Hold onto your money friends!
No matter how often you warn them, people will usually never fully listen.
The amount of time I've seen people waste in line for scratch offs alone, tells you all you need to know.
But it's time to wise up.
Don't let yourself be swindled.
Redditor wa8808 wanted to discuss all the ways we're being bamboozled by asking how to spot the signs:
"What's a scam that people think isn't a scam?"
It's always good to know how to the scammers.
BBB
Wall Street Friends GIF by Imagine DragonsGiphy"That the Better Business Bureau is part of the government and doesn't have any power to resolve fraud and other issues, rather than what it is. Which is a private marketing firm."
boofaceleemz
Ingredients
"Supplements or drinks that remove 'toxins' from your body. Your body already does that."
urbexcemetery
"Especially the ones with stuff like activated charcoal, which can mess with your ability to absorb a myriad of actual prescription medicines."
smollest_snek
"My relatives got super into MLM cleanses that remove toxins. They kept pushing really hard for me to try them."
"I looked up the ingredients and 1/3 were known carcinogens. The best part is they kept saying how I was full of toxins. To give you context, at that point I was drinking filtered water, growing almost all my food in my organic permaculture food forest, avoiding driving and cities when possible, etc. They were doing: alcohol, cigarettes, fast food, prescription painkillers recreationally, etc."
BaylisAscaris
Playing with coins...
"The auction websites where items apparently sell for WAY under market value. Like a PS5 going for $5. The thing is, you do actually pay $5 for a PS5 if you win, that's not the scam."
"The scam is that you have to pay for bids. You'll buy a set of bids for say $50. Then you'll just never win a bidding war or it'll take way more bids than you thought it would."
"I'm sure the websites themselves have fake users that are guaranteed to win, as well, so it's just farming bids, which is farming your money."
"If you get hooked, just like any other type of gambling, they will ring you for thousands and thousands of dollars in bids, while you 'win' nowhere near that value of the bids."
Patsfan618
Gauge it...
"High end speaker cables. To be able to afford to put silver in them, they make the gauge really small. Wire gauge is the biggest decider of how much signal gets to the speaker (resistance in ohms) and how different the signal is from the original (distortion). The truth is that going from 22 gauge (what a lot of snake oil cable companies use) to 16 gauge."
"Which isn't even that thick, but definitely enough for most in home cable runs) is going to have waaaaay more of an effect on resistance, and as a result distortion, than going from a really conductive (copper) to a slightly more really conductive (silver) material inside the cables."
clyspe
Make you money
Curb Your Enthusiasm Bingo GIF by Jason ClarkeGiphy"Those bingo games that supposedly 'make you money.' When I worked at Taco Bell, two of my managers would always play those kind of games. In order to win you have to pay for currency to use in order to play bingo… they were paying $20 to win $5."
GuideSad2361
I'll never stop playing Bingo! Scam or not.
Pay it Forward
Schitts Creek Do Not Want GIF by CBCGiphy"Send me 50 bucks and I will send you a list of all the scams out there."
Good_Swordfish_3736
"Sorry, I can't send money now, because the bank needs 500 dollars to unlock the 500,000 dollars I inherited. If you send me 500 dollars, I can pay you!"
Batavijf
Look Up Doc
"Vision Insurance. It is an eye doctor coupon you pay for in advance to get your one discount to use each year to bring inflated prices back to normal."
shazwazzle
"So random trick we do at the eye doctor. We tell them we don’t have insurance, they then give you store discounts. Then I just submit the receipt for reimbursement to my insurance."
"My daughters contacts and appointment this year I was only out of pocket $17 after I got the insurance check. Only catch is you have to be able to pay the cost up front, and wait 4-6 weeks for reimbursement. If I would have used my insurance in the store my total was like $120 after insurance. Super weird."
Awkward-Train1584
Used Data
"Any guarantee or purchase that ends with 'unlimited.'"
"As Scotty would say in Star Trek 'you canna break the laws of physics.'"
karo_scene
"Found this one out with my unlimited 4G turns out when I used over 2TB of data I got an angry message to knock it off. (To be fair I was using my phone as a hotspot for like 5 people for a month long while we were on vacation... lol)."
CMDR-Serenitie
Fortune
"Plenty of these 'super investment guru' ads in the Internet (if not all)."
GabThePretto"
"I have here the key to that treasure chest, inside is a vast fortune, but I could open it myself, but instead I'm going to sell the key to you for but a pittance."
"This scam hasn't changed since the dawn of money, yet people fall for it in every epoch dressed up in a different dollar store Halloween costume."
McCheeseTruther
"When the gold rush hit, the vast majority of people digging for gold didn’t make the money. The people selling the shovels did."
HeyYoPaul
Love Search
Sad Talk To Me GIF by SpongeBob SquarePantsGiphy"Those 'courses' that are meant to teach sad lonely dudes to pick up women."
anxiousjellybean
Beware the scam. They're everywhere!
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.