The times do change fast don't they? Everything we think we'll know about the future is usually false.
How much of history is littered with things we thought we'd never be able to do without?
Now we watch movies in our palms. (Instead of theaters.) We send millions of dollars through the air. (Instead of withdrawing in person, or a check.) And we no longer need pennies. (Basically)
Who would have thought?
These were all going to be life essentials.
But generation by generation, the obsolescence takes over.
Redditor VictorPumpenstein wanted to talk about what truths were hidden until it was too late for each group as we aged.
"What is the biggest lie sold to your generation?"
Beepers. I was told my beeper would be forever. Alas...
You Still Here?
"Gen X-er here... we were told that the boomers would eventually retire. Still waiting for that to happen while rapidly approaching retirement age myself."
drsfmd
Seth Meyers Lol GIF by Late Night with Seth MeyersGiphyJOHNNY!!
"Don’t act up in class Johnny, It will go on your PERMANENT RECORD!!"
ThePracticalDad
"I worked in records for a public school board many years ago. The only thing colleges ever requested was transcripts and IEPs if a student had one. However, the police would request full disciplinary records of someone was going to be hired. And unless a student had a disciplinary hearing at some point, most records other than transcripts are destroyed after 7 years."
War Over
"The war on drugs."
2003gts
"Poverty and terror won theirs, too. Turns out, declaring war on a concept without attacking the societal roots of the problem is just a way to funnel more money into the military-industrial complex."
MrVeazey
"Shout out to pharmaceutical companies for winning the war on drugs."
Responsible_Tell1589
instead of cardboard...
"Plastic recycling. I remember when grocery stores went from paper bags to plastic because 'they're recyclable!' Literally everything else started coming wrapped in a ton of plastic (instead of cardboard) because it was recyclable. Single use plastics were great, because we'd just recycle the plastic, and use it forever! Turns out, it was just cheaper, and recycling had nothing to do with it. Most of that plastic can't be recycled anyway."
DifficultMinute
Food Contents
"Fat is bad, sugar is good."
Thesorus
"This is why America has an obesity epidemic. Even now, older generations tout the health benefits of low fat things, without bothering to look at sugar contents. High sugar processed foods that happen to be low in fat destroyed multiple generations. Thankfully I think Gen Z might be the turnaround. Older generations are pretty messed up."
Bulky_Consideration
Unprotected
"Medicare and social security will protect you. Based on how things are going, anyone with 30 years or more before retirement better have strong backup plans."
iteraco
Medicine Pills GIF by FergieGiphyOh Medicare and social security. What. A. Disaster. We are in trouble.
Just Type
"You will always have to write in cursive."
hakuna_matitties
"I hated those cursive books and being 10 and still couldn't figure it out. My sister a year behind me never had to write cursive. I firmly believe my year was the last year to deal with cursive. This was back in 2012-2013."
chonketteseal
take notes GIF by US National ArchivesGiphyIt's Broken
"Climb the corporate ladder."
UKS1977
"It's not a ladder, it's a pyramid. Only one person can be CEO, a handful can be executives, a bigger clump can be in some form of middle management, but the majority will always be 'individual contributors' - what an amazingly corporate term."
"You're often better off with an in-demand skill set that you can shop from company to company. Unless you enjoy fighting and scrabbling and climbing over people to keep getting promoted. Sure, you may have crappy bosses, but even the CEO has to go in front of the board and be told everything that's going wrong."
towerdweller
I'm Good
“If you don’t go to college, you’ll die broke and alone on the street.”
googlyeyes183
"I wish i hadn't been pushed so hard to go to Uni at 18. I wasn't ready yet and i didn't know what I wanted to do with my life yet. Asking a 16 year old what degree and vocation he wants is just a bad way of doing it!"
Relentless_Fiend
"My principal in high school was upset at me because I wasn't going to college. He told me multiple times that if I don't, then I am just throwing away my intelligence. I never went to college because it just sounded miserable and expensive. I worked a few different jobs after high school and learned a lot then started my own business. Glad I never went to college."
acetamethemphetamine
Not True
"Work hard for your company and they will take care of you."
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!"
whatintheactualfeth
Season 1 Lol GIF by NBCGiphyThe Crap Job
"If you work hard and accept lower pay it'll pay off in the end."
thrownawaybyubefore
"That works only to put experience on your resume. Then you find a better job, then a better job. The people who pissed me off were the ones who told me (or assumed I was planning) to stick to one shi**y job forever."
BubbhaJebus
Source of LIfe
"Growing up everyone I ever met said to never get a credit card. The only way to buy a house is with credit and the only way to actually get credit is a credit card. In my life I paid off 3 vehicles early only to be told the second they were paid off my credit was dropped to a no rating because I wasn't actively in debt."
Squantoon
Hiding
"'Duck and cover,' somehow hiding under my student desk would allow survival from a nuclear attack."
biggesterhungry
"I always laughed at this concept as well. 'How is a desk going to protect me from that?' I researched it. Turns out the government really didn't give it as advice for people that were near the epicenter of the blast but those that going to be potentially effected further out by blast shockwaves. They deduced that hiding under your desk would partially protect you from flying debris."
robert238974
Once
“'It’s a one in a lifetime event! These things don’t happen all the time'” - In reference to things like wars, devastating floods, wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, mass shootings/gun violence, terrorist attacks, and now… pandemics, apparently. How many more ‘once in a lifetime’ freak events am I going to be living through? When can we have some peace and quiet?"
One-Two3214
I Do's
"Weddings, it should be a huge wedding with a crap ton of guests we don't care about."
elegantloba
paul campbell love GIF by Hallmark ChannelGiphyAll of it!
"You can have it all... that both parents can work, go to school, raise kids, have time for their marriage, and have hobby time."
Prestigious-Owl-6397
"You can have all those things, just not at the same time, especially work/school OR work/kids OR school/kids. And it requires both people to be equal contributors to housework/child-rearing."
ace_at_none
Fake It
"That cheaters never win. Between the removal of the Fairness Doctrine leading to extreme and overt media bias leading to people living in echo chambers, phrases like 'fake news' negating inconvenient facts and halting critical thinking, and Gerrymandering being legal cheating is obviously the American Way. Sadly, few people even realize it and when presented with the facts cannot accept them because generations of Americans were brainwashed into blind faith in the american system and its fairness."
Grenuille
Generations
"Born in the early 80s, kind of between Gen X and Millennials: you have to go to university if you want a real job. I try not to hold this against my parents because it worked out for me, but it took me a very long time to pay back my student loans."
"I guess the key difference is that at least I was able to pay mine off; anyone born even just a couple of years later than I was has it considerably worse."
Grenuille
So much changes over each generation. How will we ever learn?
- Someone Asked “What Is The Biggest Lie Sold To Your Generation ... ›
- The lies our textbooks told my generation of Virginians about slavery ... ›
- What is the biggest lie sold to your generation? : r/AskReddit ›
- Someone Asked “What Is The Biggest Lie Sold To Your Generation ... ›
- what was the biggest lie sold to your generation? : r ... ›
- Gen Xers, Millennials and Zoomers share the biggest lies sold to ... ›
- "We Were Told That Boomers Would Eventually Retire": 30 People ... ›
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.