, and a very obvious one.
He then waits for me to pay up and I gave him the equivalent of $5. 500 yen. He kinda looked at me like I just insulted him and I walked away. I checked google later that night and apparently he was a well known scammer in the area. Made a topic about it at the time and seems I'm not the only person
https://www.japan-guide.com/forum/quereadisplay.html?0+118849.
Backstabber
Mom And Pop Music Smoking GIF by DMA'SGiphyMy former best friend and his dad cheated me out of my money to invest in their company. When I asked for a contract, his dad said, "Between true friends, words aren't necessary."
When they started making money, I asked for my money back, and they said they didn't owe me a thing.
After Dad
Right after my dad died I got a call from a number I didn't know. They left a voice mail saying they needed my social security number so they could pay out a life insurance policy to me. I was 21 and super inexperienced with stuff like this. So I did what any real adult would do.
I asked my mom for advice.
She told me it was legit and to give them my SS number. I had a weird feeling about it but if my mom said it was ok then it must be ok. I did it. I called back and gave the guy that answered my SS number.
I never got a check but my mom suddenly did from a policy my dad "forgot" to take her off of even though they had been divorced years before. She did give my 10k but I'm 100% positive it was worth way more and she had something to do with it all. We don't talk anymore for various reasons including this one.
Thanks for Listening...
Money Win GIF by InternetBetaGiphyI went to buy a Rolling Stones ticket from a scalper years ago (i know, i know) and he talked me into a VIP Backstage Pass. He said that's all I need! Free food, booze, all the perks. He insisted the sticker was all I needed to get in, no paper ticket necessary.
So a few hours later I go to the show, obviously can't get in - it was a VIP pass from the night before. There was no date on it, just a different shape.
I try every single gate hoping someone won't notice/not care and finally try the media entrance. The nice lady ushered me right in, I took an elevator up to the main concourse and I was free as a bird. I didn't have a seat obviously but I snuck down to the floor and ended up having a great show.
Still feel burned by the stupid idiot to this day tho. I've seen him at other shows (nice neck tattoo of a fish, you freakin' jerk) and I always mess with him.
Thanks for listening.
What have we learned? Trust nothing and no one. Ok, that's dramatic, but definitely trust a little bit less. And if someone can help me get my robes I'd be eternally grateful.
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Reddit user GCanuck asked:
"Which historically famous person do you think would be most surprised to learn they are famous?"
If your mind immediately went to that Vincent Van Gogh scene from Dr. Who then 1. you're a nerd (me too!) and 2. you're not alone.
Here's what Reddit had to say.
The Little Painter Fellow
Van Gogh Reaction GIF by GIF IT UPGiphy"Vincent van Gogh."
"His paintings made billions of dollars for rich people, but couldn't trade a painting for a meal during his lifetime. Had to be supported by his brother."
- strangedigital
"It’s amazing how many pieces he created in such a short time considering how unsuccessful he was in selling them while alive. He kept banging them out despite his 'failure'.”
- Fthewigg
"He was encouraged to paint as part of his therapy/rehabilitation. He was a pretty disturbed guy, and not in a romantic way."
- redkat85
"Have you ever seen the Doctor Who episode about him?"
- LucyVialli
"This is what actually prompted this question for me."
- GCanuck
A Diary
"Anne Frank"
- 222sick
"Most of the world has read your diary."
"Wait...All of my diary?"
- SuperstitiousPigeon5
"Her Father censored some of it because she talks about her body and other things, I can't really blame him for that. Modern prints are uncensored."
- zerbey
"She’d have been thrilled, but I don’t think surprised is the right word. She dreamed of being a published author. She knew that she was creating something valuable and important with her diary, and she wanted it to be published."
- shhhhquiet
"I wonder what she'd think of her diary being turned into a stage play including a Broadway run and thousands of young girls doing their best to recreate all the different facets both good and bad of how she acted during her time in the Annex."
- Lil_Jazzy
Herman The Whale
bart simpson episode 3 GIFGiphy"Herman Melville."
