It's no secret that women are often objectified by creepy men. But some of these men, specifically those known as "incels", or "involuntary celibates". The stereotypical incel is a fedora-wearing neck-bearded creature, but the incel culture can be hiding in any man's brain. And that's friggin' terrifying.
MetaphoricalProverbasked: Women of Reddit, have you ever had a run in with an Incel? If so, what happened?
That's horrible.
"Met one in college. He seemed normal at the time although we rarely talked. Had literally one class together.
He friend requested me on Facebook and I accepted. Soon after he asked me out on Facebook and I rejected him. He started staring at me in the one class we had together and followed me around a lot.
One day I got a text from my mom telling me I should check my Facebook. I maybe looked at it once a day at the time.
He had commented on every single post I made, every picture, anything on my wall. Literally everything he could. Every comment was different too, but all some variation of how I'm a slut. How all I'm good for is to please a man and produce his offspring... if he finds me worthy.
He planned it out well I think I because the semester ended the week before. Which was good for me I guess, didn't have to see him anymore.
I blocked him then deleted my Facebook. I was rarely using it anyway. He put so much effort into those comments, hundreds of them. Just weird."
What a huge red flag.
"I started chatting with him on Tinder, about an hour later I run into a friend of mine and we decide to grab a beer together. I tell the guy cause I was still chatting with him and he explodes.
Goes on a huge rant about how if I have a straight male friend I should just sleep with him then since the only reason a straight single man would be friends with a girl is to sleep with her. Also that if we were dating he'd never let me have male friends cause they'd just want to sleep with me. Noped out of that one pretty fast."
Big yikes.
"I met a guy online who turned out to be an incel. We chatted casually for maybe a month, nothing sexual, just friendship as we had a hobby in common we were discussing. One day he asked me to check his dating profile for him. Hoping that a woman's perspective would tell him why he wasn't getting any messages. I didn't mind as he'd been polite up until this point. But I didn't read that this was his way of flirting with me.
I just told him his bio was far too long. It was the longest profile on a dating website I'd ever seen. It would have been pages and pages of paragraphs if you printed it out. I just said it's easier to read if you shorten it and make it about the lasting impression you want a woman to have of you. And I sent him an example since I knew about his hobbies. I just wrote something like, "I like philosophy, debating and discussing psychology" and leave it at that instead of discussing every topic in detail and what you like and don't like about them.
Also, his page was filled with more negatives than positives. Paragraphs upon paragraphs about what he found unattractive in women. His standards were ridiculously high. They couldn't have had any previous relationships. No tattoos. Can't be into hobbies he doesn't like. He accused anyone who didn't like his hobbies of being stupid and he thought other people were all 'vapid and shallow for only caring about looks'. Also, he required a woman to have a very specific body and face type.
When I told him maybe he should cut this part out and stick to what traits he likes in a woman...he suddenly flipped. Out of nowhere. He'd shown no sign of craziness before he asked me about his dating profile. Suddenly he starts ranting about how women don't want him but he's a catch. And if I wasn't such a bitch, I wouldn't be single. And he could show me a good time if I learned to be more passive and not speak my mind as much.
I told him to calm down and he wouldn't. He sent me pages and pages and pages of hateful, venomous messages about hating women for not seeing how intelligent and insightful he was and how I would be single forever if I didn't take his offer to date him because he could 'improve' me by making me more alluring to other men.
I tried to give him another chance but my message was drowned out by the paragraphs he sent me over the course of a few hours. So I blocked him on Skype and his original account that we spoke on on another platform disappeared the very next day. Never heard of him since."
Nope, he was definitely an incel.
"This was over a decade ago now, I think. But, at the very least, he was pretty convinced that women were the issue.
The issue was that he was obese. And unwashed. And looked exactly the way you think an incel would. We got along very well and I tried to get past all that, but you can't force attraction.
Basically, we hung out alone once and it was pretty much a disaster. Awkward, uncomfortable. Smelly. Anwyay, after that, I tried to diplomatically let him down. He basically told me I was a slut, tried to rake my name through the mud, and cut me out of his life.
So, yeah. Pretty much a paint by numbers."
Where do these men even come from?
"I went on a date with one about six months ago. It was so, so uncomfortable. He was asking me what I was looking for in a relationship, and the conversation went something like this. M represents me, and D will represent him.
D: So, do you know what you're looking for?
M: I'm new to the state, so I think that for now I just want to go out a bit and meet new people. I'm the commitment type, though, and I'm not at all opposed to finding something serious. What about you?
D: Well, uh, I don't really think I want a girlfriend, you know? I don't want to feel smothered. I mean, sex is nice, of course, but... I just like hooking up. I hooked up with some girls this summer and the sex was fun.
M: Ah. Yeah, I'm not really the hook-up type. I feel like healthy relationships are pretty balanced and no one needs to feel smothered. But I can see how going out with no strings attached could be a good time.
