
Have you ever looked around at your life and suddenly wondered "Holy crap, what did I get myself into?" Most of us had that moment about a friends-with-benefits situation that got a little too comfortable, or that math class you totally weren't ready to take ... then there are these people.
Reddit user jhossuah asked:
People who were part of a cult, when did guy realize "oh, I'm in a cult"?
These folks all came to the realization that were in WAY over their heads. For some it was a literal religious cult, for other people the "cult" took other forms. For at least one person the cult took some weird left turn and ended up with people "writhing" together to the Prince Of Egypt soundtrack.
No, we're not joking.
Things are about to get weird, real weird - the kind of weird that only happens when you start talking about cults. Essentially, we're telling you to brace for a hard-hitting awesome/awful combo pack.
Standing Ovation
When I went to some Scientology event was told I would really enjoy and there's a standing ovation for the founder literally every 5 minutes.
The Evil Other
When they said,"Don't hangout with non-Jehova's Witness people, they are evil." I was in that organization for a long time I was clueless about everything.
I hope it falls down one day.
Middle Aged Ladies In Tie Dye
When I was 17-18 my friends and I (guys and girls) were big hippie stoners, and we would go to this active meditation dance event with the hippie crowd in our city. Then this one time we attended a "private event" called an "intensive" where all these new-agers kind of broke us down and got us to talk a lot about our sexuality and everybody was crying and whatnot.
I left feeling like "that was weird" and then a few kids in my crew went to another one. They reported that it was different in that there were more adults, everybody wore all white, and that at one point they rolled out a TV with a video of Sri Bagavan Osho Rajneesh talking. They were long dead by then, and everyone started yelling, "we love you Osho!!! We love you!"
At that point I was like yeah, probably weird that I'd been spending so much time with middle age ladies in tie dye tights trying to bang me. Taught me how to like dancing, though.
- TerH2
No Photography
I was a part of Sogga Gokkai International, they never really followed Buddhist philosophy, and were quite materialistic. I realized it was a cult when we were to all watch a video from our "president " and we were not allowed to record it or film anything. That's when I realized I was in a cult. Look them up.
Amway Strikes Again
I accepted an invitation to a seminar at the local convention center to learn about how to add some financial stability to my life. It was an Amway recruitment meeting. And I was very ashamed because this was the second time in my life that I got tricked into attending an Amway recruitment meeting. There were obvious ringers in the crowd, even though everyone sitting were supposedly newcomers. I could identify the ringers by their irrationally enthusiastic clapping, and by their frequent use of Amway GlisterMint (tm) Refresher Spray.
- panzan
The Whole Shin-Dig
Grew up Mormon. Did the whole shin-dig:
-Mormon missionary
-Married in the HOLY temple
-Only dated members
-Went to BYU
-Had kids immediately to fulfill my holy gender and didn't finish my career at the behest of church leaders telling me that motherhood is the "holiest calling on earth."
Then when I was around 28 yrs old I found a video about polyandry (men marrying already married women) and I was taken aback. It got me to actually research my religion for the first time.
That was a bomb to my faith and I spent hours upon hours reading the history of the "Spaceballs of Christianity." Basically, I found out the church was founded on pedophilia and adultery.
Left the church. Took my kids out. Marriage suffered a lot and luckily my husband ended up doing his own research and he left as well.
We lost all our friends, community and it destroyed our business that was dependent on other members since we live in Utah. Where we live, it's 80% Mormon and we endured a lot of slander and harassment, even from our own families. It's been hell but it's heaven on the other side.
But let me tell you that it was a learning curve to see how to navigate life outside the cult. I had to learn to order coffee. I had to spend a few hours shopping for clothes since I didn't know my own style out of "Holy underwear." My political views changed 180 and we are now fully tattooed, raising our kids to be unique individuals and made friends with those that love us for us. Marriage was suffering and dying when in the church and we managed to recover and start anew. I'd like to renew our vows since we were robbed of a real ceremony.
You follow a strict list of rules your entire life and then you leave. You discover yourself outside the cult propaganda of who they tell you to be. Living life now is a deep breathe of fresh air.
100 Rounds With Rocky
I was at the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and they told everyone to stand up like usual at the beginning of a show, and they said "anyone who has seen the show 100 times, sit down," and I did, and that's when I knew I was in a cult.
