Redditor IfItQuackedLikeADuck wanted the legal eagles to share some truth.
So they asked:
"Lawyers, What's a law that isn't real that normal people insist exists?"
The law is tricky. So help us out.
We see you...
mean girls amy GIFGiphy"People that think it's illegal to be video taped in a public space."
RmeMSG
Goodwill...
"In the UK, people often claim that if an item is listed for sale in a shop then the shop legally has to sell it to you at that price. This is not true at all as the shop doesn't have to sell you anything at any price."
"Often as a gesture of goodwill shops will honour erroneous prices, but they are under absolutely no obligation to do so."
HereForTheTurnips_
Her Choice
"Probate attorney here. I’ve had many people ask me when the 'reading of the will' is going to take place. I explain to them that only happens in movies. But one of these days I am going to have one, and hire a mysterious blonde wearing a veil to sit in the corner quietly."
"Then I’ll tell everyone that she inherits everything. Provided, of course, that she must adopt the decedent’s cute but troublemaking six year old child no one knew about. Or she can spend the night in a haunted house. Her choice."
SpaceFaceAce
Thanks Eric
"That commercial use of a photograph means selling the photograph."
"Commercial use means that there is an implied endorsement. You can take and sell photos of Eric Clapton all day long. Put that same photo in an advertisement for a certain guitar without a release and you can be sued."
xaclewtunu
Not true...
Big Boi Smh GIF by OutkastGiphy"An arrest isn't magically invalidated if the police don't read you your rights on the spot."
"There could be a whole thread of just misconceptions people have from watching Cop TV."
Auntie_Hero
I knew Olivia Benson was lying.
$$$ Talks
Bugs Bunny Money GIF by Looney TunesGiphy"In California, it's not illegal to discuss your wages with your co-workers, despite what your boss might say."
Coolest_Breezy
100 Feet Away
"Am a lawyer. This is not a law that doesn’t exist, but a law that is misunderstood. Typically, you can’t just go get a restraining order against anybody. Most states have specific laws for who you can get restraining orders against (typically household members or former romantic interests). Usually, it’s only in domestic violence cases or for victims of crimes. You can’t just get a restraining order and comically use it to keep someone 100 feet away."
"*in the United States, at least."
hawkjc19
Damn you Sam
"'When my parents die, the government is going to seize a big chunk of the inheritance and I'll get nothing.'"
"In the US this is a very common misconception. Although state inheritance taxes vary, the US federal taxes on inheritance don't actually kick in until the estate's value exceeds US$5 million."
"So, for the vast majority of working class folks, the federal inheritance tax won't have any effect. But people will still talk to their family lawyers and ask about how much Uncle Sam is taking away when mom or dad die."
dusmeyedin
Suggestions
"It's a law that exists but widely misunderstood is the concept of Entrapment. If the police put a Bait vehicle in a high crime area, that is NOT entrapment. If the police are watching a bar known to overserve to see if there are impaired drivers at the end of the night that is NOT entrapment. Entrapment only occurs when a gov agent suggests committing a crime that you were not otherwise going to commit."
Dinothegreen
Secrets
Angry Inside Out GIF by Disney PixarGiphy"A real, but widely misunderstood law is HIPAA. People think it protects you from literally any discussion of your health issues by anyone at all. Nope. Not even close."
I need a lawyer. NOW!
Do you have any misconceptions to add to the list? Let us know in the comments below.
Redditor caloriedeficit101wanted to see who would fess up about and embrace a certain lack of knowledge.
They asked:
"What do you honestly not understand?"
I'm also up on biology. That is a whole other mess.
Sudden Poop
"Mining crypto. How does a powerful computer use an algorithm and suddenly poop out a bitcoin of real, monetary value?"
SuitableTaint
bitcoin GIFGiphyThrough the Lense...
"How cameras work. It honestly freaks me out how they can literally just capture moments."
kneecapstealerr
"Imagine light as lots of streams of coloured water. When it's dark, those streams are weaker, and when it's bright they're like a fire hose. The sensor in a camera is like a lot of little buckets, and the camera opens a door for a very short amount of time to let the streams through."
"After, you see how full the buckets are, and use that information to create the picture. When it's dark, you open the door for longer to let more of the 'water' through. If you let too much through you fill the buckets and you saturate the sensor (it comes out as white). Not enough, and all the buckets are empty (black)."