D: Yeah. I really just like sex, like any other dude, yanno? I don't need a girlfriend. Of course, there are the times that I see a stupid couple holding hands and being all cute, and that makes me mad, of course. I don't like seeing it flaunted like that.
I kind of froze at that point. It's difficult to explain the tone of voice he used when he said that last thing, but it made me uneasy. I could see the anger/hatred in his eyes and he went from casually conversing to seriously mad. And he kept saying "of course," like everyone felt the same way, or like he was trying to gauge if I felt similarly.
Needless to say, I never went out with the guy again. I met my now-boyfriend two days later and we've run into D together while on campus (D and I go to college together). Every time, D glares at me and shoots my boyfriend dirty looks.
Edit: I realize that he said he was screwing girls, which would make him not an Incel, by definition. But he seemed to be lying about the sex, and the way that he spoke about his anger toward couples/women with boyfriends made it really clear that he had an Incel-like mindset."
Holy crap.
"This was freshman year of high school and I swear I have about a hundred stories on this one boy. Let's call him blue (because his hair used to be blue).
So I first met blue on a bus ride to a field trip where we were visiting a local college to go through a "practice" course. He and I were both put into the computer programming course, so we spent the whole day together. He seemed like a pretty chill dude, so I invited him to come hang out with my friends at the football game that night. No big deal, right?
Well, he arrives and jokes about how he told his parents we were on a date. I cut him off right there and clarify I invited him to hang out, I did not ask him on a date. He shrugs and continues the story. His father apparently asked if he should bring condoms and his mom asked if I was spending the night. Oooookay now this feels awkward. I emphasized once again we were not in a relationship, I did not ask him out, and nothing was happening tonight. He agreed.
So a small bump in the road, but I still don't feel comfortable around him. To get away for a bit, I offer to go wait in line for snacks while everyone else watches the game. He offers to go with me to "keep me safe": yeah, no. I try to talk one of my girlfriends into helping me leave alone, but she thinks he's cute for me and tells us both to go. Yaaaaay.
So he and I are walking to the snack bar, my friends money in hand (they were paying for their own snacks, I was just going to wait for them) and he's following. As we get close to the stand, a cute girl walks by and he very obviously checks her out. I honestly don't care, but it's what he says that made me cringe.
"Damn, I'd rape that."
I immediately go off on him, that that's not funny, that he's a high schooler and should know better, that some jokes are funny but that's a bit far. He is shocked saying. "What? I do you first!" Apparently he thought I was jealous or something? I give him the money and tell him to order for our friends, I'm leaving. He keeps trying to get me to stay, but I'm just done. He then offers to drive me home, which is a BIG hell no at this point! You just made a joke about raping me I am NOT having you drive me home ALONE after that!!!
It gets worse.
For about a month, he would follow me to my gym class, wait for me to walk into the girls locker room, and then go to his class. After I realized this was a common occurrence, I talked to a mutual friend of ours, and then it stopped. Don't have confirmation, but I'm assuming our mutual friend (let's call him pink for his fav color) told blue I knew and he stopped.
Skip to sophomore year, when us three are all in a club together. Pink keeps trying to set me and blue up together, and it's making me really uncomfortable. Blue and I are in a different club together where I compete and he is taking pictures for the yearbook. Turns out almost all the pictures he took were of me. Creepy.
What was weird was he found a crappy homemade ring in the hallways apparently? With a heart charm as the charm of the ring. He snuck it in my bag with a note of "just thinking of you" and it just weirded me out.
This was when I decided "okay so we just can't be friends." So I cut myself off from him, but not from everyone else in our group. Meet black, a kind of emo chick I used to be friends with and at one point dated blue. She came over to my house to hang out, and he texted her 52 times and called 7 times in the span of the 3 hours we hung out, because apparently blue didn't "trust me". They broke up later when he came out as gay. Weird.
LITERALLY A DAY LATER he comes up to me and asks me out. I ask him I thought he was gay: nope. Apparently that was his excuse to break up with black, and he blew up her phone in hopes that I would be the one to pick up the line. DUDE.
Then I moved at the end of sophomore year. I was finally going to be away from blue, or so I thought. Though I still liked pink and black, those friendships disintegrated when I stopped hanging out with blue because they sided with blue. Whatever, like I care.
Because I moved I made it so he couldn't contact me at all: blocked his account on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, everything I could. Kept his number in my phone but named it "Don't Answer" so I'd know it was him. I thought I was rid of him.
Cut to January. At this point I haven't seen them for 8 months. The ahole hacked into my Facebook hoping I wouldn't notice. For a solid hour I was "in a relationship" with him, he was unblocked, and he had posted a picture of him on my account titled "I love my honey ♥️" LIKE WTF???
Gladly this was late at night and I was up studying, so I had gotten an email about logging into a new device on my phone. Instantly changed everything back, deleted and cleared everything, and changed my password on everything. I was not about to have this happen on another account.
Is this an incel? Or just a stalker? Or a creep? Whatever he's categorized as, it's f**king creepy. He never did the classic break down at being rejected, he just... Never took rejection."
