People Reveal The Reason They Cut Someone Out Of Their Life For Good
There comes a time in our lives when we have to cut people out because of their toxic, negative, or destructive behavior. And there's no shame in doing it - tolerance and acceptance can only go so far, and there is always a last straw.
The785 asked: What was the incident that made you cut somebody close out of your life?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
15. Some people desperately need to control others.
She said I was becoming arrogant.
All my life I was a very submissive person, full of guilt for any perceived slight I might have made against someone, and generally apologetic for being the huge waste of space I thought I was. This girl I was friends with for 10+ years tended to prey upon that. I was her walking doormat, and would do anything she wanted.
When I met my husband, he helped bring me out of that mentality. Helped me become more assertive, and to stop letting people walk all over me and take advantage of my submissive nature.
This friend saw that and tried to stop it. She said I was changing, but not for the better. That I was becoming arrogant and selfish and a bad friend. At the time I was devastated, but my husband said, "She can't control you anymore, and that scares her."
He was right.
Going 5 years since I cut her (and some of our mutual friends) from my life, and I've never been in a better place mentally.
The same thing happened to me - she didn't like that I didn't need her any more. :(
14. Just mean.
I had a roommate who's BF broke up with her. I went and picked up her stuff from his house and took her out to eat. On the way home she's going on about how he could walk out of the house and get hit by a bus and how heartbroken she would be. I pointed out there wasn't a bus stop next to his house trying to lighten up the mood (they only dated about 3 months or something) so she turns to me and says "I hope your husband dies in Iraq so you know my pain." I told her that was going too far and she kept at it. I pointed out we had been together years not months and he was her friend to but she didn't care and never said sorry, she was drunk so I thought that was why she was being so mean but the next day when she was sober she stood by what she said. I kicked her out and never talked to her again.
Woooow. F*ck that.
Good on you for giving her the drunk pass. I can't believe she doubled down.
13. Grooming.
They started engaging in behavior around my kids which reminded me a little bit too strongly of the way I was treated by a child molester when I was little. And they tried to get my kids to ignore rules that I had set, and replace them with their own rules.
Wise choice. Good for you for noticing
12. Trashy, goodbye.
I used to go to the same pub every week on the regular with the same group of peeps, was an awesome time for a while.
One of the girls got a new, slightly weird boyfriend, and kinda went downhill as a human. This culminated in one particular night, which would be our last time going as a result.
On this night, she started being a huge b!tch to the server because the wings were taking too long. This is wing night, there are like 150 people here for cheap wings, and the server obviously has nothing to do with how long food takes to come out.
So her and her boyfriend literally trash the table we were sitting at, spraying condiments all over, wetting napkins with sauce and sticking them everywhere, and everybody else literally gets up and moves or leaves.
She was laughing like a psycho, her and her boyfriend were clearly getting off on one-upping each others sh*ttiness, and I decided I did not need that type of lunatic in my life.
11. Enabling doesn't help anyone.
When my sister text my mom with a message that read: "You're a horsesh*t c*nt of a mother. I can't wait until you die. It'll be the greatest day of my life!"
All because my mom wouldn't take $30,000 out of her retirement to bail out my sister's house that was to be foreclosed on because she's a lazy f*ck who didn't want to work.
The sad thing is that my mom was going to do it, too. My dad & I convinced her that she's going to piss away the $30,000 to save the house and then in a few more months, right back in the same situation. It was a lost cause.
She's even worse than meets the eye for those of you who want to understand a bit more about foreclosures.
It's not just the fact that she's going through foreclosure due to delinquency, but it's also that she let something entirely preventable from happening by doing nothing.
Contrary to popular beliefs, banks don't like foreclosures. In fact, banks will actively work with you to avoid foreclosures provided you give them 100% effort.
Foreclosures suck butts. The process needs to be done to the tee, the home will probably fall into disrepair, and buying a foreclosure is an entirely different beast than a traditional transaction, short sale, etc. Buying foreclosures sucks major butt, and banks know this, so they try to avoid holding onto these foreclosures.
Basically, your sister played the victim card instead of arranging something with her bank. She could have done a short sale at the very least (and would owe a lot in taxes but w/e) but instead, she wanted a hand out.
Wow. I bet she's the type to trash an apartment when she gets an eviction letter.
10. Someone has issues...
I had a friend who kept insisting I had a mental illness and wouldn't stop even if I told her. She began telling my friends and even asking if they thought the same thing. Because of this incident and her toxic personality I decided to tell her to f*ck off which was definitely for the better.
