People Explain Which Things They Thought Everyone Was Exaggerating About Until They Experienced Them
"Reddit user rentinghappiness asked: 'What is something you used to think people were over-exaggerating about until you experienced it yourself?'"
Life lessons are forged in experience.
So many of us love to think we know what another person is feeling, and their reactions are just emotional.
Or what they're saying about what they're going through feels a bit over the top.
So many people are just dramatic, right?
Wrong.
Until we walk in those shoes, we'll never know.
Redditor rentinghappiness wanted to hear about the things everyone really didn't know anything about until it happened to them, so they asked:
"What is something you used to think people were over-exaggerating about until you experienced it yourself?"
We never really know anything about anything until we try it for ourselves.
Mouth Issues
Dentist GIFGiphy"Dentist chiming in… tooth pain. I knew academically how painful they could be until it happened to me."
juneburger
"You know the pain is serious when you start looking forward to the inevitable root canal."
HailMari248
Wonders of Nature
"Giant sequoia trees. When I finally saw them in person, they looked fake. I could not comprehend a tree of that size."
schaefer001
"And we may have lost 15-20% of the remaining trees during some big fires in 2020 and 2021. A 2011 estimate puts it that there were only 80,000 remainings. They truly are wondrous organisms that I feel like everyone should have the chance to experience if they can."
"I'm a big believer in doing everything we can to protect and preserve these silent giants. It's really sad that so many were cut down by loggers when the wood is such poor quality for human purposes, to begin with. Such an utter and sad waste."
this_is_poorly_done
Just Me
"Loneliness."
Fried__SoapI
"I'm with you. Put all my cards into a girl who went suddenly cold and dark on me. Now I'm alone at rock bottom figuring out my next moves. You know, the smartest people in the world and also the happiest people in the world can be the loneliest?"
"I was only recently informed it's okay to talk to myself and hype myself. Enjoy my own company. I'm absolutely going to learn to do that. I'm thinking of painting, walking, and weekend trips out on a bus. Would be nice if you could have joined me even if we sat in silence."
Roofdragon
The Years Gone By...
"The physical pain of getting older. Damn."
marklikeadawg
"The emotional pain too. I get so nostalgic and teary over the past and how much has changed. It's a weird grieving process over losing your youth and the way things were."
heethersmeether
"On my 35th birthday, my wife woke me up with a cupcake and a candle, sang me 'Happy Birthday' and then congratulated me on being '15 from 50'... that really hit me hard. The other day I turned 45 and she said '5 from 50' and that hit me so hard, I just wanted to stay in bed all day. I still feel like an irresponsible teen but I'm pushing 50. Insane."
Opa_Kalaka
It's Hazy
Confused Always Sunny GIF by It's Always Sunny in PhiladelphiaGiphy"Brain fog. I had an alcohol withdrawal seizure in March. My short-term memory and sense of time are absolutely sh*t right now. On the plus side, I haven't had a drink in over 90 days and I don't want one."
Sideshow_Bob_Ross
Oh the wonders of the brain.
What a mess.
Scorched
Menopause Hot Flashes GIF by Kino LorberGiphy"Hot Flashes. I didn’t think they were this bad. I’m a 31-year-old man who took Wellbutrin for the past month and hot flashes are a side effect."
"I thought you just thought you were hot. No motherf**ker you are. You’re super hot legitimately, and you have to do something about it or you’ll go insane. It’s not in your head. It’s your brain raising your temps until you can’t focus on anything else."
_PswayZ_
Everlasting
"Chronic illness, there is absolutely no way you can truly understand the impact unless you experience it."
Disastrous-Phase-979
"Just that idea of always being sick and you will NEVER not be sick again."
"AND you're expected to participate in society just the same as everyone else. It's deeply f**ked up."
Farisr9k
"I like the part where I've been in pain for 25 years so I can kind of still function even when it's really bad."
"And then I try to get an ambulance guy or an admin assistant in a hospital to believe that I'm having an emergency and they're like 'You seem fine, take some Tylenol and go home' until I finally get a blood test, and then the doctor goes 'Holy crap, you're about to die, why didn't you come to the ER sooner.'"
"Like, listen up MF, I had to take a go**amn Uber to get here and then argue with reception for an hour."