Logic.
"He said sexism in the workplace wasn't real. Then proceeded to give an example of a person being denied a role because of their gender.
"Women aren't discriminated against in the workforce. We had a lady put in her resume at our construction company and the workers wanted to hire her but the boss didn't end up hiring her because his wife would be jealous".
Yeah the cognitive dissonance hurt my head."
Trust no incel.
"It happened more frequently in my younger years say late teens/early twenties. Almost, exclusively online. I used to be one of those "super nice-but-actually pushover-y" girls and gave everyone the time of day to at least chat and small talk, now I do not 100% because of incel run-ins.
Worst run-in I've had was a boy, after agreeing to exchange phone numbers (I don't know why I did) would call/text sometimes as early as 7 am...I never answered and eventually got pissed off and told him to stop calling me. He was WAY too obsessive and I barely knew the guy. He later threatened to post my social media pictures and phone number on craigslist and back-page on the casual sex ads. No idea if he ever did but for weeks, almost months would text just "$" and say nothing else.
So men, if you approach a lady and she seems short & snotty with you like she has her guard up she's probably actually a really cool girl but has had one or two really disturbing run-ins with an incel so she's protecting herself from the trouble. We all watch too many episodes of Dateline to play around with that. Incels seem to make life a little more shitty for everybody even other men, sadly.
I can't tell you if I ever ran into one in real life but I know I have. I'm 100% sure I did but it was completely non-memorable and I can't say I even notice them in passing. Maybe that's why they get so upset with people. It seems like a sad life but they make it impossible to feel sorry for them. Poor."
RUN.
"I dated a guy who became an incel after we had been dating for 7 months. It was my first time dating anyone so I was ~nervous to do any thing major ya know~ He was a virgin as well and made me very clear of this fact anytime things were a little bit romantic.
One night we got in an argument about the definition of consent and how I wasn't sure if I wanted to have kids one day.
He said, "Hypothetically, if a man and a woman were to get married, and the husband wanted kids and the wife didn't, isn't it the wife's duty to provide the husband with a child even if she doesn't want one?"
I told him no it would be rape to make a woman forcefully have a child she does not want. This made him extremely angry and he stormed off. He then texted me later that night around 9pm asking if he could call me. I had work the next morning and knew this would be a long call so I asked if it could wait until the next day. He said it couldn't wait and that he needed to say something tonight. I asked him if he could text it to me, thinking it would be a paragraph or something. I could not have been more wrong.
I woke up at 4am to a text from him. It was so long that it couldn't be read in messages and had to be opened in notes. It turns out this "text" was a 9 page long essay describing how my thoughts were completely wrong and how I needed to allow him to screw me whenever he asked and how it was my duty as a woman to bear him children.
I broke up with him the next day I was so appalled. He was obviously very mad at me for deciding I didn't want to have sex with a guy who viewed me as just a 'baby maker'."
NOPE.
"I've had a few, but the worst interaction I've ever had, personally, was with a dude named Brandon. He was friends with some of my friends, I don't think anyone actually liked him but they felt bad for him so they let him hang around.
He developed an obsession with me and would message me on every platform of social media he could, wrote "fanfic" about us (which was VERY inappropriate and made me 10/10 uncomfortable) and eventually started messaging me about all the ways he wanted to assault me. I blocked him but he always found a way to keep harassing me.
I ended up moving out of state for other reasons, but after that it died down, thankfully."
Terrifying.
"This is before they started calling themselves incels -- or maybe before we knew they did -- but this dude hit all the markers.
High school. I made the mistake of being polite to him. Not flirty, not overly friendly -- just basic kindness. "Hi, how are you today, sorry to hear that" kindness. He spewed their typical hateful, self-pitying nonsense at me before I knew better than to sympathize with him.
When I told him I wasn't interested in a romantic relationship, he terrorized and stalked me for years, showing up at my work and extra curriculars and threatening to do me bodily harm. He made up truly insane stories about a made-up "childhood romance," harassed my friends, tried to isolate me from them. He made my high school experience a living hell. It didn't stop until I got a restraining order, and he still tried to indirectly contact me for a while. I was afraid for years after graduation that he'd show up and kill me at work.
A decade later, he found my professional e-mail and apologized. It was short, to-the-point, polite, and sounded like a therapist had helped him write it. (I doubt I was the only woman he did this to over the years.)
I agonized over replying because part of me was afraid it would just reignite his obsession. Ultimately, I sent him a similarly short "thank you for saying that, I wish you well" note and never replied to his follow-up message.
He hasn't contacted me again, so I do believe he's changed, or is trying to change. But I never made the mistake of giving too much kindness to an abuser and/or psychopath of that particular strain again."
"Nice guys" are almost as bad.
"Are incels the same as niceguys? I think maybe they are different... somehow. Anyway, I was once tricked into a helping a niceguy.