Owned By The School
I recently enrolled at a "private school" which ended up being more of an elitist cult than a school. We were given an orientation lecture and had to listen to the dean speak. I knew it was a cult or cult-like when the dean said to us,
"When someone asks you who you are, say to them... I come from (school name), I am (school name), (School name) is me."
and then he said "say it with me,"
And then we had to repeat his words saying that our school was our identity. When utilizing career services, we also were required to include the school's logo on the top of our resumé, as if they owned us or something.
Wow, They Really Liked That Soundtrack
I didn't realize I was in a cult until years after I left. I was heavily involved for about a year from ages 15 to 16. The group claimed to be an offshoot of a local Assemblies of God church, but they had no oversight from the church as far as I could tell. The offshoot itself was called "Revive", which sounded innocent enough to me, and there was no literal attempt to raise the dead.
I'm almost certain the group disbanded after a few years, especially since the AoG church vacated town too.
My parents stopped me from attending their cult meetings when they realized that one of our practices was akin to a clothed orgy, not even knowing that weirder things were afoot.
Practices of the cult:
- The aforementioned "clothed orgy" - where we would stand or crouch together, sometimes in a "human furniture" type position, and writhe against each other to the Prince of Egypt soundtrack
- A "new bible", that didn't include too much blasphemous content, but contained such gems as "why God never intended for us to have fun"
- To prove our collective devotion to God, some members would voluntarily "sacrifice" their comfort in the form of setting their clothes on fire or making themselves vomit
- Glossolalia, hypnotism, and the occasional bit of physical violence (i.e. wrestling someone to the ground) when the hypnotism didn't work
- Exhortation from the adults involved that we were not to tell our parents about what was happening
Why I stayed in the cult:
- Peer pressure, mostly
- A huge crush on one of the auxiliary youth pastors, a man who now runs a polyamorous "intentional community"
- It honestly didn't feel too different from the various fundie churches I'd been carted around to as a kid
The Cult Of AA
AA can be pretty culty depending on the meetings you go to.
I went to one meeting regularly where they didn't want me to interact with anyone outside the program. They also wanted me to devote all my free time to AA by doing service commitments and going to multiple meetings a day. They also told me to use the program as my higher power if I couldn't find my own conception of a higher power.
I thought it was weird to think of the program as basically being God.
Everyone also wanted to know my life story down to the nitty gritty details, and I would get criticized if I didn't want to share something. I ended up feeling worse about myself as a person because I constantly had to re-live all the bad stuff I had done.
I ended up leaving AA and going to different recovery group that was a lot more relaxed. I have nothing against AA as a whole, it has helped millions of people. Also like I said, it depends on the meeting, but the one I was going to seemed a lot like a cult and it made me not want any part of the program.
- Deezax19
When Jesus Buys A Jet
I was briefly in a "prosperity gospel" cult.
I was at a really low place in my life, gnarly alcoholism, and everyone was SO kind! Everyone was my brother, sister, aunt; they always bought me lunch after church!
The "bishop" who was in charge was not actually a bishop, he just called himself that. he started his own church after the old one asked him to leave when he got his side chick pregnant. There was all the theatrics of a black church- people fainting from the holy ghost, him anointing/healing people, etc. all of the services were recorded and streamed on his subscription website. he briefly had a show on Oxygen.
There came a point where I was going to Bible study Tuesday & Wednesday night and two (4 hr each) services on Sunday.
The church was in an unfinished warehouse in South Central LA, bathrooms were Porta potties outside. Everyone I saw was putting at least $20-50 in the envelope every time AND most were tithing. I started putting $1 in envelopes beforehand so they didn't guilt me. A lot of them didn't even have money to take the bus (he very kindly gave out tokens). He has 5 bodyguards, a Jaguar, and a Maserati.
I thought there was something really fishy about that! A woman told me I had to get rid of a Buddha keychain or God wouldn't love me. The absolute last straw for me was when the "bishop" got a private jet for his birthday. I asked who it was from and they were adamant that Jesus Christ bought it for him. No one could grasp the concept that it is all a HUGE scam!
Gaudy Ads Plastered Everywhere
I kind of realized it operated like a business. You can't advance if you don't shell out cash. We constant meet so the clergy can beg for money. We have gaudy ads plastered everywhere. Most churches don't operate like this. I slowly dissociated myself from the cult after that.
Yoga, Anorexia and Piercings - Oh My...
