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People Explain Which Previously Luxurious Things Are Now Considered Totally Normal

Even just in the past decade, items that used to seem too luxurious or expensive for "average" people to purchase are now incredibly affordable. And inaccessible produce and personal hygiene products are close to a distant memory.

It's fun to think back about how far we've come.


Redditor Repulsive_Ad_1163 asked:

"What previously luxurious thing is now considered normal?"

Speciality Spices

"Vanilla. It’s the second most expensive spice by weight, even today… but for some reason, it’s associated with bland or mundane flavor. Go figure."

- AccioNimbus

Year-Round Produce

"Today's produce is a crazy luxury."

"You are telling me that in Ontario Canada, I can get perfectly ripe bananas in January? Insanity."

- mkicon

Car Bag Phones

"I remember my dad having a bag/car phone in the '90s for his business and people thinking that was a huge deal."

- ServiceCall1986

Cell Phones

"25 years ago, I was in high school, and we watched a corporate video in class. It was one of those of how the future will be all bright and shiny, as long as everyone uses brand X."

"The video was by Motorola, and it described the future. And they weren't that far off, stuff like zoom calls from the beach. But the one thing that had everyone in the class laughing and dismissing the video as bulls**t?"

"The eight-year-old with her own cell phone. Because 'no parent would ever spend that much money on a phone for a kid.'"

- UssMaurauder

Aluminum

"The only way there used to be to get aluminum was to find native deposits of it. Meaning, basically, pure nuggets or otherwise tiny little deposits. Which were exceptionally rare. Hence the precious nature of aluminum."

"Aluminium didn't become the ridiculously disposable commodity it is today until we learned how to break bauxite with electricity."

- PM_ME_CUTE

Accessible Water

"Running Water. I live in a rural part of Alaska in the summer, it is still a luxury there."

- ier_who

Car Features

"Power windows in a car."

- mook1178

Backup Cameras

"Car backup cameras. I think they're mandatory standard features on cars now."

- Augustus58

Readily Available Food and Water

"I LOVE that I can buy pre-butchered meat and vegetables I didn't grow and pasta I didn't make, etc."

"I read 'Little House on the Prarie,' I'm not butchering the pigs and preserving the meat in barrels/smoking it over two weeks, and it's awesome!"

- Revolutionary-Yak-47

Flat Screen TVs

"The first flat screen TV I saw was at a Bose store in the Spring of 99' and it was 42" for $15k! By today's standards, it was a fat flat screen of lower pixel quality. Crazy how cheap you can get one for now!"

- krejkick

Meat Products

"Eating meat every day, my grandfather was born during WWII and he told me that he only ate meat once a week when he was a kid. I can't speak for other countries but in the French countryside that was considered a luxury post-WWII."

- lehmx

Purple Dye

"Purple clothing."

"If there was one random thing I remember from middle school social studies/history, it’s going to be the fact that purple pigment was for the elite."

- GorillonDollars

Feminine Products

"I'm old enough that when I was a girl, most sanitary napkins still had a suspender belt that you attached the pad to; the 'beltless' maxi pads that arrived in the '70s were a game-changing deal."

"And tampons? Revolutionary, although they required a large body of marking reassurance that girls' virginity wouldn't be ruined by tampon use..."

- Mis_Emily

Different Expenses

"Agatha Christie once said, 'I never thought I would ever be so poor that I would not have servants, or so rich that I would own a car.'"

"But Honestly this statement is still quite true around the world."

"In places like southeast Asia, many families have live-in helpers or servants and they are quite poor themselves. Yet they can't afford a car."

"It's wild."

- AussieCollector

Orange Selection

"My dad used to always put an orange in my stocking and explained that it used to be a big deal because the fruit was hard to find."

"I carried on the tradition with my own kids. My 20-year-old, who I still make a stocking for, told me this past Christmas that it doesn't feel like Christmas if he doesn't get an orange in his stocking."