Backstory. Am a girl, and in college I had a crush on this guy, and because of this I offered to tutor him in one of his classes that I had already taken. It was... a short lived crush. Because after tutoring him I discovered that he was dumber than a box of rocks. Like... so, SO dumb. But I had committed and I was kind of in his same friend group, so I also learned that he was highly religious (another way we were totally incompatible), and he was totally into another girl in this friend group. So I gave up my crush.
We graduated. Or, well, I did. Some time later he messages me on Facebook, all heartbroken and shit. Apparently he had managed to get together with this girl, and had even slept with her (despite being, you know, MEGA Christian) but she had broken up with him. And he was so upset, why didn't she like a nice guy like him, he had a dream sent from God where he saw them getting married, it was meant to be. And would I please reach out to her for him? This was a little before everyone was woke about this shit, so my dumb ass did it. It's one of the things I regret having done in my life.
So I reach out to her and ask her how she is and then bring the conversation around to him. She tells me that he's basically fucking stalking her. Like this dude's been creepily driving by her house to see if she's home. I was like oh damn, ok, btw he asked me to talk to you for him, sorry.
I forget what I told him after that, but I was washing my hands of it. I wish there was a better ending, but I was mortified that I had acted as his agent and bothered this poor girl.
Bonus: I didn't defriend him on Facebook until he got pissy that he got a ticket for parking in the fire lane. It was "just for a few minutes" and didn't give a single shit that, you know, people could have DIED IN A FIRE because his dumb ass was in the way.
Also he had IBS and I eat way too much chili, so that's another way this was never gonna work."
At least he grew up.
"I'm a male, but I used to be an incel.
In high school I would ask out a bunch of girls (one I asked on Facebook) and each time I got rejected I would yell at them for not giving me a chance. I would stalk them and message them constantly, even using Words with Friends to message them. I would threaten to kill myself because of how angered and depressed I was, but also using it as a way to get someone to reply back to me.
I'm horrified by what I used to be, I hate reliving my past. I really want to apologize to the women I tormented, but also feel like it's best I leave them alone. This is one skeleton I have in my closet that I want to be burned and buried."
Ugh.
"A guy I met on tinder before I started dating my boyfriend.
He knew a creepy amount about me, or guessed a lot of stuff correctly (height, bra size to a T, etc.) that a random stranger wouldn't know. And one of his pick up lines were "I hope you don't mind I have a huge cock."
But I was young, inexperienced and so I disregarded his creepiness.
We were supposed to meet up, but it was the same day I was supposed to go on a date with my now boyfriend, so I had to tell him that I wasn't able to meet him.
The guy lost his shit on me, the usual "fucking shallow bitch" and "all women are the same" and how he was so sick and tired of women doing this to him. It got really intense, and I was wigged out. It was the first, and last, time I experienced something like that."
We hope he gave them their money.
"I was friends with one in college. He thought he was the coolest, hottest guy ever, and would resort to pathetic tactics to picking up chicks, including getting a puppy and walking it around campus solely so girls might come up and talk to him.
A friend of ours took him to a bar and the guy started crying because no girls were coming up and talking to him. Before that time, he had bet us $300 that he could "go to any bar in this town and pick up a chick". Our friend set him up on a date with a friend of his, and the dude was creepy and rude the entire time."
Big yikes.
He didn't seem like an incel while we were talking a few days before our date, but he also used fake/heavily altered pictures so that says a lot. Arranged to go to a bar and maybe get something to eat if I was feeling happy to after a long day of work.
That didn't happen...met at the bar and he said he wanted to take me somewhere better which I was happy to do, turns out we were headed to his place. I objected and said "oh I'm really hungry could we just go somewhere to eat instead" and turned out he had a plan for us to make food and smoke together. I wasn't getting super weird vibes from him so I thought he probably had good intentions and it was a fairly easily place to get away from need be.
Went in, and I felt very uncomfortable (bear in mind he looked NOTHING like his pictures and was acting like I was his girlfriend, we matched on tinder like a week before), so uncomfortable in fact that I didn't look him in the eye even once the whole night. Strange note: his entire place was like a Doctor Who museum...bed sheets, pillows, posters, figurines, dolls, and costume pieces. That gave me some vibes.
Anyways, he made a pie while I awkwardly stood in the kitchen corner and watched him trying to impress me and saying "we should do this together a few times a week, you will really love this" and awkwardly laughing in response. Had we been in a relationship and he looked/acted any way he had online I'd have loved it, but he was a stranger...also I have coeliac disease and refrain from animal products for my health so couldn't eat it..smelt like soap but he tried.
We sat and watched Doctor Who (what a surprise) for 5 hours while smoking, which would be fine with me but whenever I got a message he would ask who it was and would move progressively closer to me and look at my phone. He also got a little carried away (?) with smoking. Now I can hold myself pretty well with weed, and I don't think he expected that at all. A few joints in and he was a mess. The pie he was trying to eat was just crumbling and falling on the floor which he sort of mushed in the carpet trying to pick up, and he was saying shit like "why aren't you high yet" "you need to smoke more you should have passed out by now" at that point I was freaked out. Called a taxi and left, he had passed out when I had left.