BlahBlahILoveToast
Stoned
"How much a kidney stone hurts."
SpiritusSanctu
"Most people expect it to hurt the most when passing a stone through the urethra. Nothing prepared me for the pain as it passed through my kidney/ureter."
"One second I would be fine, carrying on conversations, prancing around nimbly-nimbly. The next second I would be keeled over, crying in agony, losing my lunch due to the sudden onset of crippling pain. 0/10 ... Would not recommend it."
King_of_Lunch223
Close Your Eyes
"Insomnia."
Successful_Fall7801
"Oh, what I would give to not have insomnia! I go through periods of sleeping more or less normal, and then for seemingly no reason, I’ll have weeks on end where a good night of sleep is IMPOSSIBLE. I’ll get 2-4 hours of sleep despite pills, tea, baths, white noise, meditation - everything."
"I’ll spend my days so deeply, utterly exhausted that I can barely think, and my whole body feels heavy, lifeless. It’s hard to feel any kind of emotion, let alone happiness or contentedness. Just existing as a human-shaped puddle until the time when I can go to bed and hope to god that tonight will be different for some unknown reason."
"Insomnia is a real bi*ch. It will tank your mental health and send you spiraling really fast."
thesmallshadows
Beep
Meme Reaction GIF by TravisGiphy"Tinnitus. It’s torture."
DissidentBliss
"I don't mind it much 'cause I've had it since I was born. That means I don't know what proper silence is."
77x5ghost
"Me too, they thought I had hearing issues when I was young because I couldn’t really hear some of the beeps well because they matched the pitch of the ringing."
ehter13
Don't judge another until you lace up their shoes and walk a mile in them!
Do you have anything else to share? Let us know in the comments.
We've all seen an episode or two of at least one reality show, and we all vary in how entertained we are by these shows.
We can all understand that these shows are exaggerated for the sake of entertainment, but we have to wonder, what really goes on behind the curtain?
Curious, Redditor body_by_art asked:
"People who were on shows like 'Supernanny,' 'The World's Strictest Parents,' or 'Scared Straight!,' what was the experience like?"
"And what was the aftermath?"
Perpetuating Stereotypes
"I really dislike this ‘idiot dad’ narrative that a lot of media pushes. It’s sexist not only in that it says that men are stupid, but also in that it assumes women’s ‘place’ is managing the household."
For Health Benefits
"I'd like to contribute from a different show; hopefully someone sees this! My brother was on a show called 'Violent Children: Desperate Parents,' and honestly they were brilliant."
"I wasn't part of this whole experience because I was in University at the time, but my father and my brother both were in this show and the show staff was honestly brilliant."
"Here in the UK, especially Wales where my family lives, mental health is not really a thing the poor have access to and my family is definitely working class. This show gave my brother and my father access to mental healthcare they would have never been able to access themselves and made quite a large difference in both their lives."
"They continued to support my family for almost a year after filming with offers of more mental health help, and both my father and my brother are happier people today because of this."
"One thing I will say is the only reason we were featured on this show was out of pure desperation. There was basically no other way that my father could imagine getting help, given he'd spent almost eight years fighting with the NHS to get my brother psychological help, all to basically no avail."
"My family was made into entertainment for the masses so that we could access something fairly basic. Something about the whole experience doesn't sit right with me at all."
- kn100
Exaggerated to a Fault
"I'm a little bit late to this one, but my younger siblings, mother, and then stepfather were on a program in the UK called 'Mum's On Strike' in the mid-2000s."
"The premise was that the mother would be sick of doing everything around the house, and would be whisked away to a luxury spa for a weekend, leaving the clueless father in charge of trying to take care of the household duties."
"A lot of the conversations and scenarios were faked. I supposedly visited them for the weekend, but I did multiple different shoots across a few hours on the last day of filming, then went back home."
"They'd cause fights between the siblings by purposely creating situations where one was favored over the other, so the others would throw a tantrum."
"There was a shoot on location in our local town center, and they encouraged my little brother to run off into all sorts of different shops, causing hilarity as my stepfather tried chasing after him with two other children in tow."
"Mealtimes were a bit of a farce as well. As it was a weekend, my stepfather had to cook a traditional roast dinner. The production company intentionally supplied incorrect ingredients to make sure my stepfather looked like an idiot. They filmed my reaction to him trying to add beans to the roast a few different times, so they could pick the best one."