I was really into yoga during the summer of 8th grade. I tried a bunch of classes but none of them were a good fit, so instead I started going to this very weird yoga studio sort of far into the suburbs, because I was very weird. There was always just one big group class going on and everyone knew each other. Everyone was older than me but they treated me like an adult so that was cool. I started going to class every single day and eventually they were inviting me to these after-hours (like 7pm) parties they'd have. There was no alcohol or dancing or anything, we'd just sit around listening to the guy that owned the studio talking. He just read passages from different new-agey faux Buddhist books and go off on long tangents in the middle of sentences. Sometimes he'd pick out a word that he thought "resonated with the room" and had us repeat it over and over, or pass it around the circle. So we'd be saying, "Green, green, green," or "health, health, health," or "awesome, awesome, awesome," over and over again.
They also had really shitty food. It reminded me of the oily food my family would make for Hanukkah, but really gross and "healthy". The leader's girlfriend told me that when she first joined she always made an effort only to eat food when she was with the leader. That got into my head, so I stopped eating at home and only ever ate the awful food at the studio when he was around. At one point I was there almost eight hours a day. (My parents thought that I was just with friends or swimming at the YWCA, probably because that's what I told them I was doing.) I watched the group turn more and more cult-like before my eyes. No one ever tried to touch me or anything, but some of the other members would do these "couples yoga" things in front of me, and when I told the leader I was uncomfortable, he got super mad and threatened to kick me out. I was scared because I thought that the studio was the only place I had friends, so I apologized and never said another word against him. We started wearing matching necklaces and earrings, and one of the other members pierced my tongue so I could wear her old ring while she was on vacation. (Gross.)
I came home and my mom saw it and she was like, "What in the hell have you been doing?" And I tried lying to her because I was embarrassed at how creepy the yoga classes had gotten and how stupid I had been for staying that long. That's actually when I realized I was in a kinda-cult, when I saw how disturbed she was by the things I told her. Obviously she made sure I never went back there. My parents were actually really compassionate and nice, but I still ended up with an eating disorder and mild agoraphobia, which I can partly attribute to my time at the yoga studio.
But I can also do a hand-stand and I'm hella flexible, so at least something good came out of it all.
In the end, I was only going there for a couple months. I'm not sure if it even qualified as a cult. I don't think they were doing anything illegal. It's not as if I was brainwashed, I was just immersed in a really weird, unnerving environment for a brief period during those formative years.
Soooo that's my cult story. Not very interesting. I think I'm gonna start telling more people about it though, because it felt pretty good getting it out.
CW: Suicide
There is so much to learn in life.
And once you acquire certain things mentally, you regret it.
How much 411 have you come across over time that made you think... "How can I unlearn that?"
Yeah, not possible.
Knowledge is power and sometimes it's a nightmare.
Don't we have enough to keep us up at night?
Damn curiosity.
Well let's do some learning.
Redditor RedBoyFromNewy wanted to shed some light on creepy issues we need to be discussing. They asked:
"What’s a disturbing fact that not a lot of people know of?"
So who is ready to spill, and where do you find the info?
From the Guts
"Without mucus your stomach would digest itself."
Ddubsquizzee
"The reason you body produces more saliva before vomiting is your bodies way if protecting your mouth from the acidity of the vomit before you actually throw up."
-AntiVegan-
Death
"There are more suicides than homicides in the US every year."
tmsanch
"60% of all gun deaths in fact are suicides. It is estimated that someone offs themselves with a firearm every 20 minutes in the US. And 80% of them are males."
hymnsees
"And what's worse (knowing, as my family just went through this.)... 70% of suicides have no note. It's a common misconception that most people leave a note and it just isn't true. Mainly because a lot of people who write notes realize they don't want to go through with it. Those who are 'successful' just do it."
jdward01
After...
"You can give still 'birth' if you die while pregnant. The decomp process will force the baby out. It’s rare but it does happen."
MelissaAthalie
"This is usually what ends up happening when a pregnant woman gets murdered. They usually find the fetus either completely separate (like in the Lacy and Connor Peterson case) or in the same location as the mother, but clearly birthed (like with the case with Shanann Watts). It's something I never knew happened until very recently and I think it's one of the most horrifying aspects of death."
rivlet
Disaster
"The deadliest ship disaster was the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship built during the Nazi Regime. In January 1945, she was evacuating 10,000 German citizens ahead of the soviet Invasion when (albeit ironically) a Soviet Submarine spotted them, and fired three torpedoes. The ship was on the freezing cold Baltic Sea, and the davits (ropes) for the lifeboats had frozen over."