A_name_wot_i_made_up
“invention”
"How people can just 'invent' new math. Or actually how people can sit down, start writing equations, and figure out something about the universe. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I absolutely love math and the idea of it but man do I truly suck at it. I’d love to let some math PHD just talk my ear off about what they’re working on even though I probably wouldn’t understand any of it. I just think math is neat."
Osirus1156
A to B
"I've have tried many times to watch explanations of how gravity affects time and I always find myself just short of 'getting it.'"
Vealophile
"Think of light travelling from A to B in a straight line. Now imagine that line is pulled by gravity so its curved, it now takes the light longer to get from A to B. Light travels at a constant speed so it doesn't change speed but the time it takes to get there does, that means time slows down to accommodate."
Tsusoup
Worship...
"Celebrity worship."
1980pzx
"People worship them because they're infatuated with the idea that everyone knows them and they feel it's impossible to ever be able and do that, so they think these celebrities are special and different from ordinary humans.
whereami100k
mariah carey hello GIFGiphyWhy do we obsess over celebrities? Over the lives of people who are complete strangers... ah, an eternal life struggle.
Bloodletting...
"I don’t understand how when people undergo surgery they don’t bleed out or why there isn’t blood everywhere. Someone please explain."
PillowPrincessB
Penn Badgley Joe Goldberg GIF by YOUGiphyBlinders
"Why it's illegal to blind other drivers with your high beams, but those super bright LED headlights are totally fine."
Practical_Pie_586
"Those lights are so fucking awful. Mostly just the fact that I've literally never seen a vehicle with properly positioned lights. Right light lower towards the side of the road, and left pointed lower facing the road. They would be SO much more tolerable, and safer for all parties that way."
yazzeroni-toni
Crossed Wiring
"Wi-fi! Like I understand the concept of how it works, but when you get past the theory of it it makes absolutely no sense to me. How can such complicated and absolutely MASSIVE packets of information just be in the air? We seriously went from sending single electrical pulses through a wire(pretty easy), to using radio waves( makes sense), to heres all the information humans have ever known just in the air and it can be read by a tiny cluster of glass and metal (like what?!)"
Dougflooty2
I gotta do something...
"That feeling that I get where I feel like I'm meant to do something (but I don't have anything particularly to do) and just builds up anxiety."
FocusRightNow
"Master procrastinator here. The really fun part is when you get so accustomed to that anxious guilt that it never leaves! Then the free time you’ve actually earned becomes guilty too and the proverbial doomsday clock is always ticking!"
KaiLewisOfficial
The Skies...
"Astronomer here! Dark energy. The idea that the universe is not just expanding, but accelerating in that expansion despite there not being enough matter that we can see for that to happen, is just mind blowing and I can't make heads or tails of it. On the bright side, no one else can make heads or tails of it either and understands what's going on, so we're all in good company on this one."
Andromeda321
StarsGiphyYou don't have to know it all. Just know enough. The rest will come.
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Specifically, what some dudes believe to be true about the female body is downright hysterical and is something that was explored when Redditor Gamestar02 asked:
"Women of Reddit, What's your 'That's not how women work" moment?"
It's interesting how some men are completely in the dark about how menstrual cycles work.
Can't Swim At The Moment
"The first guy I dated wanted to go swimming, but I told him no because I started my period and felt sore and crampy. He asked me if I could finish it before the end of the day so we could go swimming the next day…bruh, I wish it was that easy!"
– robo-dragon
The Yoga Fix
"An old boyfriend once explained that if I was having cramps, I just needed to do what his ex did: 'there's this one yoga pose that will make that shift in the uterus that usually takes a few days happen in just a few minutes. It drops, and then your period is done in one day instead of four or five'. He couldn't elaborate any further, (what 'shifts'? What 'drops'?) But he swore he was 100% right his ex cut her period down to one day with yoga."
– trashytamboriney
Peeing Solves Everything
"I was complaining about my period, and this awful guy goes 'just pee it out for f'ks sake.'"
– ThatOneTheatreGhost
Some guys can learn a thing or two about feminine hygiene products.