I said the next day thank you for the evening but I didn't want to see him again, tried to guilt trip me with how much money he put towards smoke and food and drinks (I never actually agreed previous to that evening to what happened that night, I thought we were gonna get chips) and how he deserved compensation (you can guess what he meant). I turned him down as gently as I could. He got my Tinder account banned, showed a screenshot of me pissing around saying something t along the lines that I'm 13 as evidence (I'm not and my pictures made that pretty obvious) but yeah, said if I was on Tinder going in dates I should follow though with the arrangement (there was literally no dirty talk) and that I shouldn't be on tinder if I was just going to use people for freebies and take away what they deserved. I never responded to him.
Every couple weeks for MONTHS I got a message from him, usually responding to something I post or just a picture of a random thing (no dick pics thank GOD), which I ghost and are usually met with some very threatening angry emojis and a "what did I do to deserve this". Blocked him, problem solved. Still pissed about my Tinder account though."
And there are just as many grievances for which we are not at all sorry.
Curious to hear about people's track record of their questionable behavior, Redditor NanoPKx asked:
"What is something bad you have done with no regrets?"
Is it petty theft or flat out stealing? You decide.
The Parting Gift
"'Forgetting' to bring back a company ipad after they forgot about me having it. Actually they never asked for it back so I still have it and use it."
– Koetjeka
Furry Companion
"I stole a barn kitten while delivering packages for FedEx. He kept climbing my legs and getting into the van, sitting under the wheel when I tried to back out (it was a steep driveway, no way to swing the van around). I called the number on the package, looked the name up on facebook, called the local non-emergency to get contact info, all failed."
"So I took him. Now, if you're not from a rural environment, you might not understand that barn cats like that are 'no-man's-cats.' For all the owners know, he got sick or got got by a coyote. And he would have died, because when we got him to the vet he had a nasty upper resp infection and some other nasties."
"Now, one deformed nasal passage and the cutest snore later, we have a bonkers little orange cat with the heaviest penchant for snuggling I've ever seen (his name is Monty btw)."
"Edit: I forgot to pay my Cat Tax: https://imgur.com/a/HIXS4us"
"Edit Part 2: Monty loves the attention. Thank you for loving him as much as we do :3"
"MmmmMMMMRrrrrrrrrrrAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAW" -Montgomerey Valentine, 2022
– SonOfSkinDealer
The Dirty Treat
"A housemate of mine kept eating mine and my girlfriends food and even though I asked him to stop the only thing he would ever say is 'I thought it was mine' then keep eating it."
"Well I bought my girlfriend some ice cream she really enjoys and she put the half she didn’t finish back in the freezer. Well when she want to get the rest it was gone and it made me madder than I think it probably should have."
"The very next time I saw him and somehow keeping a straight apologetic face I told him how he accidentally ate our sex ice cream and that bits of it had been on our parts etc. I told him I felt guilty not to tell him and that I had to apologise for him to eat such a thing."
"I will never forget the face he made when I told him. A face of pure self disgust and shock to which all he had to say was 'I wish you never told me that' and proceeded to move out around a month later."
"Although he didn’t actually eat sex ice cream, like why the f'k would you put it back after use anyway? Sometimes I wonder if I went to far but in that moment I just did not care at all. He still doesn’t know it isn’t true and I’ll probably never see him again."
"F'k you Vitas buy your own food."
– SpicyDolphin74
Vengeance is sweet.
Payback Time
"A drunk driver hit my parked car, left a huge dent in the front driver’s side door, and then drove away. I happened to be looking out the window at the time and saw the whole thing, including his plate number. Cops got there not long after and took my statement. After a couple days and a couple phone calls, I found out nothing was going to come of it because he was the son of the sheriff the next county over."
"Fast forward a couple months, I see his car parked behind a local bar within walking distance of my apartment. I got out my hunting knife and sliced all four of his tires, and made a couple trips around it destroying the paint job. Yellow Pontiac Sunfire, and I still remember the goddamn plate number even after almost 20 years."
– IgnoreMe304
For The People
"I was a GM for a retailer that was going out of business. During the liquidation I let my employees that worked until the end store product they wanted to buy in a closet I claimed I didn't have a key to. Oh the final days I sold them all the items they requested for 95% off. 70" tvs, ipads, gaming laptops whatever they requested."
– Midnights606
Surreptitious Swap
"Years ago I worked for a wealthy dude who was married to someone semi-famous. He would waltz in every morning and talk about the fantastic dinner he had the night before, how he hung out with some other famous person or whatever else."
"He paid me peanuts. I had a hard time making ends meet."
"I was the office assistant and IT guy. So it comes time to get a new computer for one of the designers. I spec something out, and show it to him. It was a ripper of a machine for the time (early 2000s). But it wasn’t expensive enough for bossman."