"Not only that, but the ship was only meant to carry 2,000 people normally. These two factors, coupled with the harsh angle the ship was sinking at, meant only half of the lifeboats could be deployed. 9,400 people drowned to death that night, and nobody knows about it."
TheNonbinaryWren
I See You
"Your eyes have a separate immune system than the rest of your body, and if your normal immune system ever learns about your eyes, it will target them and you'll go blind."
hiruko_uchiha
Oh my eye. How do we protect them? As if I don't have enough stress.
Launched
"Penguins can launch their poop out of their butts like 5-6m far."
Bela_hrn
Despair
"Cotard's delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome, is a neuropsychiatric disorder in which the person is in eternal damnation. They literally believe they are dead or dying [or don't have organs], the amount of despair is unimaginable and simply can't be grasped by people not suffering from it."
SweetTimpaniofLogic
'hard problem'
"It may seem like we know a lot about the human brain, but our standard way of studying brain activity is an fMRI, where a single pixel contains over 3 million neurons. That is more than many vertebrate animals' entire brains. The truth is, we really have no idea how the brain gives rise to consciousness."
"Edit: Even if we somehow perfectly worked out all the neural correlates of consciousness so we could say a mental state happens if and only if some exact pattern of brain activity happens, we would still have the 'hard problem' of consciousness: Why do these physical processes give rise to raw subjective experience, rather than just happening 'in the dark?'"
zeugenie
2 Minutes...
"If your esophagus closes and you cannot swallow, you have about 2 minutes before saliva starts reaching your windpipe. It is not a long time, but it is long enough to panic..."
grat_is_not_nice
"I have Eosiniphillic Oesophagitis and have had food stuck in the oesophagus for up to 24 hours before. And it’s horrible. You don’t realise how much saliva you swallow, to be constantly choking and vomiting that back up isn’t the best experience!"
AwayFollowing554
Get Lucky
"You’ve probably been closer to dying multiple times in your life then you even know. Just got lucky, or unlucky depending on who you are."
GingeBeardManBro
Well that's enough to disrupt sleep for life. Thanks y'all.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
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The best stories are ones with exciting plot twists.
But the next best type of stories are the ones that continue spiraling out of control.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor _Mitnix_ asked:
"What's your best 'oh you thought this was bad, it gets worse' story?"
It's story time. You may want to buckle up.
It All Started With A Cat
"This is a long one, but I promise it's worth it:"
"A buddy of mine was cat-sitting for a friend of his while the guy was out of town on a vacation. My buddy didn't have a car, so the dude told him that if he needed to go out and pick up more cat food or anything, he could borrow the car."
"At the time, my buddy was living right down the street from this guy, staying at his parents' house. So my buddy was just going over for a few hours each day to feed the cat and keep it company, then going back home."
"Meanwhile, he's also been flirting with this woman online. She lives several states away, but he feels like they seem to be getting pretty serious. So he decides to take some liberties, really push the envelope on where he'll pick up cat food from, and he takes his friend's car on a little multi-state road trip."
"This is insane, right? Just atrociously bad judgement, especially since someone does need to feed the cat. To solve this, he left his parents a note. It read, 'I am camping in the woods behind our house. Please go over to ____'s and feed his cat. I'll let you know when I'm home.'"
"Boom. Problem solved, right?"
"Except that the 'woods behind our house' are about 20 yards deep. It takes less than five minutes to walk through them and come out into the neighboring housing development. So his parents went looking for him, calling out for him, and couldn't find him. They got worried and contacted a family friend, a local police officer. He subsequently got a hold of the fire department. There was a full-on search party combing through about 1/50th of an acre of woods. Unsurprisingly, they were coming up with nothing."
"This was before cell phones were common, so my buddy was completely unaware that his plan had fallen apart. He was cruising along on his 12-hour drive, expecting to get to this girl's house just in time for dinner. Except he didn't have a GPS. So he got lost. Very lost. Like, by the time he turned up at this woman's house, it was almost midnight."
"When he got there, she was crying her eyes out. He assured her that it was okay, he was fine, wasn't hurt or in a wreck or anything, he'd just gotten lost. And she said, 'No, no, I wasn't worried about you. My dad just died in a motorcycle accident.'"