He Needed An Education
"Had a very amusing convo with a gentleman once. Dude was confused why we would need pads. He asked why we didn't just go to the toilet more often on our periods. He thought that we were able to hold our period in line you do with pee and pads are only if accidents happen. So his reasoning is that if women would be more careful we wouldn't need menstrual products. Props to him, he was apologetic after I explained it to him and overall respectful."
– RRay108
Leaking Blue
"Had a guy friend in college who seriously thought women leaked blue liquid during their periods, like what you see in maxi pad commercials."
– karaokechameleon
Alarming Frequency
"My (female) bff (male) was my date to the prom. Because of my awful luck, I happened to be on my period."
"As we exited my car, I grabbed a handful of tampons to toss in my clutch and my date asked me 'Omg are you having 8 periods??'"
"Yeah he thought you used 1 tampon per menstrual cycle. If only- the $ I would have saved over the years!"
– farts_n_darts
Tampons To-Go
"And at the opposite end of that spectrum of male ignorance you have NASA scientists who packed a few hundred tampons when Sally Ride was going up for a few weeks and checked with her to make sure they had enough!"
– Raddatatta
Uninformed To The Max
"There was one guy online who tried responding to womens' complaints about expensive period products. He started by saying 'a tampon holds 4-12 mls of fluid... women lose about 40 mls per cycle ...'"
– heidismiles
Umm, They're Not Diapers
"I'm at the store with my friend stocking up on pads, tampons, etc. As I'm putting boxes in the cart, my friend starts generally complaining about the prices. Understandable, so I agree. We finish up in the aisle and as we're walking away, a full grown 30-something looking man mumbles, 'just hold your pee like everyone else.' We were so taken back that we didn't even say anything. I never realized before this moment how utterly dense some people can be."
– out_of_nutella_again
Two Different Functions
"Tampons are NOT pleasurable and are not the same as dildos."
– moonlitcat13
Where do these guys get their information?
Stopping The Pain
"I was on my period and I had horrible cramps. One of my guy friends came over to keep me company but he wasn't really prepared for how much pain I was in. I was crying bc it hurt so bad and the poor guy really wanted to help but didn't know what to do so he just suggested that I ' push out all the blood at once bc that usually helped him when trying to stop a nosebleed '."
"After he said that I looked at him like 'wtf' and he said ' what? Doesn't it stop hurting once all the blood is out?' I explained to him what happens to a female body when we get our period and he was just shocked, it kinda cheered me up tho bc I thought it was hilarious."
– Concrete_cats
After Birth
"Person on TV gives birth. 5 minutes later, belly is flat and back to normal."
"THATS NOT HOW THAT WORKS."
– Aceandmace
Ladies Don't Come With Fidget Spinners
"women's nipples don't spin around"
"i swear."
– teacherbooboo
Walking Milk Factory
"The best situation I can think of was something a friend of mine said once. His sister was breastfeeding and said something like 'I don’t know if I have enough left' to her baby. So my friend kindly suggested that someone else can volunteer and asked me. I said well I’m not lactating, since I don’t have a baby and he was honestly shocked to learn that only women who actually gave birth are able to breastfeed. He was convinced every woman just casually has boobs full of breastmilk at all times. He was 25 at that time. I will never forget this."
– mrl_a
Getting Loose
"If more sex meant looser vaginas, having a kid would mean a catastrophe down there. 🤦🏻♀️ clearly women have multiple kids, you’d think the logic was simple that it doesn’t work that way."
– Thanmandrathor
A Small Misconception
"A guy once told me he know i was a virgin because my boobs were small. That boobs grow every time a woman has sex. Jokes on him, I’m just a slut with small boobs."
– Bitchcat
Fellas, if you're uncertain about how the female body works, it would behoove you to educate yourself before confidently making false assumptions to their face.
Because there's nothing worse–or even hysterical–than being mansplained by a dude who doesn't have a clue about what he's talking about.
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Curious to hear what stumps strangers online, Redditor homo1ogize asked:
"What makes absolutely no sense to you at all?"
The things people do can be forever mysteries.
Entitlement
"Grown adults not taking responsibility for their actions/property and expecting others to clean up after them."
A Curious Culinary Process
"How people came up with baking."
"I get eating meats and veggies and fruits. That's just food that's pretty much ready to go."
"But somehow someone figured you can grind this plant into a powder, add a certain amount of water and some chicken eggs and some oil and some other crushed plant stuff and then heat it for X Minutes and now you have cake or bread or cookies or whatever."