This exact thing happened to me. She had a lot of mental issues and she tried to mirror them in me.
She has clinical anxiety and subclinical depression and is medicated for it. she said she saw traces in me and that i had to go to the psychiatrist.
I have some issues but therapy once a month is working just fine.
9. Self-destructive behavior is contagious.
For me it wasn't a single incident, but the fact that she was always incredibly negative and refused to get counseling for the issues that she was going through. Every single time we hung out she Would spend two hours complaining about the same for things over and over. One of them being that people never stuck around in her life… At first I felt sympathy for her, then tried to suggest counseling to help talk through her issues, then I got frustrated, and eventually I slowly let the relationship die out. I don't want that kind of toxicity in my life.
she sounds like my ex...
She pushed everyone who cared about her in her life away through her actions and then and treats whoever she gets romantic with as the piece of the puzzle that completes her and can understand her and the pain of losing every around her in her life until she stops being infatuated and inevitable pushes them away too while finding a way to spin the story in her head as them abandoning her.
8. Men who can't keep it in their pants...
The second time I've heard that he was flirting with my girlfriend, a different girl than the first time.
A friend doesn't do that, so he was demoted quite instantly.
Same. I'm a female though. My best friend of 7 years started sexting my new boyfriend she knew I was really into behind my back. She then lied about still talking to him multiple times to my face. Even laughed about it to my face. Turns out like 2 days after I find all this out (this past Valentine's Day), she went on a date with him and lied about it to me, twice. I don't know why she thought I would still be her friend with her blatantly lying like that. I saw them together on my birthday last month and as far as I know they are still together. Friends don't do that sh*t.
7. No excuse.
My older brother and his wife #4 turning my parents home into a crack house while mom and dad were still there. Haven't seen or spoken to him in over ten years.
Good on you for just walking out of that, condolences to your family.
6. Pets' lives are worth saving.
My uncle basically forced my grandma to adopt a cat they found. He say he would pay for all the cat's expenses (vet, food, litter, etc) since my grandma does not work and can't really afford the expenses of owning a pet. After 2 or 3 years of my grandma living with the cat, he got a blatter infection and had to be rushed to the vet since he had not peed in a couple of days (grandma did not notice this). My mom had to drive them (cuz my grandma is not a confident driver) and neither of them speaks English very well. Because of this my uncle was the one who was talking with the vet over the cat's treatments and it boiled down to either putting the cat down or do an expensive medical procedure.
My uncle instead of telling my grandma what the situation was and that the cat needed surgery, he simply told her that they needed to put the cat down and to let me know so I could go say goodbye to him. Once I arrive to the vet and see my mom and grandma crying cuz they are saying their last goodbyes, I talk to the nurse wondering if there is anything we can do whatsoever to save his life, she looks at me confused and tells me that we could do an operation on him that had good chances of being successful. I tell my mom and grandma this and they are confused because my uncle told them the cat could not be saved. I ended up paying for the surgery and Valentino (cat's name) is still wagging his tail to this day. That was the day I stopped talking to my uncle (he has a very well paying job, no kids nor family, money is not an issue to him, yet he still decided to just put him down regardless of all the pain my grandma was going to feel).
5. Some people are never satisfied.
Made a friend in 8th grade, stayed friends through highschool and college. She was a bridesmaid at my wedding, planned my bachelorette party since my MOH wasn't sure what to do. She got engaged 3 years after I was married. At this point we'd been friends close to 15 years.
Her mother had died when she was young, MIL was unwilling to help plan, and no idea what to do so she asked for my help in planning the wedding as it hadn't been too long since my own, then went total bridezilla on me. There were lots of issues with the planning but the main issue had to do with the bridesmaid dresses.
We went to a bridal show one Saturday and she decided she wants all the bridesmaids to match. The problem was she had bridesmaids of every shape and size, from 0 to 5x and she kept trying to choose only dresses that the skinny girls felt comfortable in. Things that were strapless and would not allow the larger girls to wear a bra. More than one came up to me and asked me to see if I could help her choose something so that everyone would be comfortable.
The next weekend I was supposed to go to a concert that was 4 hours away from home. The plan was for my now-ex and I to go up Saturday morning, sight see from noon to 8, see the concert and then drive home. Since everyone was having problems with the dress I agreed to leave the house at 2 instead, not do the sight seeing and spend the morning with her to figure out the dresses.
The night before the concert she sent me a message on Myspace and said that I was a liar for making plans with her when I was going to be out of town. She proceeded to call me a c*nt for taking over her wedding, said that my mom was a whore, my sister was going to end up being raped if she didn't learn how to say no and that my dad needed to stop being such and abusive a*shat. I cut her out of my life right then, had a great time sight seeing and at the concert.