"He said when he has kids, he'll carry on the tradition and explain why. It made me feel good to know that it was as important to him as it was to me."

- Smart_Cabinet_9381

It's amazing to think of how the economy and our lifestyles have evolved over the years, and how expenses have changed to reflect that.

People Reveal The Most Shocking Secrets Someone's Ever Told Them

One Redditor asked: 'What's the most shocking secret someone has revealed to you?'

Woman shushing camera by putting a finger to her lips
Kristina Flour/Unsplash

CW: addiction, death, abuse.

Everyone has secrets they'll take with them to their graves.

But some clandestine info is so hard to contain, that it can cause stress and anxiety until some of the pressure is alleviated.

You might be the person who was sworn to secrecy to share some of that burden.

But are you to be trusted to aid your secret-sharer in keeping their secrets?

Curious to hear from strangers online who have a tough time keeping some of the most jaw-dropping intel to themselves, Redditor HardDeep69420 asked:

"What's the most shocking secret someone has revealed to you?"

Knowing that a friend or family has suffered has haunted these Redditors.

A Painful Truth

"In the 70’s, my cousin died in a car crash that caught fire. I was very afraid that he was awake and felt the fire. My parents said he died immediately and didn’t suffer. My mother was on hospice at home in 2011. She told me the firemen were trying to open the doors and My cousin and the other teens were screaming for help when the cars caught fire. There were no survivors and my Aunt was never the same. It wasn’t until after his death that the jaws of life were distributed to our rural departments."

– Tkay906363

A Tough Call

"When I was 11 I had a friend reveal that her stepmother was abusing her... she made me promise not to say anything to my mom or any other adult. I agreed, we had weekly therapy sessions with a guidance counselor if you wanted it so it was my day to go and I just felt like I needed to tell… so I did. The counselor ended up reporting it and CPS got involved and my friend was made to live with her mother. She was so angry at me for telling but I felt it in my soul that I should. We are still friends to this day.. both of us 29 years old."

– SubstantialLove8330

"Sometimes you have to decide between your friend and your friendship. It sounds like you made the right choice."

– ALawful_Chaos

The Evil Of Addiction

"That he watched his son die of an overdose and didn’t do anything to help. He told me that his son had battled addictions for many years and that he had called an ambulance in the past when his son had overdosed, but that he thought it was better this time to 'just let him go since he made his choice.'"

– Ok-Associate-7894

The Ex And Her Health Issue

"I had an old girlfriend who was coming to Florida and wanted to hang out with me and my wife, she brought her mom, who I knew pretty well. A great dinner, drinks, fun stories, then when my ex went to the bathroom, the mom told me she (the ex) was dying of cancer. (I had No idea). It was sad, but yet felt so good she wanted to hang out. She died within a year. We were probably 35 years old at the time."

– waistingtoomuchtime

"You know..people will read this and grasp the sadness of the end but, on the other hand, your ex reached out and wanted to share some of her remaining time with you ..and your wife...clearly, your time together was special to her regardless of how it ended. You still had a warm place in her heart for you. That's actually quite awesome. I know you know that. Your wife is very lucky."

– Impressive-Doughnut7

Life will never be the same after Redditors found out about these long-hidden family secrets.

What The Fork?!

"When I was 16, my Mom announced at dinner that her sister was coming for a visit next week. I dropped my fork and said 'YOU HAVE A SISTER?'”

–Initial_lampwick115

"I had this: age 11 driving up to Scotland with my parents and we stopped off at a tiny town, walked into the big hotel, then got introduced to my uncle. My mum's brother. Hadn't existed before then and only came out of the woodwork because my grandpa died shortly before (they didn't get on). It was a weird shock but also an 'OK cool, life goes on' moment."

– slinkychameleon

Extended Family

"I'm 56 now but at some point in my early 40s while driving with my dad he says 'you have a half brother somewhere.'"