"In the end, after they'd got all the footage they wanted, they sent one of the production team out to the chippy to get us some actual edible food."
- Henry1691
No Air Time
"I was on 'Scared Straight,' and my episode never even aired because they only select a very small amount of footage to make it look a lot worse than it actually is. Most prisoners were pretty nice."
- franklinclinton1
Dramatic Transformations
"A classmate was on MTV's 'Made.' They came to my high school too and turned a classmate into prom queen. It wasn’t a stretch, she was naturally pretty but went back to her nerd look right after they left."
"It was crazy how MTV made it look like she had no friends when she actually had a huge group she’d hang out with all the time."
"They also made her love interest look like such a jerk when he was actually the nicest guy you’d ever meet."
"I haven’t believed reality TV since 2005. Still enjoy the ridiculousness of it sometimes."
- TheRealMrsNesbit
So Staged
"A friend of mine worked on 'Nanny 911' in NYC. Nothing on that show happened unless the producers okayed it. They would come up with scenarios and plot points to film."
"You don't just shoot TV shows like that and hope that something magical happens. They created every 'issue.'"
"Reality TV is not real."
"Also, the camera crew who worked on 'Nanny 911' also worked on other shows like 'Real Housewives of New York,' Kitchen Nightmares,' and 'Hell's Kitchen.' The film business is a very small world."
- Jonlife
Nothing Revelatory About It
"My friend was on 'Supernanny,' they don't actually do anything, it's just acting, he and his brother are still exactly the same as they were before."
- screamingXeagle
Breaking the Cycle
"Her techniques on 'Supernanny' (and, honestly, the children themselves) are never really the problem, it's the parents."
"She's not there long enough to break years of bad parenting habits. I imagine that a lot of the parents just revert right back to their old ways as soon as the camera crew packs up their stuff."
- xaviira
Safety Precautions
"One of my friends in grade school was on 'Nanny 911' as a kid (maybe around five years old)."
"There were a lot of kids in her family and one of the biggest problems the nanny had with their household was safety. She baby-proofed the entire house and lectured them on safety precautions they have to take in their lives to ensure that the children wouldn't get hurt."
"She even gave them all helmets to wear whenever they rode bikes or 4-wheelers."
"After she left, a lot of the safety precautions went out of the window, and later my friend told me that they still had the helmets but they were all sitting in a dusty corner."
- -k_d_t-
Scripting Matters
"I worked on 'Teen Mom' and saw how the process works. It’s mostly just the crew following the people around, letting them live their lives with the producer occasionally throwing in some talking points and guiding the 'talent' on what topics they need to touch on."
"But there was no actual scripting involved. There was way more emphasis on the editing if anything."
- TostitoNipples
Small World
"I lived in India. Once in my school when I was in sixth grade, these 'foreign kids' popped up with a bunch of cameramen and stuff. Speculation went wild. We thought our terrible principal probably wanted to create a 'cool' image for the school and was creating some kind of weird advertisement."
"Anyway, years later, I saw a YouTube clip by complete chance of 'The World's Strictest Parents.' It was my school and those exact kids! They had come to visit an Indian family, whose children went to my school."
"The episode was a lot of drama. The parents were kind of obnoxious, at least for the episode."
"However, the last I heard on asking a few friends was that those parents were fine and their children are doing reasonably well. Not sure about the 'foreign kids' who came."
"What a small world! Seems like ages ago."
- ReelWatt
Close to Home
"Like three years ago, I lived in a big 5-bedroom house with four other friends in college. The house was in an episode of 'Supernanny.' We found out because our nice neighbor literally gave us a signed headshot from Jo Frost as a gift out of the blue."
"He literally told us, 'I think y’all would like this more than me and get a kick out of it.'"
"It made our week and we found the episode online and watched it. I asked about the family to the neighbor as our house was rented out and owned by a property company."
"He told me after the show the parents fought all the time, lost all of their money due to 2008 crisis, and lost the house to foreclosure."
"The picture stayed on our mantle for three years and I thought about that family every time."
- Redditor deleted
Beyond Surreal
"My childhood home had been in a famous episode of a famous reality show. (I'd doxx myself if I said which.)"