TLDR: Bridezilla asked for my help then insulted me and my family when I gave it.
4. TV shows understand us better than ourselves.
When I was 12-15 I went through a very bad depression that almost killed me. I went through life like a zombie, agreeing to everything my friends said and having no personality.
This one friend left for an exchange year. When he came back, we were having trouble reconnecting as both of us had changed quite a bit (including me getting through my depression). We met one day to talk about everything that was going on and he said "I don't know who you are now. Do you even know who you are now?" He then told me he liked my older self better, using those exact words. To me, that meant that he liked me better when I was sad and considering taking my life, because I just followed whatever he said in fear of being left alone. It came as such a shock and hurt so much that when I got home that day, I asked my mom if she liked me better before as well.
He also tweeted about me, calling me a toxic person, and treated the whole issue as him being sassy and moving on from me, who had been his friend since we were 4.
Also, when I was going through this depression, I trusted him and told him about the problems going on in my house, to which he replied with "oh my god, this is so similar to a TV show I'm watching called Shameless, maybe it will help to watch it." That's all he said about my father being an alcoholic, ex cocaine addict, abusive father figure.
I watched the first episode of Shameless and it hit too close to home - I hope you're doing better, friend, and if you're not - it gets better, I promise.
I'm doing a lot better now. I still have problems at home, but generally things are going well. Thanks for taking your time to write some kind words. And I can't bring myself to watch the show because I don't think it would help much, so I don't really know what it's about. However, I hope you can find a solution or get over whatever is in that show that hits close to home.
We're all in this together, no man is an island. Yeah the first part of the episode is the kids scrounging together breakfast and putting money together to keep the electricity on - dad is nowhere to be seen. Hits too close to home. But i'm doing better, always on the up and up :) Thank you
3. Good riddance.
- Mother. She told my sister, after she had been raped and beaten into a miscarriage, "that's what you get for being such a little f---ing whore." Sister died some years later due to long term drug and alcohol abuse.
- Step-Father. Did not intervene when my mother intentionally and maliciously tortured my dad and his family with the planning of their daughter's funeral and gravesite.
Step-father had two step-daughters in a previous marriage and no children of his own while my mother had my sister and me. Now they don't see or hear from any of their children or grand children.
2. People who harm animals are the worst. Full stop.
He picked up his 8 month old dog and slammed it to the ground because it pissed in the house. I called the humane society, had the dog taken from him and never spoke to him again.
Thanks for doing that. I respect you for it.
1. Success is a state of mind.
Close-ish.
I hosted a party a while back, Inviting close friends and some slightly more extended friends. Food, drinks, games.
I was talking about work with a close friend. We both work in technology.
Extended friend sees us talking careers, etc. He walks up and asks me if I think he's successful. The guy has been working at a gas station for the last 3 or 4 years or so.
I had had a couple of drinks already, but I could recognize emotional blackmail a mile away. I told him that I think he's successful is if he thinks he is. He though my answer was a cop-out, so he kept trying to bait me into saying that I don't think he's successful. Close friend called him out, and the guy left me alone for the night.
It makes me pretty mad for sure, I haven't talked to him since the incident.
Clearly he had serious self-esteem issues and wanted to be angry at someone other than himself. Glad your friend called him out on it.
That's why I told him that I think he's successful if he thinks he's successful. If he has a problem with where he's at, that's on him. I wanted to project that to him, but he was being too pushy to notice.
As the saying goes, you can't believe everything you read.
But every now and then, you might find yourself reading or hearing a piece of information that you at first think couldn't possibly be real.
Until you are presented with verified, reliable information to back it up... Then you have to eat your words and put your disbelief behind you.
Perhaps the most surprising instances of these are statistics, which at first glance you can't possibly believe are accurate and find yourself proven otherwise.
"What is a fact or statistic that seems fake but is real?"
And You Thought Sharks Were Dangerous...
"Horses kill more people every year in Australia than all the other beasties combined."
"Everyone thinks it's the spiders and snakes that'll get you, but it's the horses you've really got to watch."- Gingerbread_Cat·
The Dangers Of Scientific Advancement
"It took us more time to go from bronze swords to iron swords than it did for us to go from iron swords to nuclear weapons."- IMJUSTABRIK
Frightening People For Generations!
"Sharks have existed longer than trees have."- Capital_Indication_4
The Great Unknown
"I saw a scale model of the earth, moon and sun in a museum."