– ridobe

"My dad pulled this sh*t on me when I went to my grandfather's celebration of life. Picked me up from the train station, asked me if I knew about his new wife (I did) and their daughter, born six years before my mom died of cancer (they never divorced). Then had the guts to follow it up with a request to FaceTime them that night because they wanted to meet me, because "[he] never kept his family a secret... from them." It took a while for me to get over that."

– toujourspret

Invisible Husband

"I found out my mother and father were not divorced. He never existed. She had a one-night stand, found out she was pregnant, bought a wedding ring, changed her name, and told the family that she had gotten married. She made up excuses every time she went to my grandparent's house as to why her husband couldn’t also be there to meet them. On the 3rd visit, my grandfather told her never to wear that ring in his house again and when is the baby due? I’m 53."

– Traditional_Jicama72

Why The Nun Made Weekly Visits

"I found out my parents weren't married when I was 14, and my parents had a massive row after my dad was caught by the police with a sex worker. My mum blurted it out to me along with the reason why they were arguing. I'm 50. Up til then, they pretended.. when my Catholic secondary school asked for a marriage certificate as part of my screening for the school, they sent a letter to the priest confidentially... I still got in. Explains why from birth until 11, a Catholic nun would visit my parents every weekend, probably to ensure my soul was intact, lol."

– PidginPigeonHole

Things get sinister.

A Murder Confession

"Casually dropped they’d killed someone then got really quiet about it. Like, sad quiet. Sounds like there was a case surrounding the ordeal but could never get them to talk about it more and I didn’t want to push."

– lil-kingtrashm0uth

Dodging A Bullet

"My ex casual dropped he killed someone also. He was a lot more loud about it when he was upset with me though. 'I’ve killed for less'. I know the whole story, or both of them. The one he tells people, and the one he told me. Either way. He’s a scary man, and I would never wish to be near him again."

– Skyecatcher

One of the hardest positions to be in is when a friend tells you that they've cheated on their significant other, whom you also know.

This happened to me.

Keeping the privileged information was agonizing as I feigned ignorance whenever I hung out with the couple or with the person who had been cheated on.

Eventually, the pair broke up as the affair came to light through no involvement by me.

The truth always has a way of surfacing, after all.

Would you rely on that to happen, or would you intervene?

When is it okay to betray the person who entrusted you with their secret?

A cucumber, sits along side measuring tape.
Photo by charlesdeluvio

The human body is an amazing thing.

It is capable of far more than we ever thought possible.

When studying anatomy we really should start doing a deeper dive into all the parts of the body.

Each organ and limb has a story and function that we never really learn about.

Redditor NorthPengyyy wanted to discuss... the penis, so they asked:

"What are some fun facts about the penis?"

Don't Die

"Fun fact - the erection happens when blood enters the penis, the main "structure" of the penis hardens and expands (obviously), but by doing so it presses the Veins and blocks them. Meaning - the blood comes but doesn't go out of the organ, thus keeping it erect for too long. This is why erections over 6 hours are dangerous because the blood blockage is for too long of a time and the penis can die due to lack of oxygen. I hope it was interesting."

SoapBubble3

Outaries

"The seam on your testicle sack is where your proto vagina sealed up while you were in the womb."

melonsquared

"So testicles are just ovaries that are outaries?"

datazulu

"Literally yes. They all start as gonads in your abdomen. Girls’ gonads stay and turn into ovaries. Boy’s gonads descend and become testes. It’s why, when you take a hit to the balls, it hurts all the way back up in your stomach and can make you nauseated. Boys still have innervated back up to where the gonads first developed."

SpartySoup

SNAP!

Schitts Creek Pain GIF by CBCGiphy

"It can break like a glow stick if it slips out while a girl is on top and slams back down on it."