"So he bailed on his cat-sitting duties, stole a car, and inspired his parents to file a missing-persons just so he could awkwardly watch a woman cry for a few hours and then drive back home."
– GavinBelsonsAlexa
The Beekeeper's Nightmare
"I will try to keep it short. I am a beekeeper. My 3rd year of beekeeping, I suddenly developed a severe allergy to bee stings. It was spring and I was installing bees for the beginning of the season. I was up to the last hive, went to install that package of bees and one stung me right in the top of my head."
"I finished up a few minutes after and went up toward the house to do some other things. I started feeling flush and I could feel my heart racing. After I few minutes I realized I was having an anaphylactic reaction."
"If you’ve never had one, aside from the physical symptoms, they also say you will get a feeling of impending doom. That was spot on. I absolutely felt I was going to die and people do die from these reactions."
"So I am now in the house and desperately searching for Benadryl of which I have none. I am also having trouble breathing, my body is going haywire and I feel like I’m going to black out shortly."
"I call my mom, who lives an hour away, to call 911 because I feel like I will be unconscious soon. She says okay, phone rings 30 seconds later. It’s my mom, she goes 'I called 911 but they said you have to call'. This was my first wtf."
"So I call and it’s a very typical 911 call she is trying to keep me talking and I essentially started vomiting and she is still on the line and I am waiting and waiting for this alleged ambulance."
"A full half hour goes by. At this point I am actually coming out of the reaction. So I go to sit at my kitchen counter. I’m still on the line with the 911 dispatcher. I see the ambulance pull up and I say, oh they’re here. She’s like great, are you okay? I’m like yes and then she says goodbye and hangs up."
"I see the EMTs outside but my driveway has a gate so they are just standing there and they ring the bell on my gate and I am just looking at them, dumbfounded. Like I called for an emergency over a half hour ago, and they’re gonna roll up here and ring my bell and wait for me to come out when I more than likely could be unconscious or dead on the floor."
"I literally had to go out and let them in. Then they basically talked me in to going to the hospital to get checked out. Another huge mistake because this took place in the 2 months in my entire life when I didn’t have health insurance. So I ended up paying $4000 for a late ambulance and some IV Benadryl and epinephrine."
"Oh which also reminds me, a paramedic also showed, put the IV in when I agreed to go to the hospital. Then I felt something dripping and turns out he put it in my artery rather than a vein and it was just pushing the fluid out of the IV."
"0/10 would not go through any of that again…but I did 10 years later when I had another anaphylactic reaction due to a bee sting. However this went a lot smoother and I had epi-pens and a responsive ambulance."
– soline
Oil Everywhere
"Arrive home from work, my house reeks of oil."
"Go in the basement, and there's a pool of oil, with my stuff floating in it. The oil filter on my burner rotted out (it was defective and recalled, but the tech never bothered to notify me or replace it). Call up the tech, he throws a new one, charges me the emergency call fee, and advises I call HO insurance before running away (it was his fault, I didn't know it yet)."
"This was February in NY, about 13F out, and obviously the burner wasn't on while sitting in a pool of oil. But, they get there pretty quickly soak it up, and get things running so my pipes don't freeze."
"Only way to get the smell out is to dry clean everything I own, then shampoo all the carpets, run deodorizers, etc. Takes weeks. Had a headache the whole time."
"Turns out, my basement has cracks, most of it leaked through. They had to cut out my foundation and dig out the contaminated soil."
"Oil in soil means DEC gets involved. Whole new can of worms as they now had to monitor the process, test at every step. Big enough deal I have a spill number in their database."
"A 20 yard dumpster, with 20 yards of oil soaked sand, is so heavy that it broke through my driveway, destroying it. They did that twice, took out my entire driveway."
"Remember how I said this was in February? March brought the COVID shutdown."
"I spent over a year with my basement in shambles, holes in my driveway, plastic sheets taped up, no washer/dryer, and all sorts of equipment kicking around."
"The next spring, they're back and working, and screwed everything up. Not going to get into every detail, but after a big fight, I managed to get rid of them and bring in a new company to fix their screwups and finish the job. Old crew got very difficult when the new crew requested permits and reports. Turns out, they never bothered. Had to do all that before they could start working again."
"New company dropped a storage crate on my yard to store my stuff while working, destroyed my grass, took out a sprinkler, took out my neighbor's driveway curb, got concrete all over my brickwork, but at least the nightmare was finally over."