"The sun was about the size of a basketball, and the earth was on the opposite side of the room, the size of a small marble, I'd guess about 30 metres away."
"The moon was the size of a tiny pinhead, about 10cm away from the earth."
"On this scale, the nearest star to earth, Proxima Centauri, wouldn't be in the same building, or even in the same city."
"It would be 10,000km away."
"And that's just one star, the nearest one to us, in a galaxy containing billions of stars, which is just one of billions of galaxies."
"The scale of the universe really is mind bogglingly big."
"Far bigger than we can begin to comprehend."- Qabbalah
Zero Points To The Lost World For Authenticity...
"We live closer in time to Tyrannosaurus Rex than the T Rex did to the Stegosaurus."- reiveroftheborder
From Bad To Worse?
"After the British made head protection mandatory in WW1, the amount of head wounds increased."
"It's due to they were no longer KIA, but 'only' a head wound."- WouldUKindlyDMBoobs
Sarah Palin Can Confirm...
"USA is only 2.4 miles from Russia."
"2 islands in the Bering Strait, the body of water in the Pacific Ocean that separates Alaska from Russia, are 2.4 miles from each other at the narrowest point; one island is owned by Russia, the other is owned by USA."- Qabbalah
But Where Did "Ginger" Come From?
"In English, the color orange was named after the fruit."
"Before that, orange was just considered a shade of red."
"That's why gingers are called redheads."- I_might_be_weasel
At Least We Can Be Sure He Didn't Lie About It
"George Washington didn’t know dinosaurs existed."- Silver34
But What Did They Want To Do With Those Cobras?
"New Delhi hired people to hunt cobra snakes which led to people having Cobra Farms to earn money, then the government stopped the project which led the Cobra Farmers to release their snakes, causing twice as many snakes than they first started."- cathabit
The Truth Lies Between The Lines...
"Barcode scanners scan the white lines, not the black ones."- the_blast_radius
But Does It Make It Easier To Avoid?
"Wombat poo is cube shaped, to stop it rolling away."
Perception Can Be Dangerously Misleading
"The Oxford University in England existed centuries before the rise and fall of the Aztec civilization."- RefrigeratorStatus96
"Time Is The Longest Distance Between Two Places..."
"A million seconds is 12 days."
"A billion seconds is 31 years. "
"A trillion seconds is 31,688 years."
"People have a lot of trouble comprehending numbers that big."- sunbearimon
One thing that makes science so remarkable is how difficult it can be to believe.
And yet, scientists have been working since the beginning of time to prove that facts are, indeed, facts.
Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comments below.
People Share The Best Real-Life Examples Of 'You Can Have A Ph.D. And Still Be An Idiot'
Earning a college degree, especially a doctorate, takes a heck of a lot of work and definitely requires intelligence. Expertise in your usually narrow field of study definitely doesn't guarantee expertise in other areas — especially common sense, it seems.
Redditor SgtSkillcraft asked:
"Richard Feynman said, 'Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot.' What are some real life examples of this?"
Too Much Ketchup
"My ex-boyfriends mother was a linguistics professor and knew over 10 languages. She was also one of the dumbest people I've ever met. Some examples: she believed that in case of emergency stewardesses catapult out of the plane; she was also convinced donating blood causes some blood disease and you can die because of it. But my favourite one was when she said her son's orthopaedic problems are not a result of a serious injury he had. His knee hurts because he eats too much ketchup."
- ImnotUK
"Man that ketchup is going straight to my knees. Ima need to sit for a minute."
- myrevenge_IS_urkarma
You'd Think An Engineer Would Understand Physics
"I had a boss who was an engineer who put a couple hundred dollars in change in a bank’s pneumatic drive through tube where it got stuck and they had to use a jack hammer to get it out. He was upset that the bank was charging him for this because he didn’t know this would happen. They had large signs saying not to put change in the tubes, including on the tubes themselves."
- RumBunBun
Self-Powering Power Strip
"My first call at my first IT job was in a medical laboratory. There was a doctor who had been in the job for years and she called saying her computer would not power on. I walked her through some troubleshooting and nothing worked. "Is the computer plugged in? Ok, is the monitor on? Ok, when did the problem start?" type of questions were asked and she answered them all. I go up to her office and indeed the computer is plugged in to a power strip which is plugged in to itself. Cleaning crew had deep cleaned her office and never plugged anything back in. Dr. plugged the power strip into itself thinking that as long as it was plugged in, that's all she needed."
- acheron53
Liquid Displacement Isn't That Complicated, Is It?
