Okay, everyone, today we're going to learn a vitally important life lesson, one that could make or break your reputation and be the deciding moment between a life of normalcy or a life of soul-shattering humiliation.

Please take out your paper and pen and write this down:

ALWAYS DESTROY YOUR *ahem* PRIVATE FILES BEFORE SURRENDERING YOUR DEVICES

This cannot be stressed enough.

It's not sufficient to just delete the files—you gotta catapult all that ish directly into the sun.

Giphy

Which is a lesson a gent on Reddit recently learned the hard—and profoundly soul-destroying—way.

Redditor JustaYeetingMat posted the harrowing tale to the r/tifu subReddit. "TIFU" is Redditspeak for "Today I F*ed Up" which, as you'll soon see, is the understatement of... maybe all of human existence in this case?

"Homework folder" is a Reddit by-word for a folder on your phone or computer in which you hide all your, um... adult? content? Be it the, shall we say, "professional" or "homemade" varieties.

So, you know, basically the dead last thing you ever want anyone to see.

JustaYeetingMat recently got a new phone, and in his family it's customary to give your old phone to a younger sibling, so he passed his on to his sister. Conscientious lad that he is, he moved his "homework" folder to his new phone before passing the old one on.

Done and done! Right?

Well, we'll just go ahead and let the title of his Reddit post speak for itself, because there's simply no better way to put it.

TIFU by giving younger sister a phone with the "homework" folder in it and now i am probably going to get disowned

Are you secondhand dying inside? Cuz JustaYeetingMat certainly is, firsthand.

As JustaYeetingMat explains, it turns out that you have to completely destroy all the data on the phone to truly get rid of the "homework" folder. So when his sister went traipsing thru the phone to clear some more storage space, she found the "homework" folder and did what, quite frankly, most of us would do:

instantly she ran around the house showing everyone in my family about what atrocities i keep in that document

And, of course, his family had pretty much exactly the response you'd expect.

now nearly all of my family either hates me or is disgusted by me

Fair enough.

So what has JustaYeetingMat done in the wake of this?

The only sensible thing really.

i have locked myself in my bedroom with 3 days worth of food and a good supply of water from my filtered tap

Don't worry, though: he hasn't ostracized himself entirely.

I go out through my window and go to kfc (only at night) for some good non frozen food

At least he's not totally isolated.

As you might expect, JustaYeetingMat's fellow Redditors had plenty of fun at their expense.

The best part is that you'll be reliving this story for the entirety of your adult life at family get-togethers. -- u/handlessuck

Don't forget about the shame that will come on at random times when he remembers the story. -- u/averagethrowaway21

If OP ever gets married, you can guarantee that his family is going to have fun pulling this out at the wedding. -- u/AreThereWaffles

Though there were a few words of comfort.

Well there's always the chance of being disowned, don't want to rule out all these options just yet -- u/Keaton525

I got caught cross dressing and so forth when I was 14. 31 and still alive -- u/ZeroSymbolic7188

Your best bet youngster is to just suck it up and own it. Seriously! Don't let your family make you feel insecure about this stuff. -- u/MadEzra64

There are two kinds of people in this world. People who enjoy a bit of porn now and again, and liars. Just own it, imo. Be like, "oh you think thats whats up? You should see the stuff I have on my new phone" -- u/Madaghmire

And, for those of you who also have "secrets" to keep, there was plenty of advice.

Always, always, always do a factory reset on electronics you sell or give away. Protects your information and saves you from embarrassing situations. --u/tony7914

If you want to be thorough, do a factory reset, put dummy data and do a factory reset again. This is because there are data recovery programs that can pull previously wiped data from a device. So, if you put some dummy data, nobody can access it later --u/AdityaRav

So the message here is clear—DESTROY YOUR FILES.

Your dignity will thank you.