It's Neo-Noir time. Let's strap into the back of a PI's car and follow them around on some cases!
u/Xenasty asked:
Private detectives of reddit, what is the most interesting case you ever solved?
Here were some of the coolest cases.
Backting
So I work for a company that investigates what look like insurance fraud. So someone has some type of accident and are saying that they can't work ect.
So we have this case where a man is saying his back is terrible. Like he can hardly walk, can't work at all, needs constant assistance for everyday life.
So we get an investigator to provide footage of them going around their everyday life, pretty normal thing for us to do.
So I pop this DVD in my computer and start to watch, he's walking, bending, twisting. All things that make it look like he isn't injured but then he does one thing that makes his claim fall in the toilet and flush itself down.
He did a backflip. He stood on a bench at a park and flipped off. Needless to say after we showed him the footage he withdrew his claim.
Movie Plot
I'm a PI
Been one for a long time. I gotta say that most cases I work on are pretty boring. The job is full of mild "gotcha" moments, but they're a product of long lonely hours on surveillance just to get a guy shovelling some dirt while collecting injury compensation benefits. A PI's greatest tools in the universe are Google and a telephone. I can call and ask anyone anything under the guise of anything I want. I even call the people I'm investigating sometimes or correspond via email when I need answers or information. It's ridiculous the amount of information people volunteer about themselves after some good natured banter.
Also, I'm sure most of you know this trick. But you really can go anywhere with a clipboard, high viz vest, and a hard hat.
The BEST case I was part of involved a security guard my firm hired to do night watch on an electronics store. I was part of a small firm that, at the time, provided security guards and private investigators. One night we get a call from the guard. He'd had the sh*t kicked out of him, been tied to chair, escaped, and called the cops and the office to report a robbery at the store. Three attackers managed to pry the back door open and subdue the guard and proceed to rob the place of about a 100k. The guard told a compelling story and looked like sh*t.
It took the police all of two days to track down the stolen sh*t. The thieves weren't being very careful when it came to offloading the goods. The thieves turned out to be the guard's brother and cousins and it was our guards brilliant idea for them to come and rob the place and make it look like an armed robbery. What a g*ddamn idiot. We still laugh about it.
It must have been one of those thoughts that sounded brilliant and sophisticated in his own head, only to have the epiphany that it was moronic hit him with same Mack Truck like intensity a little later on.
It was unusual to have such a dumb movie heist plot happen with people I worked with.
Thankfully Low End
I wasn't a detective, but I worked as a Skip Tracer for a credit card bank back in the early 2000s.
I was a bill collector, basically, but because of my ability to track people down who had "skipped out" on their debts, I was put on a "task force" to go after accounts that exclusively had zero contact information.
My favorite one was when I tracked down a guy in the middle of South America doing his religious mission. He had access to a phone literally one hour of one day a week. My job was to call around and get information on how to reach him -- at the time I was in my early 20s, and as long as I didn't break FDCPA, the bank let me do my thing.
When I got the guy on the phone he was flabbergasted that I was able to track him down and he wanted to know how, so I told him.
I called his mom, who told me about the mission he was on. Then, when I called again, instead of asking which church he was through, I had instead found a local church and said, "Oh, he went down there through [SUCH AND SUCH] church, right?"
Oh no, not that one. It was [OTHER CHURCH]. "OH OF COURSE! [OTHER CHURCH]! That was with pastor Smith! No? Oh, Pastor Davis!"
Then, called [OTHER CHURCH] and asked for Pastor Davis. Explained that I had just talked to his mom and she suggested I talk to him in order to get a phone number. Pastor Davis supplied me with the phone number and the day and hour that the debtor would be there.
It took me a couple of tries, but I eventually got him on the phone. He gave me permission to talk to his parents regarding the debt, I called them, explained what was up, and they worked out a payment arrangement.
I think he owed less than $10k to the bank, which was on the low-end of accounts that I worked.
Staring
I've been a PI for almost a year now. The job is definitely not as exciting as most people think. Some days it's busy and stressful, but a ton of it is just sitting and waiting. When people ask what's it like I tell them, "stare at something for 6-10 hours. That's your job most days".
Anyways as for the most interesting case, we don't necessarily "solve" but rather provide evidence. Most cases are workers comp or liability but we do have domestic (think cheating spouse etc.) Cases about 2-5 a month. I personally have been involved in undercover work buying illegal cell phones that my company gives me 5k - 10k cash to buy that have gone to court and testified afterwards. My all time favorite case involved me following a guy with a boat to a marina. He got on his boat and set out. Our client authorized getting footage by any means necessary. That means my company allowed me to rent a jet ski for 6 hours to watch him fish. After about an hour he left the "zone" I was required to stay in so for the next 5 hours I jet skied then fished on the docks all while getting paid.