"I was at a keg party at college and the (gravity keg) was set up. Someone complained that the beer was not flowing, so I check that the keg was still almost full. Turns out someone closed the air intake on top. I opened the intake and poured myself a beer. Problem solved. A few minutes later someone else complains the beer is out. I told them the keg was full a few minutes ago and it was a tap problem that I fixed. They told me they just came from the keg. I go back to the keg and find the intake was closed again. Opened it and poured the young lady who said it was empty a beer. As she is leaving my suitemate comes in and goes to the intake can closes it. Now my suitemate is a straight A student who gets all As mostly due to his photographic memory."
"Back to the keg. So I tell him that he needs to leave the intake open to let air in to displace the beer coming out of the lower tap. He then proceeds to tell me that since the beer is carbonated air is not needed to replace the liquid volumn lost when the beer is dispensed. So I asked him two questions; If it is not needed, why is there the upper tap, and does he really think the amount of gas the carbonation gives off in a glass of beer is equal to the volumn of the liquid beer? He thought for a few seconds and his only response was, "I have a 4.0, what is your GPA?" Then he walked away."
- vpniceguys
Med Students Aren't Immune To The Bystander Effect
"Not quite PhD. But I was at a party (in the uk) full of med students and stereotypically everyone was off their face drunk. Well some guy fell over and broke his collar bone and immediately got rushed by a dozen of them all fussing and asking him the same questions over and 'going through the checklist'. Half an hour later and he's still on the couch in pain and I go in to ask if anybody knows why the ambulance is taking so long. Nobody had an answer because nobody had called one. A party full of medical students hadn't called an ambulance or made any transport arrangements for a guy in severe pain with a broken clavicle. Idiots."
- Reiseoftheginger
"That's actually super common in emergencies when there's a group of any kind. One of the first things you learn in a lifeguard certification course is to identify a single person to instruct to call 911. Never just yell out 'someone call 911' or assume that it's been done because everyone in the group is assuming someone else did it already."
"It's not necessarily that everyone forgot about it, just that everyone assumed it was the logical first step that someone else would have taken already."
- Bangarang_1
He Just Hadn't Had His Coffee Yet
"I had a professor for higher mathematics who had real difficulties figuring out how to extract a cup of coffee from the vending machine. Bless him."
- onesmilematters
Laser Focused Intelligence
"My wife has two Masters and a PhD, is internationally recognized in her field, and is an absent minded doofus. My role in her life is to ensure that her car works, that she takes her meds, and that she eats things other than yogurt and eggs. She can be brilliant one minute, then walk into the side of a moving bus the next."
"I love her dearly but she's a numpty."
- Lost_One_1963
Dump Dinners Were Designed For This Person
"As someone who did two trades and then decided life is better with education - my experience currently going to Uni is how clueless so many people are in Uni. I wouldn’t say they’re an idiot, but tons of ignorance develops living in a student bubble your whole life."
"I rented a room to a guy who did his masters, and it would take him hourssss to cook dinner. I watched him one day, and he just couldn’t wrap his mind around cooking things that take different amounts of time to cook."
"Like, he’d start cooking potatoes and wait til they were done before moving on to the next thing he was going to eat them with."
- XavierOpinionz
Doctors Are Brilliant...and Not So Brilliant
"I work with medical doctors all the time for work. Doctors are some of the dumbest smart people I have ever met."
- Secksualinnuendo
"Yup. I know a plastic surgeon who thought it was a great idea to sue Yelp for bad reviews his business was getting. This ensured that tons of news stories were written about him that repeated those bad reviews to a bigger audience."
- heimdahl81
"My friend's dad is a surgeon, I never forget when we were 13-14 and her mom called her to ask if she could go home and make something to eat for her dad because he was starving."
"That's when she told me that he had never ever made a meal himself for his entire life, he cannot even work the toaster, literally! So the guy was just starving at home because he cannot make a simple meal. And the next day he's fixing someone's heart."
- _reykjavik
"As someone who works security in a hospital, I can say a good 90% of the doctors there are smart but lack any type of common sense, and sometimes I wonder how they function on a day-to-day basis"
- Ray_Ray_86
Doors Are Hard
"I used to work at a university, and tons of academics are incredibly educated in their chosen field, but have the common sense of your average dachshund."
"My favourite was probably an entire group of geology professors and PhD candidates who got 'stuck' for a good few minutes in an entryway because they didn't think to check if the door required a pull rather than a push. Bearing in mind that they'd just entered with that same door not an hour before."