"So I added a really high end graphics card. Boss was happy then. The card added nothing for the designer: they only did illustrator and photoshop."
"So I came in that weekend and swapped the graphics card for my aging one from home."
"No one ever knew. Or cared. And I got a new graphics card."
– Dudeinairport
When times are tough, people had to do what it took to survive.
T.P. Crisis
"In college I was so poor I would steal toilet paper from the supply closet in our major building."
– Business_Loquat5658
Hungry College Buddy
"I stood watch for a college friend who was going hungry because he’d been disowned and his roommates had made living with him intolerable after he came out."
"I was loosely affiliated with an off campus program with local churches that gave free student dinners on Thursdays. We would go to church to eat, then bring dishes into the kitchen."
"Anyway, he would go in there and steal stuff like peanut butter, literal bread (not an allegory), granola bars etc. while I watched out for the pastor."
"Eventually we both got caught, the pastor for the college students got a bit mad because he was responsible for us while we were there to eat. And I think it was offensive on some level to steal from church. But then he saw what my friend was taking, and asked him if he had enough to eat. My friend shamefacedly said no, not usually."
“'Okay, fine. Put the food back, and come with me.' Took my friend grocery shopping instead, got him connected with the food pantry and community garden at church instead."
– SchnarchendeSchwein
Based on these examples, people didn't twice about their actions in the heat of the moment.
Within reason, we all gotta somehow get by.
But do you think their actions deserve punishment?
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When a person sees someone they care about going through a struggle or crisis, their instinct is to uplift them with positive advice.
But sometimes, the wisdom imparted by friends isn't always helpful or relevant to the situation.
Curious to hear from strangers online who could do without specific knowledge, Redditor Saibotnl1 asked:
"What life advice can just f'k off?"

These Redditors have a problem with how certain people have on outlook on life.
Time To Rest
"Sleep when you’re dead."
"Cool, but you’re going to be dead a lot sooner."
– Tag2graff
Irrelevant Sadness
"People have it so much worse than you so don’t be sad!"
– notrachelmar
"To that I like to say, 'people have it so much better than you so don't be happy!'"
– ___jupiter____
Your Life Path
"Almost anything relating to what age you must be in order to buy a house, have children, marry, have a profession, or do anything else. Seriously, everyone's life is different from everyone else's. Make your life the way you want it to be. If you so desire. Up to you."
– Frn071
On The Contrary
“Cheaters never prosper”
"Yes, they f'king do."
– waqasnaseem07
People can get out of any situation they find displeasing.
But others feel people should just "stick it out."
Ignoring Bullies
"Just ignore bullys or get someone else to handle it for you. I have never seen this work, only makes it worse. The only effective way I've seen to deal with them is by not making yourself an easy target and make them scared to f'k with you again. If going psycho on their a** is the only thing they'll respond to that's their fault. Also want to add in schools they will punish you for self defense but that punishment is only sitting around a few hours in detention or sitting around at home with a suspension. The punishment is temporary boredom, it's absolutely nothing compared to being bullied and when it's over the important message will still stand that you will not tolerate being a victim."
– User Delted
Remain to be Miserable
"Stick it out"
"Whether that's sh**ty jobs, shi**y relationships, shi**y living situations..."
"By all means don't just give up on things when you face challenges, but if something feels wrong or is wrecking your peace then take some control and change it if you can!"
– petitezoey
"Easy for you to say," might be an auto-response to these suggestions for many people.
Invitation For Recklesslessness
"Live like everyday was your last"
Yall know what people do when they learn they have a single day left to live?"
– LimeGrass619
A Possible Consequence
"I did that as a teenager and ended up homeless and addicted to heroin. Didn’t pan out for me too well."
"19 years sober though today."
– Open-Section-7263
A Practical Approach
"If I knew with certainty that I had one day left, I'd double-check all my financials, my will, and my insurance policies, make sure my wife had all of my passwords and knew where all the money was, spend the rest of the day with her and the kids, then call the medical examiner and ask to lie down on the gurney so that when I die they won't strain their back moving my remains out of my house."
– Asteriad
Nose Stuck In A Book
"Work while they sleep. Study while they party"
"That's not a recipe for success, that's a recipe for a lot of white hairs, burnout syndrome and a stroke before your 40s..."
– Khomuna
Doesn't Apply To Everyone
"Do what you love and money will follow"
"I love walking my dogs and grilling food for my friends but That sh*t doesn't pay the bills as well as my engineering degree!"
– Elons_android
While people's intentions are good, they're better off keeping their two cents in their own pockets.
Not everyone likes to hear platitudes.
Sometimes, people just want to know they're not alone with their problems over listening to unlikely solutions that are nothing more than superficial pick-me-ups.
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Kids start going to school from the age of five, and for the most part, they spend more time at school than at home. Because of that, teachers can become very important figures in the lives of their students.
Some students don't have the best home lives. Some keep it to themselves, but others confide in their teachers.