"He had a few early successes with seafaring books, but Moby-Dick was a total flop that got bad reviews, and he spent the final decades of his life working in the customs department."
"He would be shocked to hear he wrote the Great American Novel."
- centaurquestions
"My boyfriend is from New Bedford, MA. Apparently the local high schools there had big murals depicting scenes from Moby Dick." "
*That* would have amazed Melville."
- DoctorWatchamacallit
"Dude, that's the best part. You never know what's coming next. It's like:"
"45 pages of unintentionally hilarious interactions between Ishmael and Queequeg."
"30 pages of incredible, brooding drama written in stage play format for some reason."
"100 page essay about some minor technical details about whaling and how some village built their chieftain's hall out of a whale's ribcage."
"Another 20 pages of Ahab chewing the scenery and embodying mankind's self-destructive obsessions"
"Then Queequeg speaking his last words but then deciding he doesn't want to die yet and miraculously springing back to life."
"Like the ocean itself, you have to accept that Moby Dick moves at its own pace lol"
- jesushitlerchrist
We, In Fact, Did Not Forget
"Hegelochus, an actor who mispronounced a word in a play in the year 408 BC and was mocked so thoroughly for it, his mistake has made it into the collective ledger of things historians know about and generally agree upon having happened… and we're still aware of it over 2,400 years later."
"Imagine making a meme today with a word misspelled, and others found that misspelling so egregiously mockable that you are still known for it in the year 4422."
- film_composer
" 'Oh come on get over it. No one will remember about that by tomorrow' -Hehelochus’ mom probably"
- Kehl21
"He must have went to sleep running the moment in his head over and over again, but he probably tried to comfort himself by thinking, 'well, at least it's not like some space-age hyper-futuristic society is going to be discussing this thousands of years from now on their magic boxes powered by lightning in some language that doesn't even exist yet'."
- film_composer
"This is the worst nightmare of everyone that has been told to stop worrying because no one will pay as much attention to what you're doing as you."
"Counter point: Hegelochus."
- LectureAfter8638
Kafkaesque
"Kafka. Rarely published in his lifetime, and when he did it was in obscure magazines which nobody read."
"Explicitly asked that his works be destroyed after his death. It's only because his executor disregarded his wishes and published his unfinished works (which comprise the majority of his oeuvre) that he is famous today."
- IllustriousSquirrel9
"Kafka is a good example of how much can anxiety ruin a person's life"
- Sergey32321
"Kafka wrote his stories to be shared with a group of friends like story-telling at a campfire"
- Responsible_Put_2960
Gospel Legend
"Blind Willie Johnson."
"He passed away blind, poor and sick, lying in the ruins of his house after it was burnt down."
"And his song 'Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground' left our solar system not too long ago aboard the Voyager to be listened to by life among the stars."
- dntExit
"I really like to think one day-thousands and thousands of years in the future, an alien race will find that golden disk and hear his voice."
"I think the fact he had such a poor life but could one day live eternally amongst the stars is so beautiful."
- gonzomullz
"Found out about him through a VSauce video."
"I listened to a couple songs and really liked them, he had a great voice and had a great talent for playing guitar despite being blind. Such a humbling and inspiring story he had"
- HRPr03
"I remember learning about this in a Vsauce video and crying profusely afterwards, but not only from sadness, also from hope, and some other emotions I can’t possibly describe."
"The fact that he died at the lowest of lows, blind, sick, poor, and alone, yet he very well could be the man that teaches the stars about the very essence of humanity… there’s just something so intrinsically beautiful about that."
"Humanity, flawed as it is, is as intrinsically kind and beautiful as it is evil. The world forgets that sometimes."
- cmoneybouncehouse
Other Madonna
mona lisa oh no you didnt GIFGiphy"Lisa Gherardini, the Mona Lisa model."
"She was just some unremarkable random wife. Fast forward a few hundred years and she ended up as one of the most recognizable faces in history."