- Koras
Children Require Supervision At All Times
"My ex had a real lack of knowledge and common sense when it came to children."
"She's currently completing her PHD in biochemistry and molecular biology. She was confused though when I said I couldn't go out after putting my toddler to bed as I had no one to babysit. In her mind, once my daughter was asleep she no longer needed anyone here to take care of her."
"I chalked it up to cultural differences and never being around children. Eventually though our opinions on raising kids differed too much and I had to end things for my daughter's sake."
- RetroDad-IO
Just Read The Documentation
"Worked at a tech company, was made team lead. One of our team members was a PhD in astrophysics. He would ping me constantly for how to do things that we had well documented. How to install certain programs, how to gain access to servers or code repositories. Literally we would sit in zoom calls together and I would just read the instructions out loud and watch him do them. I was utterly confused as to how he could breathe by himself."
- Woodhouse_20
It's Not Supposed To Be A Soup
"A long time good friend, absolutely brilliant. Can literally beat you at chess blindfolded. Engineering in college and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. But he’s a big picture guy, sees how things develop and great long term vision. Incredibly successful. But little things? Guy couldn’t pack a suitcase, wouldn’t know how to book a flight. Was making boxed Mac-n-cheese and couldn’t figure out why it was so watery. Ya, he didn’t drain the water after the pasta was cooked."
- PapaChoff
India Is Definitely Not A Continent
"Mother in law has a PhD in some thing related to botany. She thought India was a continental island like Australia. To this day I still have no idea how that happened when this came up she was in her mid 60's."
- SavingsCheck7978
Computers Aren't That Hard To Understand
"If you work IT you feel this. Every lawyer, doctor, celebrity and CEO I've ever worked with is computer illiterate. They can email, they can Twitter and that's it. They confuse the mouse, they openly call themselves Luddites, they kick the power plug out and claim the 'box broke'. Mega-millionaires, too. Smart in other regards, but computers are kryptonite."
- zeift
"not IT, but, I worked in tech support for Verizon fiber optic services a long time ago. they provided internet, TV, and phone services."
"my favorite call was a dude who couldn't receive calls, and this was a Big Deal™ because He Was A Doctor - that might've been something he repeated a few times. anywho, I walk him through basic troubleshooting as he's dramatically exhaling after every sentence because I should obviously just be sending a tech. I wasn't allowed to do that without going through the steps, though."
"everything in the house checked out, but, after an attempt to remotely reset the system to no avail, my last required step for the guy was reporting the state of some status lights in the terminal on the wall outside the house. I get the guy to pop the front panel, and I'm explaining that he needs to tell me which of these lights is on and off, and what one of the digital panels says. guy cuts me off to say, 'oh, hey, there's a bunch of phone and internet cables in here,' to which I reply, 'yes, there are, but, we don't need to pay attention to them at this time, we just need to know what the status of the system is.'"
"dude says, 'well, these don't seem to be plugged into the right ports. let me see if I can correct-' this was when I interjected with, 'sir, please don't mess with any of the wired connections, those are setup on installation and everything is already mapped to your home layout-'"
"that's when he cut me off with, 'I think I know what I'm doing - after all, I'm A Doctor.'"
"the line immediately went dead. obviously, I tried to call him back... but, his issue was that he couldn't receive phone calls, and we didn't have a cell phone number for him. shucks."
"I've often pictured the guy standing outside his home, realization of his mistake settling in, all while his brain starts to focus on the fact that he had to wait on hold for over fifty minutes to even speak with me. f**king glorious."
- extralyfe
We can't all be smart in every area of life, but it's good to be able to acknowledge your weaker areas as well as your strengths.
When it comes to TV and movies, acting is everything. A good actor can make a bad TV show good, while a bad actor can do the opposite.
While the main character is the person viewers focus on for the most part, the villain may be the most important character.
Without the villain, our main character wouldn't be interesting.
The actor or actress who plays the villain needs to be top-notch. A great example of this is Imelda Staunton, who played Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1.
Umbridge was a truly despicable character, made more evil by the fact that she posed as someone working for the greater good and held a position of authority over all the heroic characters. Staunton did a great job portraying her exactly as the books described, and made viewers hate her just as much as we hated her in the books.
As the main villain in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, a poor performance would've destroyed the movie. Instead, this is often the movie fans like the best.
Redditors know the importance of a good villainous performance and are eager to share their opinions on the best in TV and movie history.
It all started when Redditor Helloimafanoffiction asked:
"What’s the greatest villain performance in a movie/TV show?"
Worst Teacher Ever?