Leaving The Bowl Full
"People that don't flush public restroom toilets."
"What's the deal with that? Do they not flush in their own homes? Is it laziness? Contempt with society? Seeing retail and other workers suffer? Just not knowing better?"
Life Insurance Loophole
"Seems like half of the true-crime shows I watch involve life insurance. What I don't understand is how the perpetrators convince themselves that being the beneficiary on a brand-new life insurance policy and then having the insured turn up dead within days or weeks is not going to put you under a detective's microscope."
"Even more suspicious are the ones who immediately make the claim for payout within a day of the death. At least sit on it for a month or two and act like you're grieving."
These trends continue to dumbfound Redditors' minds.
The Housing Market
"House price rises. How seriously can people have so much money for crappy houses? Where are all these great paying jobs that service the mortgage?"
"My partner and I have decent middle class jobs ( teacher, nurse) yet cannot afford to buy in the city where we live…. And not even close to the city where we live."
"How can a pandemic wreck an economy… throw thousands out of work needing to rely on government handouts …. Yet house prices increase?"
– mwm1980
The Facebook Ploy
"Those Facebook photos that promise you a lot of money if you post them. Is it true that people believe it?"
"How, in what environment, under what conditions, could that possibly work? Is this some sort of inside joke that I'm not aware of? 'Write Amen.'"
Brain Talk
"My first language was Spanish, which I learned at home. I learnt English at school and with friends outside of school. In addition, German is spoken."
"Surprisingly, when I speak in my brain, it's always in English. When I pronounce them out loud, though, they come out in the correct language."
What's In A Name
"Dick is a shorter way to say Richard. Like when the f*ck does Richard turn into Dick. If you're going to have a shorter way to say Richard just say Rich, because that makes sense unlike Dick. Sorry for anyone named Dick out there, but ur name makes no f'king sense."
– [deleted]
People Describe Their Best Chance Encounters | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Are chance encounters really serendipitous or is it part of some grand master plan? While we may never have an answer for why we come to meet certain people ...Work Experience
"That i can't get a job without experience. Like how am i going to get the experience if not at a job?"
– No-Frosting6958
Knowing scientific explanations doesn't necessarily mean we will completely comprehend them.
Moon Face
"How the moon is in perfect rotation with the earth to the point where we only see one side of the moon at all times no matter what."
Lack Of A Void
"What is the root of consciousness and why is there something instead of nothing."
Baby Transition
"How babies just go from swimming/breathing in a pouch of goo to being born and able to breathe normal air. It makes no sense to me. How does something go from not breathing air to breathing air in like a second?"
The Vastness Above Us
"Space."
"Look at the moon. Some days you can see Saturn or Jupiter out there. Look at the stars."
"You think about us… people on this rock in space all running around. We're floating in space on a rock. Spinning around. All together. One."
"And space is just soooo big. It's overwhelming. Really really big. I can't even comprehend how big."
"It doesn't even make sense how big it is."
Device Communication
"how bluetooth works."
– This_Confusion3890
"I always picture radiowaves like Bluetooth or wifi as simply another 'realm of light' (which it basically is). The sender like your wifi router is like a light bulb that blinks very fast and in different colors. Your receiver like your phone can 'see' the light bulb flashing and receives the information via the on/off intervals (ones and zeros, binary)."
"In this realm, everything looks like it's transparent, but depending on the material, it has a more or less tint. A wooden door or your pants would be only slightly tinted, a brick wall much more. So if you stand behind two brick walls, the 'flashing light' of your sending device is much harder to see for your phone as if you would stand right next to it."
– verraeteros_
How We Fly
"Planes. It still amazes me how something that massive can fly."
– Regular_Logical343
Hairy Situation
"How your body knows when to stop growing your eyebrows, arm hair, leg hair, pubes, etc., but your facial hair and the hair on your head grows endlessly."
– SupaKoopa714
This is something I've always chalked up to fate, but the concept of meeting people floors me.
How did I wind up with the friends in my circle? How did I get paired with my parents in this life? And how did I meet the person with whom I wound up exchanging vows?
It's terrifying to comprehend the prospect of never having met some of the most important people in my life, yet I would never know because I haven't been faced with the alternative.
It continues to blow my mind.
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