Curious about various situations, Redditor Delicious_Mastodon83 asked:
"teachers of reddit what is the saddest thing you found out about a student?"
In Need of Parents
"Not a teacher but was a school-based therapist. Had a student (7 -8 y/o) I didn’t know knock on my office door and ask if I’d adopt her and “if you have room, my brother too, but if not, that’s ok, we can be split up. We’re split up now. And I don’t take up space. I just need a sleeping bag”. Broke my heart."
– secretkpr
Heartbreaking, But Industrious
"My mom taught at a school in a bad neighborhood in Chicago in the mid 90’s. There was a second grader that would save his milk and ketchup packers from lunch for his mom so she had something to eat when she got home from work."
– PowerstrokeMe
Big-Hearted Mom
"Not a teacher but a parent with a 9 year old son. Every day I pack extra in my sons lunch because he tells me he has a friend that never has anything to eat. It's winter and my son came home and told me his friend was turning up with shorts and shirt and holes in his shoes. So I sent in a jumper and long pants for him to wear and some slightly used but good condition shoes. I have been up to the school recently and the teacher pulled me aside and thanked me profusely for helping this child. Apparently teachers are not allowed to aid kids they teach here in Australia and they have already reported the issue 3 times to child welfare without results so I was the only one helping this child. The teacher told me before I started sending in more food and clothes, this child would steal others food from their lunches and look through the bins because he was so hungry. They doubt he gets fed at home. So now I make sure to always send an extra lunch and some school clothes/supplies when I can. I can only hope child welfare eventually does something but it breaks my heart."
– spetzie55
Amazing Big Sister
"It was right after winter break and before class started I was just talking with some students and asked if they got anything fun for the holidays. One girl said on no, I don’t ever get presents, my mom is a drug addict. But I went out and got some stuff for my little sister so that she can have a real Christmas."
"She just said it so matter-of-fact. She was so used to being the parent to her little sister that she didn’t even care about her own childhood. It totally broke my heart."
– tonydanzascaulk
The Importance Of Human Affection
"Second hand story from my mom, elementary teacher for 30ish years. She had a hug or a handshake out the door policy, just some small contact and a proper goodbye, and had this young boy who always picked the hug. She wondered why he always went for it, most kids would go back and forth depending on their mood that day, so she asked him why he was always so excited for the end of day hug? His answer, "It's the only one I ever get.""
– needsawholecroissant
Coming Out The Other Side
"Two teenage boys (16/14) with learning disabilities were on my caseload, they never missed school but often ditched class. They were homeless mid-year after they went home from school to find the locks changed, their Mom had abandoned them for a new boyfriend. She didn't leave an address for them to find her."
"*Edit: both eventually dropped out, however a couple of years later the younger brother came back to visit. He and his brother were both working construction, and his brother had gotten married, had a child, and was living with his wife’s family."
"The younger had roommates and was saving for a car. He told me it was a shame I didn’t have kids, because I would make a good Dad."
"People often persevere, even with the odds stacked against them."
– Kursch50
True Parentification
"Not me but my daughter is a teacher, she has lots of stories but one that stands out for me is one of her kindergarten kids saying she was tired and her asking why, the little girl explained that she had been up all night with her mums newborn baby. She did this every night, fed her bottles and everything."
– lb47513343
Luckily, He Was Resilient
"This year I had a 17 year old kid enroll at my school. He was sitting in my math class and I could tell he was struggling. After class I took some extra time to go over a concept with him. I asked him to read the question to me, and he sat there silently. He then looked at me and said “I’m not going to lie to you, I cannot read. I have no idea how to say these words""
"Turned out at age 17 he was illiterate and had been kept out of school by his very religious, controlling parents. Over the past few months he has worked very hard! Now he can finally read at an 8th grade level and he is STILL improving!!"
– User Deleted
A Heroic Teacher
"I worked in an inner city charter school. One of my students (`M10) had a sib (M8) in a lower grade. The mom was there every day in the beginning of the year encouraging them, helping them and generally being very supportive... until a CPS agent spoke to me asking about her behavior. After CPS left things went downhill. The boys showed up late to class even though they lived a half block away from school. When in school both boys were tired from sleeping in the car while their mom "went fishing". She also had two very young girls which she dragged around making the boys take care of them. One day the boys didn't show up and their teacher walked over to the house to find the mom had loaded up the fridge, paid the rent for the month and abandoned them. The teacher (a candidate for sainthood btw) took them in, adopted them and grew them up to be great men."
– mopedarmy
This is really heartbreaking stuff! Luckily, teachers aren't just another adult in your life; they can be your saving grace as well.
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TRIGGER WARNING: This article contains sensitive content about depression and mental health.
As the stigma around mental health lessens (however slowly), people are more forthcoming about the problems they are facing. One of the most common mental health issues is depression.