"J.K. Simmons is up there for his role in Whiplash. Hated his guts there."
– Xporttek
"I just watched that movie for the first time a couple days ago, I too hated him! Who throws a chair at a student??? Who embarrasses a student in front of a whole audience just for revenge and then have the audacity to say "I will gouge your f*cking eyes out"???? Hated him."
– Lejarwomontequadea
"Thank you for getting that he was a villain. Too many of my friends see his speech at the end about finding/creating a good musician as profound enough to justify everything he did throughout the movie. And they see the “reconciliation” at the end as a sign that he was a good teacher after all. Maybe I’m off base, but that wasn’t what I saw at all. I saw a power hungry, obsessed, abusive adult take advantage of a passionate boy."
– John__Wick
Origin Stories Matter
"Charles Dance as Tywin Lannister."
"His introduction where he lectures Jaime while skinning a deer is perfection."
– 501stBigMike
"Yes. His acting was far more intricate and nuanced than any other villian on the show. He seemed like a real villian, not just a character being played. Too often hollywood goes overboard on the evilness of their characters and makes them evil for the sake of being evil. Give me backstory. Tell me how they become who they are."
– NeighborhoodCold6540
Super Scary
"Homelander in The Boys. I forgot the actor's name but the performance is actually kind of terrifying"
– Carnaraa
"Antony Starr"
– Precumbrian
"Yeahhhhhh he is so very very very scary. Absolutely amazing performance."
– Haliwe
"Every scene he's in I'm always worried that whoever he is interacting with won't survive the scene, especially if they're not a main character."
– HappyChaosOfTheNorth
"Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa in Inglorious Basterds"
"That opening scene is just....... 👌"
– hackyslashy
"Tarantino grew so frustrated at casting that role, he was five days away from calling off the movie when Waltz auditioned."
""I told my producers I might have written a part that was un-playable,” Tarantino said. “I said, I don’t want to make this movie if I can’t find the perfect Landa, I’d rather just publish the script than make a movie where this character would be less than he was on the page. When Christoph came in and read the next day, he gave me my movie back.""
– Exact_Roll_4048
The Curl Of The Lip
"Any and every villain Alan Rickman played, the man was a pure genius"
– Psyco_diver
"Rickman's villain roles are always captivating. Hans Gruber and the Sheriff of Nottingham being the two more notorious examples."
– Hydra_Master
"Sheriff of Nottingham is my pick. Maybe not as high as others in the evil stakes but nobody curls their lip in disdain like Rickman."
– Swimmingbackwardsish
Nightmares
"Child catcher from chitty chitty bang bang .. this one performance might have stopped many rl kidnappings."
– nineties_nostalgia
"Was the first film character that truly terrified me"
– 2020_really_sucks_
"Yeah nightmare fuel for sure, he was a ballet dancer in real life."
– nineties_nostalgia
Is There A Right Answer?
"Javier Bardem as Anton Chigurh."
– f*ckyourlandlord
"To this day, I still wonder what the right answer to "Do you see me?" is."
– PaulsRedditUsername
So Very Hateable
"Commodus in Gladiator"
– SimonApexPlayer
"One of the first movie characters I actually hated. And that one a**hole from The Green Mile."
– heylittledog
Why So Serious?
"The Joker by Heath Ledger"
– Adalbjorg_Hiraeth
"I think it’s too easy of an answer so people are going with other stuff. He is the GOAT for that performance."
– CappinPeanut
"Absolutely this one. Crazy, maniacal, insane, unhinged - he’s just so damn convincing. 100% my favorite Batman film."
– mrshfter
Rage Inducing
"David Tennant in Jessica Jones."
– jennyrob669
"I absolutely adore David Tennant, in a Doctor Who—obsessed kind of way. And Kilgrave terrifies me to my core. It was really difficult to reconcile. He did such a good job being positively chilling."
– Lionswithwands
"The man has range."
– Tudpool
"Man he felt straight up menacing and nothing redeemable about him."
– Konebred
"I’ve never wanted to step into the screen and kill the bad guy more than this character."
– Primary_Difficulty19
Brilliantly Done
"Really enjoyed Andrew Scott’s portrayal as Moriarty in Sherlock."
– GlennSWFC
"Of course people are going to die, because that's what people DO!!!!"
"He was such an enjoyable unhinged maniac in that show."
– Hydra_Master
The Ultimate Anti-Hero
"Walter White"
"Probably the most complex and realistic evil character both in writing and performance. So complex that you honestly might not call him a villain at all. He's something like a good person who does evil things with good intentions and evil reasons. And Bryan Cranston's portrayal of him is awesome."