Artistic_Marzipan221

De-boned

"Most animals have a 'penis bone' which allows for instant erections, however, humans do not have this bone. The cause is thought to be because without the bone, courtship, arousal, and mating is a longer affair therefore leading to increased intimacy and pair bonding. The penis is literally made for love."

nailbunny2000

Prehensile

Nat Geo Adventure GIF by National Geographic ChannelGiphy

"An elephant's penis is prehensile, like its trunk. It can be used to pick up objects."

Sea-Woodpecker-610

How come only elephants were granted this gift?

Frozen

Polar Bears GIF by Nature on PBSGiphy

"Being stressed out, exhausted, and cold makes it smaller. So the smallest penis in the world should belong to a man being chased by a polar bear in the Arctic."

Electrical_Age_336

Wait, what?

"I remember watching a weird YouTube documentary about a spider (in Australia of course) whose bite gives you a forever erection."

JMthought

It Just happens

"Just because it's erect DOES NOT mean the person is horny/aroused."

Spartan0536

"I recently learned that clenching other muscles is a good way to get rid of an erection. The bigger the muscle, the better, so clenching your butt is a good way to go. Apparently, it’s because it causes more blood to go to the clenched muscle. More blood to the muscle = less blood to the penis."

phatcat9000

"I'm quite anxious all the time. When I'm just chilling with nothing else to do, I reach a point of relaxation and I get erections, I'm not aroused or anything, I'm just chilling and it seems that my body approves of my time off I guess."

chifrijoconbirra

Be Smart

"There is a ligament at the base of the penis that causes the penis to rise when it becomes erect. This is what causes a bulge etc."

"Some people have stupidly made the decision to have this ligament cut. This is because it adds a few inches of length to the erect penis. However, it will just hang down. Do. Not. Do. This. It is a stupid thing to do."

phatcat9000

Data Entry

information GIFGiphy

"A single sperm contains 37.5 MB of DNA information. One ejaculation represents roughly a data transfer of 15,875 GB equivalent to the combined capacity of 62 MacBook Pro laptops."

Nijinsky_84

Well, the penis is far more interesting than we thought.

Isn't it?

Do you have any interesting tidbits to add? Let us know in the comments.

man in car holding a lot of American money

Brock Wegner on Unsplash

"I work all night, I work all day to pay the bills I have to pay
Ain't it sad?
And still there never seems to be a single penny left for me
That's too bad"~ "Money, Money, Money" ABBA

Money is either the root of all evil or the key to happiness, largely depending on whether you have any.

So how do people with money get it? One method is a job that pays the bills.

Keep reading...Show less

We've all heard of intuition or premonitions or "seeing the future," and a lot of us have laughed at it at some point.

It's easy to disregard these images or feelings as a symptom of anxiety about something coming up.

But for some people, by listening to a gut feeling they had, they were able to save someone's life, possibly even their own.

Redditor guywhousesreddit09 asked:

"What was the 'gut feeling' that you listened to that saved your life?"

The Kiddie Pool

"My mom and grandpa were putting out a kiddie pool for my siblings and me in our backyard when we were little."

"My grandpa had set it up, and my mom kept insisting that for some reason, she felt like they should move it to a different spot."

"Thankfully they did, because while we were all playing in the pool, a huge branch from a tree in our yard snapped and came crashing down exactly where the pool had originally been."

- WaitWut7

A Questionable Passer-by

​"When I was around 13, I was walking to the bus stop in the morning. A car was going through my neighborhood very slowly, which made alarm bells go off in my head."

"When it passed me, I glanced over my shoulder to keep an eye on it and saw it was doing an immediate U-turn."

"I noped right out and dove through the bushes, crossed a bunch of driveways, and found a neighbor who was washing his car."

"I looked back to where I had been standing. The strange car had stopped, a seriously scary-looking dude had gotten out, and was looking in the bushes."

"I don't know if I would've died exactly, but I would not have had a good time."

- Symnestra

'Final Destination,' Who?

"I was driving uphill behind a flatbed truck carrying I-beams and I envisioned them sliding off the truck and hitting my windshield."