Depression can affect many different types of people. Factors such as gender, race, nationality, and even age have no bearing on whether someone suffers from depression or not.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), globally, "...an estimated 3.8% of the population affected, including 5.0% among adults and 5.7% among adults older than 60 years..."
Depression displays in certain patterns, such as mood changes, physical difficulties, and social isolation. However, depression manifests differently in different people and feels different to different people.
Reddit users divulged what depression felt like to them when Redditor iodineseaspray asked:
"What does depression feel like to you?"
Some of this is sure to sound familiar.
The Worst Kind Of Boredom
"Like being more bored than you could imagine but also not wanting to do anything at all, even breathe. So you want to do something, but you can't imagine anything that you would like to do so you're just sort of stuck."
– BuddhistSlater
"So you then spend literally hours staring at a blank wall hating yourself, your life, and everything around you. Well, as much hate as you can summon in the absolutely mentally numb state you find yourself sat in day after day."
– merryman1
Lack Of Motivation and Energy
"Complete lack of motivation."
"Ignoring people that I love, and who are trying to help."
"Just sh*t"
– HatFromStraw
"I feel it extra at work. Letting things slide until you either get into trouble or trying last minute to prevent it."
"Funny those times when I'm working to save my butt, the depression goes away and i feel super focused and motivated."
"I try to carry that energy over but no, it's rinse and repeat."
– ExtraBitterSpecial
Powerful Insecurity
"Insecure about absolutely everything, no hope for the future, dissociation from society and not knowing how to “act” anymore, feeling like I’m not as good at the things I always thought I was good at or that the “talent is wasted on me”, only food cheers me up and sometimes even that doesn’t work"
– tenamonth
Loss Of Creativity
"This. It's like some numb fuzziness you feel in your brain. It's the worst thing ever for an artist who just wants to create but your brain comes up dry with a dense fog that wants to just lie down for a few hours"
– FinnProtoyeen
A Mental Inability To Breathe
"For me, it feels like I’m in a lake with a ball chain tied to my feet, desperately swimming up for air, the only problem is the chain isn’t long enough. I can only get an inch of my head out of the water to breath, and as soon as a high tide comes, the water just floods over me and I feel like I can’t breath again. I live like this, constantly feeling like I’m struggling to breathe, weighed down by my own mind. It’s a struggle and I can’t really describe it in any other way, I’m jealous of people who don’t worry about depression"
– DrowningInBrokeness
"Like suffocating under a heavy cloak"
– kmartfreak
"Like being crushed. Like if the air was crushing my muscles and bones and I can’t breathe because I’m being crushed…"
"Kinda like that."
– Afreshnewsketckbook
Listlessness
"Scrolling thru your steam library. Thinking you want to play something, either not settling on anything or not wanting to put the effort into the game. Going back to the scrolling."
– Aistadar
"It feels like you're forced to play a game of Monopoly (represents life) and your just rolling the dice to appease everyone but you genuinely don't care about where you go, where you land, what you pick up, what you pay, what you gain."
"You kind of just watch it happen without interest and while people are cheering or oh no-ing for you, you genuinely don't care. Everyone is a piece on this board that hardly matters and you feel like we're all just running in a circle over and over again and it's boring and disinteresting as hell."
"You lose all curiosity for everything and just let everything happen and pass by you. No motivation, hardly any love, hardly any care. Feels like the world is in black and white and your waiting for the game to end became it's so absolutely boring and disinteresting, but it never does."
"You come to resent the game and eventually hate it because it feels like you're being forced to play it and suffer it's consequences when you never asked to play it in the first place."
"That's what depression felt like for me. Since then I've been medicated and recieved therapy. I'm doing a lot better now and I don't feel this way anymore, thankfully."
- KnlghtLlghts
A Relation To Fantasy
"You know that scene in the Lord of the Rings where Bilbo is describing to Galndalf what having the Ring all those years felt like? "I feel thin. Like too much jam spread over too much bread." That's honestly the best way I've seen to describe it."
– Electrical_Age_336
"I always say the closest thing to compare it to is a dementor in harry potter. It sucks every ounce of happiness out of you until there is only darkness left."
"Side note: chocolate always helps"
– sunfacer
Fear Of Lack Of Justification
"Like someone close to you died yesterday. Expect no one has, and nothing has happened to justify how you feel."
– AlterEdward
A Physical Pain
"Physical pain in my heart, will start crying just by attending to the physical sensation in my body."
– sagieday
Help Yourself
"I've always described it as having a shadow fixed to your brain which fuels things like indecision and negativity. You can do things to temporarily help but you can't truly shift it. Previous normality is forgotten. But it's amazing how much you can mask it."
"I found I didn't realise how bad I was until I started to get better"
"For anyone suffering with depression. Please, please speak to someone. Best thing I ever did"
– DavosLostFingers
Depression isn't something you can just deal with or get over. Learning to cope is not easy. However, as Redditor DavosLostFingers pointed out, talking to someone can literally save your life.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with depression, contact the American Psychological Association by phone at 800.374.2721 or 202.336.5500.
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