– PaulsRedditUsername
Animated Villain
"Azula in Avatar the Last Airbender"
– nicoledtn
"The scene where she and Zuko fight is so amazing. You see her unhinge and slowly lose her sh*t up to that scene. She finally goes crazy and it’s brilliant."
– vaulter2000
"Grey Griffin was the best voice actor for the role. Intimidating but cool."
– Sleepy_H34D
Azula was always my favorite villain!
Who would you add to this list? Let us know in the comments below.
Sometimes the most outlandish ideas sound totally plausible.
In this day and age when 'Saturday Night Live' and 'The Onion' sound like credible news sources, anything is possible.
It feels like a lot of humans will believe literally anything.
Redditor Jeffery_DahmerTV wanted to discuss the ideas that sound too crazy that they have to be true, so they asked:
"What is the most believable conspiracy Theory?"
In this day and age of alternative facts, it all seems like lies and truth.
Enlighten me.
Infection
"That computer viruses are made by antivirus companies to test their antivirus software."
astarisaslave
"Parents bought a new computer recently, the McAfee stuff was in there pretty deep to remove. The staff bogged it down, way faster afterward."
lt12765
War
"We are being goaded into waging culture wars that don't matter to keep us from waging class wars."
virgilreality
"Is this a conspiracy theory though? It would be if you assume it was engineered from the start, but this would also make it very unbelievable. But that existing conflicts had been fueled and taken advantage of by people in the position to for millennia is well evident I'd say."
Leseleff
Double Down
"Mattress Firm is a front for laundering money. There is no other reason for there to be so many. No one is ever even in there."
Free_Bingo
"Double down on this one! I have a Mattress Firm next to my job and I have never seen anyone in there ever. It’s been six years!"
cbcmama781
"I’m not convinced of this. Our local Mattress Firm is clearly baking $1k+ into their margins and then aggressively selling credit-based financing. Selling two or three a month probably covers everything."
Agloe_Dreams
Weather Issues
"Those climate protestors that glue themselves to the road are hired by oil giants to make climate activists look stupid."
milanvlaman
"I feel this way about a lot of 'extremist' groups on both sides, that there are plants from the other side doing really stupid stuff just to discredit the idea."
Herr_Poopypants
The climate is changing. We have to come together. How is that a conspiracy?
That's All
"That the fashion industry purposefully doesn’t put pockets in women’s clothing so they have to carry purses."
diceunodixon
Financial Clean Up
"That the only reason that the US government doesn’t do anything with student debt loans is because then people would stop signing up for the army."
Brotastic29
"That and healthcare.
"When you join up you get healthcare fully covered for you and your family, and you can get a full college education.
If the government started providing either of those for civilians, no one would need to join the military anymore."
redF5veStandingBy
"I think so too. I know and agree with what that dude was saying but when I see or hear people use 'Army' as a way to generalize the military, it usually means that what they said is something they’re just repeating what they heard."
chefboiortiz
The Commission
"There's definitely more to JFK's assassination than the Warren commission made it out to be. Whether or not LHO was the sole killer, I find it fishy that the CIA was so desperate to hide information from the public."
Bitter-Record-3831
"There is a very well-done documentary that concludes it was an accidental discharge from a Secret Service agent in one of the cars ahead of him."
Babstana
"CIA probably considered the assassination a declaration of war against Russia. They’re probably covering up that they were about to start WW3 over it."
tangcameo
Dairy Pounds
"The Great cheese conspiracy. Each year the US government buys more and more milk to make more and more cheese. The US government is sitting on something like 2 billion pounds of cheese. Just to artificially inflate milk prices."
worfhill
"Not even a conspiracy, just an example of the government controlling the economy in favor of dairy farmers."
Glass_Pies
"I watched a documentary about this. It's actually true."
PreferredSex_Yes
They're Listening
"That the CIA posts questions like this on Reddit to measure their past and current work, brainstorm for future projects."
ZRX1200R
Ominous
"I have a conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories. I believe the governments and 'leaders' of the world are actually rather incompetent, so much so, that they require the illusion of them being an ominous all-powerful all-seeing entity in order to remain in power."
"And to accomplish this they allow conspiracy theories like the Illuminati and etc to spread around to add a bit of urban myth to how 'powerful' they are."
"It's probably all a bunch of garbage Europe can barely communicate within itself you expect there to be some secret global order??? Oh, stop it haha."
SparkNoJoyThrw01
Sifting through what could and could not be true, could take forever.
Life is full of mystery.