- finsareluminous
"HER NAMES NOT EVEN MONA LISA?!"
- Jaded-Associate6891
" 'Monna' was a shortening of the Italian word 'madonna', which was the equivalent of the English 'Madam'."
- Koifish_Coyote
Honor Well Pass Death
"Glyndwr Michael"
"This is the dead body they used in Operation Mincemeat."
"The man basically consumed rat poison to commit suicide."
"His corpse was then used for a British secret operation to carry fake documents for the Nazis to find in order to make them think they were invading Greece and not Sicily."
"This man died in a alleyway and went on the become a dedicated Major in the British military buried with full military rites - under his fake name, but still him in physical form."
- TheBabyLeg123
"He was originally buried under his covert identity (in Spain where his body washed ashore after being deposited in the sea nearby by a Royal Navy submarine), Major William Martin of the Royal Marines."
"In 2009 or thereabouts his real name (Glyndwr Michael) was added to his gravestone."
- BravoBanter
"I thought he died of tuberculosis so it’d be more convincing he was a British serviceman who drowned? Or maybe that was the guy used to make the Nazis think the Allies were invading Calais instead of Normandy."
- UnconstrictedEmu
"It was rat poison but it's not clear if it was a suicide."
"The poison was in the form of a paste that would be smeared on pieces of bread; rodents eat the bread, rodents die. Or in this case; poor Welshman eats the bread, poor Welshman dies."
"It's not clear whether he knew the paste was poison, or whether he was just hungry and thought he genuinely found some bread lying around."
"Where the confusion comes in is that the guy in charge of Mincemeat claimed the body was that of a young man who died of pneumonia, and that the parents had given permission for his body to be used as it was."
- ConstableBlimeyChips
A Real Hero
"Henrietta Lacks"
- LucyVialli
"A literal hero of humanity who in some ways is still alive."
"Her family deserved so much better though."
- AzureBluet
"Can I get a short version? I don't think I've heard of her before"
- Fyrrys
"Her contribution to science is and continues to be gigantic"
- Available-Age2884
Laws Of Inheritance
"Gregor Mendel, the monk and scientist who experimented with pea plant traits to describe what we today literally call Mendelian inheritance."
"The significance of Mendel's findings, which he published in 1866, went almost completely unrecognized during his life and after his death. His work was only rediscovered in the early 1900s when modern ideas about inheritance and selection started taking hold."
- ThadisJones
"I can differ there. When he first stated his theory, he was sure it was correct (as it was) but was rejected. I can imagine him not being surprised at the fact that his work was re recognised as right later down the line"
- Brother_Not_Shook
"It's entirely possible you're correct and Mendel suspected that someday he'd be proved right. At the same time, however, he spent decades after his discovery trying and failing to elicit interest from the academic public or individual biologists, and retired from science to become a monastery administrator, which looks a lot like 'giving up'."
- ThadisJones
Okay, so we learned some interesting history today. How about you?
Don't you love a good myth?
Us too.
Let's put some of NSFW ones to the test.
RedditorWizzlyG33wanted to hear about what lies need to be exposed when it comes to sex, death and all things over the top in life. They asked:
"If MythBusters had a NSFW episode, what would you want to see on it?"
Oh Jamie
Season 1 Love GIF by OutlanderGiphy"A five second segment where Jamie points at a diagram and says, in complete deadpan, 'This is where the clitoris is.'"
TheFeelsGoodMan
"If they did such an episode, I could see this being in it for sure."
Chubby_Bub
BUSTED!
"I want them to purchase every pill they see on the internet that would make their penis bigger and see what happens."
tkepongo
"I think we can call that one BUSTED already. In what version of any world can you imagine there is a simple pill to make your junk more impressive and every dude you know doesn't already have a case of 10000 pills stashed under the bed?"
_Alternate_Throwaway
Don't Sit
"Can you actually get an STD from a toilet seat?"
BloodyChapel
"This is an interesting thing actually. It was a myth deliberately perpetuated to make people less ashamed of asking for STD tests."
leonielion
"Fun fact: There are multiple STDs that can be dormant (like inactive) for years. Like several years."