If anyone wants to know more feel free to ask.
Bonus
I thought of another experience that always stuck with me from my PI days-
I was tasked with doing surveillance on a wealthy geologist, who was in a very minor car accident but was collecting $5k+ month from the insurance company in lost wages because she supposedly couldn't work.
These cases were my specialty and I almost always got my person using my shady tactics. In this case the subject was a 60+yr old Chinese woman. The footage that helps me "win" these cases, is catching people doing physical labor, like yard work, as proof they are capable of working.
I thought this old lady would be hard to bust, but in the first hour she carried huge garbage bags of cans and bottles to the recycle depot, loaded about 20 large phone books into her trunk, took out the trash which looked heavy as hell, then went to a hair salon and was tossing her head all around (she claimed neck injury) to show the haircut she wanted. One hour of surveillance (some people take months!) and she was done! No shady tactics required. The insurance company should've given a bonus for that one...
Not Just Cheating--SUPER Cheating
A young individual once hired me to investigate whether his wife was cheating. Needed the evidence in court for when he files for divorce. His wife and his sister-in-law were going to have a get together that weekend and my client wanted me to tail them. So I set up my dash cam to live stream my video feed to the client and start following his wife. Turns out his wife and sister in law were both heading to a hotel for a foursome. Got some pretty solid video and photo evidence for my client, who then confronted his wife later that night. She tried to deny it and said she only met up with some guy for kisses and touched his family jewels a little bit.
Set Up Two People
More of a casual couch investigation than anything.
I once received a text from an unknown number regarding a class project they were working on. Clearly they had thought I was someone else, but I thought I'd have fun with it like I normally do with wrong numbers.
Based on their area code and the name of the school building they had mentioned, I was able to identify the college. I then asked them what email address of mine I had given them, which supplied me with a name.
I used the name and college to track down the real person on Facebook they were trying to contact and that gave me a wealth of information.
I didn't let it play out too long because I didn't want to actually screw up any assignment, but it did seem like there may have been some chemistry between these two.
I never ended up confessing and just told the girl to contact me solely through email, so I sometimes wonder what ended up happening.
Wedding Bell Dues
Not a PI, but my husband is not on FB. He's introverted and did not keep in touch with any of his friends. It was important for me that he invite some to our wedding. He said he didn't know how to get in touch with them. He knew his 4 college roommates names. A few were on FB and I was able to friend them to get their addresses. The last one was not, and the other roomies hadn't been in touch with him either.
All my husband knew was a name (common) and "i think he lived in Lancaster PA". I couldn't find him off that on FB, so I ran a background check on him. It was around $25. Report had his mom's name on it. I fb stalk her, searched her friends with the same last name, and found a young lady. Fb message the girl asking if she is related the roomie and she was his sister who gave me his address. I felt pretty proud that I was able to track him down. And yes, he attended the wedding!
Not A Forensic Expert
Private Eye here. We usually get hired to document someone's day. We try and gather as much info on them and get as much video of them in public as possible, without losing them or getting caught onto. Not all of it is workman's comp, but usually along the lines of someone making a claim and we go out and see what their activity level is like.
We're not out to "catch" anyone, just obtain video and facts.
We may watch someone to make sure they are getting specific care during specific times and things like that. A lot of people do have certain restrictions, which they are always breaking.
I've been doing it 10 years and i don't know if everyone is full of sh*t, or they just give us the cases where they think there's some f*ckery afoot, but most of them are doing things they shouldn't be doing and we get it all on video. However, the clients don't even read the reports, and we rarely go to court.
The Case Of The Sketchy Day Care
Not a PI but want to be after this: I'm a single mom of two toddler boys. Their dad moved out of town forcing me to put them in daycare which I tried to avoid at all costs. Since I am a single mom I qualified for a program that pays for the care. Its a county program. I was to find the daycare, put them in contact with the program, the program's provider services are then to do background and licensing checks, etc, before they approve the care. 2 months into using this daycare service, I pick up my boys after work and my 1 year old has clear handprints and bruises on both sides of his face, bruised ears, lump on the back of his head and a cut.