– MyNameIsRay
These Redditors have been dealt with some major blows.
People who say that things will always get better, are partially right. Things do come around, eventually.
But you never know how many curve balls life has to throw at you until there's a resolution.
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Life is full of disappointments. We lose out on a job opportunity or the one designer article of clothing we really wanted is not available in our size.
But we go on.
But the biggest letdowns are the ones we never see coming but must contend with.
Redditor Frequent-Pilot5243 asked:
"What is a depressing truth you have made peace with?"

No matter how much you prize a friendship, not all of them are for forever.
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow
"A friendship you thought would last forever can end in an instant."
– Febreze4200
The Best Mate Who Quit
"My best mate of 20 years, said that he didn’t want to be my best man and just said he didn’t want to be my friend any more. Hurt like hell."
– Gavindasing
It's Okay To Let Go
"Sometimes people you care deeply about will choose to drop out of your life and all you can really do is have the grace to let them."
"edit. to everyone struggling with being left behind, and to everyone struggling with having to be the one to leave- I hope the pain eases for you soon."
– girlloss
Restarting The Process
"I have a really hard time with this one. Every friendship I've had in my adult life has only lasted a couple years tops. Rarely a falling out or anything, but just drifting apart or sh*t happens type deal. It's hard for me to make friends in the first place because I'm pretty shy, so having to regularly restart that process is really discouraging. Right now I don't really have any friends because I've just kinda given up trying."
– plebeian1523
The harsh reality of losing the people we love hits home for these Redditors.
Grandpa Time
"My grandpa just wanted to get to know me and the man I was becoming during his last year of life. Which I was too young and too selfish to realize."
– MrMunky24
Lost Opportunity
"Yeah, this hits home. I spent 90% of my childhood with my grandparents. I was at their house almost everyday. When I got into my teens and obviously found friends, discovered women, all that stuff and then I just stopped seeing them. They’re both gone now and they died with the memories of me as a child. Although they seen me sometimes while I was older, they didn’t know me because I didn’t give them the chance."
– Loud-Distance-1456
In Grief
"My dad passed away 6 weeks ago and I will NEVER see, hear, chat or get to hug him ever again & that forever is a long time."
– somethinggood19
These sobering facts were huge disappointments.
Truth About CPR
"This is coming from a firefighter:"
"If you have to perform CPR on them, it's most likely over for the patient."
"I'm not sure if I've made peace with it completely, but I've accepted it at least."
– Rukhnul
The After Effects
"I've taken CPR training twice in the past 10 years. The instructors were so completely different... The second one flat out told us 'you're giving them about a 15% chance of living, and even if they live, they will probably have some kind of severe trauma that will dramatically decrease their quality of life.' Wow..."
– DavidAg02
Despite Having Good Intentions...
"No one is coming to help."
– _meddlin_
That Train Has Left The Station
"I'm aging nonstop."
– insaight
Innocence Is Gone
"My childhood is gone, and I have no good memory from that phase of my life."
– anonymoose_mrx
No matter what, life goes on with or without us.
The best that any of us can do while we're passengers on this giant spaceship is to take life as it comes and pick up the pieces the best we can when things don't pan out as we'd hoped.
Sometimes, it's about celebrating the small victories–like finally finding a store that has your shoe size.
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People Describe The Times Someone Mocked Them For Being Wrong But They Were Actually Right
The truth matters.
Something one would think was a given in modern society.
Yet all over the world, there are people so unbelievably stubborn, that they simply refuse to believe the facts.
Sometimes even when presented with evidence.
This could be for something menial, such as refusing to believe that a cotton candy was actually invented by a dentist.
But sometimes, refusing to believe the truth could have serious consequences, up to and including climate change, the effectiveness of masks, and the disproportionate amount of gun violence in the US.
Redditor Lady_Of_The_Water was curious about the many things, both frivolous and serious, people refused to believe were true, leading them to ask:
"Whats something someone thought you were wrong about and ridiculed you for it, but it turns out you were right?"
What's that smell?
"That there really was a gas leak in the apartment building."
"Thankfully, the fire didn't cause much damage."- yamsnavas2.
There's a reason the bill is so high.
"Our water usage at work went up a lot."
"They checked all the toilets, sinks for leaks, couldn't find anything."
"I mentioned that it seemed to coincide with the new water cooler system installation, maybe that should be checked."