"I changed lanes so I wasn’t behind the truck and two seconds later, the I-beams were sliding off onto the road where my car would’ve been, sparking and gouging the pavement. Terrifying."

"To this day, I won’t stay behind a truck with anything that’s 'strapped down.'"

- Infj-kc

Thank Goodness for That Lock

"In middle school, I was up late one night. My mom and my brother were asleep, and my dad had gone on business. I had let the dog out, and when I went to go get him, I got a bad feeling like someone was out there."

"There wasn't really a reason to feel this way, it was just dark, and I got spooked, so I put the chain lock up on the back door when we got back inside. Back then, we never locked our doors."

"A few minutes later, the dog is drinking by the back door, and he suddenly stops and starts growling (like a low grumble) at the door."

"I was sitting where I could see the dog but not the door. Then I hear the door pull open and the chain lock catch."

"The dog started barking like crazy and I ran upstairs to wake my brother up. He went out and looked around, but no one was there."

"I think the dog's barking scared them away, but I don't know who it was or what would have happened if I hadn't locked the door."

- monaforever

A Mom's Close Encounters

"My grandmother accidentally saved my mom's life by not allowing her to go to a sleepover when she was young. During the night, the father murdered his entire family and would likely have killed my mother had she been there."

"Another amazing coincidence that I'm alive, is when my mother was in high school, she and her best friend were arguing over who was going to take a ride on the back of their guy friends' new motorcycle."

"My mom lost the argument and her friend got on the back of the motorcycle and rode away. She never saw them again because her friend and the guy were both killed in an accident during that ride."

- ekyrt

Wait a Second

"It was very late driving and there were minimal cars on the road, I came up to a red light, and as it turned green, something inside me said, 'Don’t go yet,' and a van blew through their red light."

- imbribecca

"Similar situation, but there were four of us in the car. My friend was driving and our friend in the back yelled to stop the car immediately even though we had a green light we were coming up on. A semi blew through a red light. He later said he felt like it wasn’t even him saying it and he had no idea why he yelled it other than a bad feeling."

- harlow2088

Mother Knows Best

"Not my life but my son's. I was 33 weeks pregnant and I noticed my son wasn't moving as much as usual. I waited a day and nothing changed."

"Despite advice by doctors and family saying I should just stay home and he wasn't moving as much because he was just running out of room to move, I went into the ER and had my son that night due to fetal distress."

"He had his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck eight times and weighed just three pounds. He spent 30 days in the NICU and now is a happy two-year-old."

- Goatintree

An Insistent Friend

"A friend's feeling saved me from my gut."

"I had just finished hosting a meeting (I swear it was productive) and a friend said, 'You don't look so good.'"

"I had just come off a weekend boat diving in the Red Sea and figured I was just tired. My friend said, 'Nah man, I'm taking you to the doctor.'"

"The doctor at our clinic poked me a few times and said, 'Take him to the ER and tell them it's his appendix.'"

"I was in surgery less than 90 minutes later. My surgeon said I was two to three hours from it blowing up. I lived alone and no one would have missed me until the next day."

- ksuwildkat

A Night Walk

"About two years ago, my dad and I loved going on night walks, It was something we’ve always done more or less every night."

"One night, however, as we were about halfway through our daily route, we got to an alleyway. Now normally, I’ve never thought anything of it, but something this night just told me not to walk through, I had a really bad feeling and I urged my dad to just go back home."

"He kept brushing it off and saying I was just scared of the dark and nothing was going to happen. After a couple of minutes of arguing, we finally turned back and walked home."

"Turns out about 20 minutes after we left, there was a completely random attack in that exact alleyway that left a poor young girl stabbed, thankfully not to death, but with life-changing injuries. I still dread to think what would have happened if we didn’t walk back."

- No_Project6675

Definitely Not a Black Bear

"Up in Northern Pennsylvania, I had a gut feeling I needed to turn around and walk out of the woods I was hiking."

"That turned out to be a good idea because I saw the big cat that was tracking me on my way back out."