She kept telling me that he ran into a sliding glass door... I took him straight to the ER, called social services and the police. The next day I take him to his doctor and the abuse center for evaluations. Their official diagnosis was that we was "repeatedly slapped and choked by an adult". Days pass with no call from the police, no calls from cps, and nothing from licensing. So I start to call around myself. CPS dropped the case as it did not happen at home and licensing was never forwarded the report. The police told me it would be a while before someone gets to my case. So I do my own due diligence for my son.
I file the report myself with licensing and when they asked for her name I give it to them.....but they have no one by that name in her system. I give them the address of the daycare.....not in their system. I'm beyond confused as I KNOW she is a licensed daycare facility because she was approved for use by the county. I call the county program and cut off the care and said while I am at it, could they provide me with the license number they have on file for her as well as the address she provided them with. They give me the license and a different address than the one I have been taking my son to. I call back Licensing and they put in the license number and it is not registered to her, but to her sister. Someone I have never met before.
The address they have on file for that license is the same address she provided to the county program. This is illegal and fraud. I ask them how I can get copies of records on this license number and it turns out there is a website that will provide all information in the last 4 years attached to the license. So I start digging. She was on the license at one point, before being removed in OCT 2017. She had 3 cases of abuse that were all dropped, and was finally removed last OCT when a baby died in her care!
I call police and they still tell me to wait! I am furious as to how this could all be missed. I continue to dig and do an online search of the license number. Multiple ads pop up. There are at least three daycares and three different addresses using this one license number (license for family daycares are for 1 address and persons named on license only) All sisters. So after three days I take to facebook and post the photos and my rant and they go viral! The police station called me the next morning! Different detective different station. The people made such a fuss and called so many times that they found someone to handle the case immediately. I handed them everything I found and said " this should save you some work".
During the investigation they ended up finding things that got the FBI involved. They put surveillance her house and saw things that led to a raid. They found lots of guns and drugs and arrested her husband (Which I was under the impression she did not have!) and seized their cars and phones and intercepted all mail. All of this while she is still running her daycare and being fined a few hundred every day she is opened. She didn't have a care in the world.
They arrested her yesterday for 3 felonies! With fighting this we have been able to reopen other cases dropped and get justice for 2 other babies as well! Her bail is set for $200,000 but her husbands was much higher and she bailed him out instantly. Guess you can afford it when you run a drug business and a daycare at once!
CW: Suicide
There is so much to learn in life.
And once you acquire certain things mentally, you regret it.
How much 411 have you come across over time that made you think... "How can I unlearn that?"
Yeah, not possible.
Knowledge is power and sometimes it's a nightmare.
Don't we have enough to keep us up at night?
Damn curiosity.
Well let's do some learning.
Redditor RedBoyFromNewy wanted to shed some light on creepy issues we need to be discussing. They asked:
"What’s a disturbing fact that not a lot of people know of?"
So who is ready to spill, and where do you find the info?
From the Guts
"Without mucus your stomach would digest itself."
Ddubsquizzee
"The reason you body produces more saliva before vomiting is your bodies way if protecting your mouth from the acidity of the vomit before you actually throw up."
-AntiVegan-
Death
"There are more suicides than homicides in the US every year."
tmsanch
"60% of all gun deaths in fact are suicides. It is estimated that someone offs themselves with a firearm every 20 minutes in the US. And 80% of them are males."
hymnsees
"And what's worse (knowing, as my family just went through this.)... 70% of suicides have no note. It's a common misconception that most people leave a note and it just isn't true. Mainly because a lot of people who write notes realize they don't want to go through with it. Those who are 'successful' just do it."
jdward01
After...
"You can give still 'birth' if you die while pregnant. The decomp process will force the baby out. It’s rare but it does happen."
MelissaAthalie
"This is usually what ends up happening when a pregnant woman gets murdered. They usually find the fetus either completely separate (like in the Lacy and Connor Peterson case) or in the same location as the mother, but clearly birthed (like with the case with Shanann Watts). It's something I never knew happened until very recently and I think it's one of the most horrifying aspects of death."
rivlet
Disaster
"The deadliest ship disaster was the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, a ship built during the Nazi Regime. In January 1945, she was evacuating 10,000 German citizens ahead of the soviet Invasion when (albeit ironically) a Soviet Submarine spotted them, and fired three torpedoes. The ship was on the freezing cold Baltic Sea, and the davits (ropes) for the lifeboats had frozen over."
"Not only that, but the ship was only meant to carry 2,000 people normally. These two factors, coupled with the harsh angle the ship was sinking at, meant only half of the lifeboats could be deployed. 9,400 people drowned to death that night, and nobody knows about it."