"They basically laughed at me."
"That stupid water system never worked good and the guy came in 3 different times and said it was just the filter."
"Every month it needs changed???"
"Didn't seem right."
"Finally a different technician came in and result was it was never installed correctly."
"I asked, 'could that have anything to do with the increased water usage that started when this got installed?'"
" He smiled 'I wondered if anyone caught that, yes the valve was not correct and water has been running'."
"For 5 months!!"
"If only they had listened."
"Total redemption!"- McTee967.
Have you ever looked at a map?
"I had a coworker doubling down repeatedly, claiming that new Zealand is north of Australia."
"I even told her about how I had lived there and she just assumed I was such a huge idiot that I didn't know where on the globe I was living."
"Brought the smartphone out and put an end to that."
"Let me just say, it's ok to not know where all the countries are."
"The problem is if you heavily assert you are right and others are stupid."- PlopPlopPlopsy.
Is it supposed to hurt this much?
"My husband told me that I was a 'baby' about my IUD insertion and insisted that it wasn't painful."
"That my concerns about entrusting a stranger to shove a foreign object into my body were paranoid."
"I listened to him because really, the info you'd find online is overwhelmingly positive."
"Long story short: the provider placed it wrong, didn't check/fix it when I asked her to."
"I spent 4 years in pain that I eventually 'got used to."
"It expelled half way out my cervix, had to get it yanked out at the ER."
"That's when I was told that copper IUDs are notorious for breaking inside the uterus."
"Because it broke inside me."
"The cherry on top?"
"The female gyno with three kids I saw to get the broken piece removed told me that 'cervixes don't really feel pain' and that I didn't really need to remove it."
"Goes without saying, I was in severe pain for 2 weeks straight before this appointment."
"Tons of women came out with their stories about lawsuits over IUDs, how they got pregnant with an IUD."
" Stories similar to mine."
"And how women should really be offered anesthesia or pain pills for this procedure."
"And when my husband was surprised to learn about the pain I endured I reminded him 'You called me a baby and everyone else told me it was all in my head'."
"Which is why I didn't talk about it."- PopK0rnAndMMs.
Seems like you could learn something from me.
"In sixth grade chemistry a teacher asked us what element was a gas that was lighter than air, and extremely flammable/explosive."
"I grew up on science because of what my dad does for a living and Bill Nye."
"I knew about the Hindenburg, and so I was really proud of myself when I raised my hand and said 'Hydrogen'."
"The teacher laughed at me and said that no, it was Helium, and the entire rest of the class proceeded to laugh too."
"Almost three decades later I work in a lab now, and f*ck that teacher I was right."- vanyel_ashke.
The dictionary is your friend.
"I have worked as a translator and a proofreader."
"For one of my translations, it went something like 'and he piqued her interest'."
"My proofreader docked me for an inaccuracy and switched it to 'and he peaked her interest'.”
"I’m still salty."
"I tried to get the agency I was working for to remove this person as a proofreader since I question his/her command of the English language."
"Had a similar problem with the phrase “lynch pin” used metaphorically."
"I stopped working with that agency because it pissed me off so much being 'corrected' incorrectly."- spot_o_tea.
No, that's just an illusion.
"When I told my mom that the clouds were moving and she laughed like I was crazy."-
Did you even read the menu?
"I was in the passenger's seat at a Carl's Jr Drive Thru with a friend."
"He asked what I wanted and I requested the Fried Zucchini."
"He puts half his body through the window to the voice box and goes on this 'My friend here thinks you have some kind of food I know you don't have so I am just going to say it for laughs because you will get a kick out of this'."
"She wants FRIED ZUCCHINI' and starts laughing."
" Well guess who ends up eating fried zucchini."- User Deleted.
And how do you spell that?
"Believe it or not, the pronunciation of my own middle name."- ThePlantie.
We have standards in this community...
"Not me but my Mom tells a story about how she wrote a paper for school about how tough her small town makes it for any new people moving in."
"Basically if you didn't grow up there you were a social outcast for decades and were excluded from a lot of things."
"The teacher didn't agree so she got a bad grade and scoffed at."
"A few years later a news paper reporter essentially wrote the same thing and won a local award for calling out the same small town BS that was going on."- Jberg18.
It's pretty amazing that anyone in this day and age would jump to tell someone they're wrong without having any authority.
Particularly when someone can quickly look up the truth on their phone in less than a minute.
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