"I was hiking a stream up around Emlenton, PA, checking it out to see if it's wadeable for fishing. I didn't know y'all had any wild cats around there; I was just worried about black bears."

- abspencer22

Protecting Her Own

"Years ago, I went into my garden at night, after my husband had left for a road trip minutes before, and saw a pair of sneakers in the dark, in the gap between the fence and our house."

"I didn’t think, I just said very loudly, 'What are you doing there?' When he didn’t reply, I shouted, 'GET OUT OF MY GARDEN!'"

"He muttered, 'Yes, ma’am,' and scuttled off. Also not thinking, I picked up a BBQ knife that happened to be right there, went through the house to the front windows, and saw him crouched by my car in the driveway."

"I called the cops, they arrived, and we discovered that someone, probably the same dude, had just broken into our neighbor’s house and stolen a gun."

"The cops gave me a condescending talking-to about the ‘risks’ of confronting a criminal, but I am convinced to this day that my instincts saved me from a life-altering and horrible experience. We humans are animals and one animal knows when another will fight like h**l."

"We got an alarm system after that. And the guy came back several weeks later. I looked up to see him on our porch, about twenty feet from the sidewalk. Called the cops again. They sent a SWAT team this time. And a helicopter."

"They got the guy."

- Fair_Leadership76

Medicinal Negligence

"I was pregnant in the very early weeks (five or six weeks), and started getting these intense pains on the right side of my abdomen. Like so extremely painful that I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t make noise or move."

"I went to my doctor the next day, and he said I was being hysterical and it’s completely normal to be in pain when you’re pregnant. He refused to get me to an OB-GYN, and said I could go private if it was such a big deal."

"I went to a private scan, and my pregnancy was ectopic (stuck in my fallopian tube), and my tube had ruptured and I was bleeding internally. I was rushed to the hospital and had surgery to remove my tube that night."

"If I hadn’t booked that scan, I would have died in my sleep that night due to internal bleeding."

""I reported him for negligence."

- Murky_Conclusion4210

Potential Robbery

"A guy asked me for help with bus fare and offered to take me to an ATM. I got a bad feeling and dipped. Then I saw him on the news a week later for robbing somebody at gunpoint."

- BurghFinsFan

A Chillingly Close Call

"My wife was going to go on a road trip with friends down to a bigger city for a concert. She had done this several times before."

"Friends were close friends of ours but for some reason, I felt off about it that one day. I said to her, 'Babe, I don’t know why and you can ignore me if you’d like, but I don’t think you should go. I don’t know why, but I feel like something is going to happen.'"

"She knows I’d never tell her not to do anything she wanted. It was out of the blue and out of character for me. So she decided to stay home and watch movies with me."

"About two hours later after the rest of the crew left, we got a phone call that they had gotten into a severe accident. Two friends were in the hospital and someone from the other vehicle died on the scene. Had she gone along, she would have been sitting in the seat where they had been hit by the other driver and most likely killed."

"Someone, somewhere, somehow was warning me. And I’m glad we both listened to it."

- Sperryxd

Always Stop to Look at the Rainbow

"I was driving along a rough mountain road heading home from work. The mountain pass ends at a lake, and you drive around the lake to meet up with the main road."

"I got to the bottom of the mountain and started down the lake road, and saw this stunning bright rainbow over the lake."

"I had this weird gut feeling and urge to stop and look at it, with the way the sun was shining, it didn’t make sense that there would be a rainbow, but it was mesmerizing. So I stopped and stared at it in awe."

"A couple of seconds later, as soon as I looked back at the road, a massive boulder came barreling down off the cliff above about 20 meters in front of me, hit the road, and smoked all of the concrete barriers as it went into the lake. I 100% would have been killed if I hadn’t stopped."

- Epantz

These accounts gave us absolute chills as we read about other people's close calls.

We never know when our time will be up, so we absolutely have to be careful with the time that we have.