TheNonbinaryWren
I See You
"Your eyes have a separate immune system than the rest of your body, and if your normal immune system ever learns about your eyes, it will target them and you'll go blind."
hiruko_uchiha
Oh my eye. How do we protect them? As if I don't have enough stress.
Launched
"Penguins can launch their poop out of their butts like 5-6m far."
Bela_hrn
Despair
"Cotard's delusion, also known as walking corpse syndrome, is a neuropsychiatric disorder in which the person is in eternal damnation. They literally believe they are dead or dying [or don't have organs], the amount of despair is unimaginable and simply can't be grasped by people not suffering from it."
SweetTimpaniofLogic
'hard problem'
"It may seem like we know a lot about the human brain, but our standard way of studying brain activity is an fMRI, where a single pixel contains over 3 million neurons. That is more than many vertebrate animals' entire brains. The truth is, we really have no idea how the brain gives rise to consciousness."
"Edit: Even if we somehow perfectly worked out all the neural correlates of consciousness so we could say a mental state happens if and only if some exact pattern of brain activity happens, we would still have the 'hard problem' of consciousness: Why do these physical processes give rise to raw subjective experience, rather than just happening 'in the dark?'"
zeugenie
2 Minutes...
"If your esophagus closes and you cannot swallow, you have about 2 minutes before saliva starts reaching your windpipe. It is not a long time, but it is long enough to panic..."
grat_is_not_nice
"I have Eosiniphillic Oesophagitis and have had food stuck in the oesophagus for up to 24 hours before. And it’s horrible. You don’t realise how much saliva you swallow, to be constantly choking and vomiting that back up isn’t the best experience!"
AwayFollowing554
Get Lucky
"You’ve probably been closer to dying multiple times in your life then you even know. Just got lucky, or unlucky depending on who you are."
GingeBeardManBro
Well that's enough to disrupt sleep for life. Thanks y'all.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
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The best stories are ones with exciting plot twists.
But the next best type of stories are the ones that continue spiraling out of control.
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor _Mitnix_ asked:
"What's your best 'oh you thought this was bad, it gets worse' story?"
It's story time. You may want to buckle up.
It All Started With A Cat
"This is a long one, but I promise it's worth it:"
"A buddy of mine was cat-sitting for a friend of his while the guy was out of town on a vacation. My buddy didn't have a car, so the dude told him that if he needed to go out and pick up more cat food or anything, he could borrow the car."
"At the time, my buddy was living right down the street from this guy, staying at his parents' house. So my buddy was just going over for a few hours each day to feed the cat and keep it company, then going back home."
"Meanwhile, he's also been flirting with this woman online. She lives several states away, but he feels like they seem to be getting pretty serious. So he decides to take some liberties, really push the envelope on where he'll pick up cat food from, and he takes his friend's car on a little multi-state road trip."
"This is insane, right? Just atrociously bad judgement, especially since someone does need to feed the cat. To solve this, he left his parents a note. It read, 'I am camping in the woods behind our house. Please go over to ____'s and feed his cat. I'll let you know when I'm home.'"
"Boom. Problem solved, right?"
"Except that the 'woods behind our house' are about 20 yards deep. It takes less than five minutes to walk through them and come out into the neighboring housing development. So his parents went looking for him, calling out for him, and couldn't find him. They got worried and contacted a family friend, a local police officer. He subsequently got a hold of the fire department. There was a full-on search party combing through about 1/50th of an acre of woods. Unsurprisingly, they were coming up with nothing."
"This was before cell phones were common, so my buddy was completely unaware that his plan had fallen apart. He was cruising along on his 12-hour drive, expecting to get to this girl's house just in time for dinner. Except he didn't have a GPS. So he got lost. Very lost. Like, by the time he turned up at this woman's house, it was almost midnight."
"When he got there, she was crying her eyes out. He assured her that it was okay, he was fine, wasn't hurt or in a wreck or anything, he'd just gotten lost. And she said, 'No, no, I wasn't worried about you. My dad just died in a motorcycle accident.'"
"So he bailed on his cat-sitting duties, stole a car, and inspired his parents to file a missing-persons just so he could awkwardly watch a woman cry for a few hours and then drive back home."
– GavinBelsonsAlexa
The Beekeeper's Nightmare
"I will try to keep it short. I am a beekeeper. My 3rd year of beekeeping, I suddenly developed a severe allergy to bee stings. It was spring and I was installing bees for the beginning of the season. I was up to the last hive, went to install that package of bees and one stung me right in the top of my head."