"It was so odd watching it. It was filmed before we bought it and my parents remodeled it. So it was weird seeing how it looked when we first bought it. Seeing all the old stuff. And also my neighborhood. The outside of my best friend's house was also featured heavily in the episode."
"My parents loved pointing out bits they personally remodeled. 'I remember pulling that out!' and 'Ug, remember that awful wallpaper!' and that sort of thing."
"The funniest part was that they pretended a closet door was a bathroom door in the show. My parents actually built a bathroom there, before ever seeing the episode. So it was really head-spinning to see that."
- harpejist
The Dreaded Watch Party
"A coworker was featured on SuperNanny. They had a pretty good experience filming and were so excited for their show to air that they hosted a watch party."
"I’m sure you can imagine what’s next. The way the show was edited made the parents look SO bad (like, neglectful bad) and made the kids (who were pretty wild) look even worse."
"It ended up being a pretty awkward watch party."
- shan_diego
A Great Future
"I don't know if this counts but I was on an episode of 'MADE' on MTV (if anyone remembers that show)..."
"It was my senior year of high school, so about seven years ago. People gave me crap about it forever and still do. I was made into a 'screamo' singer, and the experience was interesting, to say the least."
"The money and flight/trip to NYC though at 17 years old made the whole embarrassment worth it. Plus, I work in the broadcast business now, so it really opened up a lot of doors and showed me a career I LOVE."
"Seeing kids now that were in my shoes, so fascinated by entertainment media, makes me so genuinely happy."
- BLONDEB***HH
While everyone expects reality shows to be at least somewhat exaggerated, it's interesting to think about what goes on behind-the-scenes in order to make those dramatic scenes happen. Imagining someone acting completely out of character for the sake of a few scenes is particularly wild.
Many people lie or exaggerate about seemingly little things. For example, I've wondered if many are lying or at the very least stretching the truth about the number of partners they've had.
One of those strange things where half of the people are lying and making the number higher, and the other half are lying and making it lower.
It's funny, isn't it? But you do you! What do we know?
People shared some of their thoughts with us after Redditor SleepingOmibozu asked the online community,
"What's something you're 100% sure most people are lying about?"
"How much..."
"How much their side hustle nets them."
Nobody_Wins13
When it comes to side hustles, everyone is much more successful than they actually are.
"Steroid abuse..."
"Steroid abuse in the fitness industry."
[deleted]
This is a big one. So many people who say they're natural are juicing.
"I have read..."
"I have read and understood the terms and conditions..."
[deleted]
Stop attacking me! I did not ask for this!
"That they don't..."
"That they don’t pick their nose."
SarcasticSparky
Yeah, right. The number of people I've seen digging for gold in public is so high.
"Fully understanding..."
"Fully understanding the plot of the Metal Gear Solid series."
N_dixon
I stopped trying to. Do I get a cookie? I'd love one.
"How often they clean..."
"How often they clean their bed sheets."
VeggieSmooth
I'm not even going to ask. I think I will be seriously horrified by the answer.
"If you're not busy..."
"About their productivity levels. If you’re not busy, you’re not a good person."
lushsweet
Yeah, whatever. This is as bad as bragging about not taking breaks at work. It's not a good look.
"So many lies."
"Their income. So many lies."
Zyrock9
Many people feel very self conscious about their salaries. It's sad.
"Why they're late."
"Why they’re late."
[deleted]
I'm not late often but when I am it's usually because of something ridiculous where if I said the truth it would sound like a lie.
"Hating the word..."
"Hating the word 'moist.'"
zerocaffeine
I love the word moist and I won't apologise.
You mean there are still people going on about this? It's just a word, people. Calm down.
Life's a competition, apparently. Take what a lot of people tell you with a grain of salt. That's the best advice.
Have some observations of your own? Tell us more in the comments below!
Children Of 'Back In My Day' Parents Reveal The Most Annoying Thing Their Parents Rant About
We've all heard stories of how things were "Back in my day," from an older family member.
Whether it was walking uphill both ways to school, or having to live without any of this "newfangled technology," there's always that one family member who has a tall tale to tell about how they had it worse.
Reddit user u/heuristic_x asked:
"Kids of 'back in my day' parents, what's the most annoying thing they ranted about?"
Some responses have been edited for content, clarity, or profanity.