"You’d never know you had gotten it. Then something triggers it, maybe an infection or something, and then you start showing symptoms/Can now test positive. So technically a partner from years before could have given it to you and you either think your SO is cheating or haven’t been with anybody in a long time. Either way it’s scary when you think about it."
DesperateMango1731
After Death
"Does a person really stay conscious for a few moments after beheading?"
SammyGotStache
"There was a French physician who tested this in the early 1900s. After a criminal was beheaded he picked up the head and shouted the criminal's name. The guy opened his eyes and made eye contact with the physician over a period of 30 seconds whenever his name was called. Edit: I provided the source in other comments but here it is on the original comment."
UnadulteratedWalking
Theories
looking down homer simpson GIFGiphy"Size correlates to what? Feet? Nose? So many theories."
throwxxawayxx10977
"I have size 12 feet and a massive nose and huge hands and the little guy is small."
FireTrickle
Oh the lies and the rumors and the shade.
More is More
Seth Meyers Dancing GIF by Late Night with Seth MeyersGiphy"They did prove that women with larger breasts will get more tips. Which isn’t really not safe for work, because Kari literally was working at a coffee shop."
Unsettleingpresence
"If breast enlargements will help your job would you be able to write them off on your taxes?"
Mr3k
Deep Down
"How deep underwater are you still able to orgasm?"
Successful_Present39
"Pretty sure there's no lower limit. When you're underwater, your body is under pressure, but for the most part doesn't actually get compressed. Only your air spaces (lungs, sinuses, inner ears) are really subject to compression from ambient water pressure. There can be painful exceptions like air pockets inside a tooth filling, which I do not recommend experiencing."
"Most of your body is water or various solids, which push back on the ambient water pressure. You prostate shouldn't be blocked by water pressure any more than your bladder is. Source: am old scuba diver, I've done all kinds of things a hundred feet underwater. At that depth the ambient pressure is 4 bar, which in olden-tymes units is nearly 60 pounds per square inch. Also: fish do it underwater, doesn't seem to stop them."
UlrichZauber
Tasting Men
"Does pineapple make your semen taste better?"
TMNT4lyfe
Keep Thinking
"Post orgasm clarity: How much better can you solve puzzles or remember something?"
texanaftdy
"Well, recently I did a lot of reaction time tests on humanbenchmark.com and while normally I get average of around 140-145, after a good O I consistently got around 130-135, very often getting single clicks close to 120 which almost never happens in other cases. And it's weird because I feel more tired but apparently my reaction time improves for some reason."
berni2905
Safety First
Safety Helmet GIF by Just SecondsGiphy"A take on the top ten OSHA violations list to see if they are as dangerous as they say."
Mariuxpunk007
"Safety regulations are written in blood."
GegenscheinZ
Well that is a ton of great suggestions. Let's work on it.
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Make the most with what makes you happy
"I've learned to enjoy my own company and focus on my hobbies."
"Funny enough, this gives me stuff to talk about when I am around people."
Voices in the background
"Listening to people talk on YouTube so I feel less alone in my house."
Millions of friends, just one click away.
"Chat with random people on Reddit."
internet computer GIFGiphyStill figuring it out
"I don't I'm f*cking miserable."- Savathunh
"I don't :("- __MashedPotatoes__·
Get my body movin'
"Working out."
"It makes me feel better about myself and I have something to do alone."- DerpBread69
Gym Working Out GIF by Chance The RapperGiphyWho says I need to?
"I love solitude."- Befuddled_GenXer
solitude GIFHit the snooze button
"Sleep 12+ hours a day."- RockandRoll682
Instant tension and relief
"Lots of arguing online about sh*t I don't care about at all, just to have some form of social interaction, and get off at least 3 times a day."-
There are very few worse feelings than that of being alone.
But it's also quite remarkable how much doing something that makes you happy, be it ever so simple, can elevate your feelings.