"I finished up a few minutes after and went up toward the house to do some other things. I started feeling flush and I could feel my heart racing. After I few minutes I realized I was having an anaphylactic reaction."
"If you’ve never had one, aside from the physical symptoms, they also say you will get a feeling of impending doom. That was spot on. I absolutely felt I was going to die and people do die from these reactions."
"So I am now in the house and desperately searching for Benadryl of which I have none. I am also having trouble breathing, my body is going haywire and I feel like I’m going to black out shortly."
"I call my mom, who lives an hour away, to call 911 because I feel like I will be unconscious soon. She says okay, phone rings 30 seconds later. It’s my mom, she goes 'I called 911 but they said you have to call'. This was my first wtf."
"So I call and it’s a very typical 911 call she is trying to keep me talking and I essentially started vomiting and she is still on the line and I am waiting and waiting for this alleged ambulance."
"A full half hour goes by. At this point I am actually coming out of the reaction. So I go to sit at my kitchen counter. I’m still on the line with the 911 dispatcher. I see the ambulance pull up and I say, oh they’re here. She’s like great, are you okay? I’m like yes and then she says goodbye and hangs up."
"I see the EMTs outside but my driveway has a gate so they are just standing there and they ring the bell on my gate and I am just looking at them, dumbfounded. Like I called for an emergency over a half hour ago, and they’re gonna roll up here and ring my bell and wait for me to come out when I more than likely could be unconscious or dead on the floor."
"I literally had to go out and let them in. Then they basically talked me in to going to the hospital to get checked out. Another huge mistake because this took place in the 2 months in my entire life when I didn’t have health insurance. So I ended up paying $4000 for a late ambulance and some IV Benadryl and epinephrine."
"Oh which also reminds me, a paramedic also showed, put the IV in when I agreed to go to the hospital. Then I felt something dripping and turns out he put it in my artery rather than a vein and it was just pushing the fluid out of the IV."
"0/10 would not go through any of that again…but I did 10 years later when I had another anaphylactic reaction due to a bee sting. However this went a lot smoother and I had epi-pens and a responsive ambulance."
– soline
Oil Everywhere
"Arrive home from work, my house reeks of oil."
"Go in the basement, and there's a pool of oil, with my stuff floating in it. The oil filter on my burner rotted out (it was defective and recalled, but the tech never bothered to notify me or replace it). Call up the tech, he throws a new one, charges me the emergency call fee, and advises I call HO insurance before running away (it was his fault, I didn't know it yet)."
"This was February in NY, about 13F out, and obviously the burner wasn't on while sitting in a pool of oil. But, they get there pretty quickly soak it up, and get things running so my pipes don't freeze."
"Only way to get the smell out is to dry clean everything I own, then shampoo all the carpets, run deodorizers, etc. Takes weeks. Had a headache the whole time."
"Turns out, my basement has cracks, most of it leaked through. They had to cut out my foundation and dig out the contaminated soil."
"Oil in soil means DEC gets involved. Whole new can of worms as they now had to monitor the process, test at every step. Big enough deal I have a spill number in their database."
"A 20 yard dumpster, with 20 yards of oil soaked sand, is so heavy that it broke through my driveway, destroying it. They did that twice, took out my entire driveway."
"Remember how I said this was in February? March brought the COVID shutdown."
"I spent over a year with my basement in shambles, holes in my driveway, plastic sheets taped up, no washer/dryer, and all sorts of equipment kicking around."
"The next spring, they're back and working, and screwed everything up. Not going to get into every detail, but after a big fight, I managed to get rid of them and bring in a new company to fix their screwups and finish the job. Old crew got very difficult when the new crew requested permits and reports. Turns out, they never bothered. Had to do all that before they could start working again."
"New company dropped a storage crate on my yard to store my stuff while working, destroyed my grass, took out a sprinkler, took out my neighbor's driveway curb, got concrete all over my brickwork, but at least the nightmare was finally over."
– MyNameIsRay
These Redditors have been dealt with some major blows.
People who say that things will always get better, are partially right. Things do come around, eventually.
But you never know how many curve balls life has to throw at you until there's a resolution.
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Life is full of disappointments. We lose out on a job opportunity or the one designer article of clothing we really wanted is not available in our size.
But we go on.
But the biggest letdowns are the ones we never see coming but must contend with.
Redditor Frequent-Pilot5243 asked:
"What is a depressing truth you have made peace with?"

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