“‘Bite’ Them, Run Away”: 30 Weird Things People Could Only Admit To Doing Anonymously
Interview
Whether it's due to shifts in mood or a (temporary) lapse in judgment, we sometimes take actions that surprise even ourselves. Even though we know they're uncharacteristic and do not reflect our personality, explaining that to others (who don't have access to our thoughts) can be tricky. So we decide to bury them in our minds.
But this puts additional mental weight on us and a person can only take so much. Luckily, a woman who goes on the internet by the nickname Key_Nectarine_1969 made a post on Reddit, asking platform users, "What's the weirdest thing you've done that you could only tell people anonymously?" and inviting everyone to free themselves of the burden.
Her call was answered. Immediately, the comments section turned into a virtual confession booth, reminding us that keeping secrets is part of being human.
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When I was walking to school one morning, I saw a kid (7-8 yo?) kicking a dog. I ran over & kicked the kid and asked him how it felt. He ran off and no one saw. Still not sorry.
My cat has trained me to give her rides around the house by jumping on my shoulder.
I walk her over to the peephole of the door, she looks out it (at it really).
There is an dangling elephant thing with a bell that my wife has a decoration, she looks at and or sniffs it.
I walk her to the back door to take a look for a minute (its glass).
Then I drop her off at her cat scratching post and she jumps off. She purrs like a freak the entire time. It's adorable.
We do this several times a day.
We managed to get in touch with Key_Nectarine_1969 and she was kind enough to tell us more about her now-viral post.
"To be honest with you, [I came up with the idea for it when] I was sitting in bed and watching ‘I Am Not Okay With This’ on Netflix," the Redditor told Bored Panda.
"[Then,] a scene popped up of the main character and the potential love interest showing each other their weird secrets. Because of that, the question just suddenly popped into my head!"
As an 8 year old, I was very, very scared of and obsessed with the idea that I was a sinner and going to hell. It led to a couple weird things. I’d pray for hours every night which led to insomnia. I had to name everyone I knew or else they’d surely die because they weren’t being protected by Jesus. If I missed someone on the list, I’d have to start over. Yes, this was OCD.
Secondly, I was pretty sure I was the bride of the devil. I was 100% sure I had been selected to give birth to the antichrist since I was so evil. So I’d routinely punch my stomach really hard to end anything that might be in it. I’d intentionally fall and put myself into dangerous situations with the hope that, even if I was destined to live in hell for eternity, I could save my family from dealing with the f*****g antichrist. Don’t teach your kids religion. Even if they don’t have mental health issues like me, it will f**k them up in ways they will never tell you about.
"Don’t teach your kids religion." This. Religion screwed up my life, my mind, and made me waste two decades of my life because of my childhood brainwashing. I am still bitter over it.
Welcome to Christianity. People are made to feel guilty so that the priests have power. Power over forgiveness. It was a pretty clever scheme to secure a fellowship.
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This is so sad. They were taught all the wrong things which affected their confidence rather than being taught that Jesus loves us despite our sin. As a christian myself i hope they found peace with or without religion. Jesus loves them AS THEY ARE regardless but i hope they get the help they need. 'Don't teach your kids religion' no, dont teach them that being a christian is a lifetime of feeling guilt and shame as a way to control them but of love, kindness, helping others and NO JUDGEMENT.
I know a few Christians who were taught exactly that and they are all very, very bad people. But it’s Ok because they go to church once a week and pray for forgiveness and then all bad things they have done that week are erased and they come out of the church fresh as lillies. I grew up in predominantly Chtistian country and cannot judge other religions, but as for Christians very few have any sort of healthy moral compass. And those who did usually abandoned the church as adults.
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My religious beliefs are important to my empathy and capacity to deal with trauma. I feel sorry that some people use it to punish instead of help.
Something similar happened to the 13 year old daughter of a friend of mine. She became very shy and introvert all of a sudden, she had been a very happy kid, always joining in the activities at school singing dancing theater. Turned out period had started and she felt that she wasn't pure like the Virgin Mary anymore. She felt dirty and unworthy of the love of God. yea religion is foorking great.
I'd ask if her name was Carrie, but unfortunately her story is all too common.
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As a kid if I came home and no one else was home I my first reaction was to think the Rapture happened and I was left behind. Not as serious as this post but it took 10-15 years to realize how messed up that was
Strangely enough my religion kind of soothes my obsessive compulsive behaviors and anxiety sometimes. And I am forever grateful to God for that because those really suck. But I understand that it’s different for everyone, and I grew up in a good parish that didn’t constantly drill into your head that if you do something wrong you’re going to hell and stuff like that.
Don't teach your kids fanatical religion. My parents raised me Catholic but I wasn't taught it was the only way, I wasn't taught that I was impure or that I was a sinner. There was open discussion about how/why my mom converted from being a Lutheran and how she felt about it. There were discussions where we were allowed to express our beliefs. There was never push to get confirmed, excel at CCD, or have our children baptized. I maintain that there *are* ways to do it that don't have to be harmful and hateful.
Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry for that person. 8 years old and already freaked out about possible horrors. You learned from "religion "????
I don't agree that much because I'm a kid and me and my life is f****d up for reasons that have nothing to do with religion but I do understand/relate in a way.
personally i'm religious, but this is incredibly f****d up. i have no clue what your church/family/etc did to you but whatever it was is NOT NORMAL. us christians are supposed to be the good ones, but some of us are the most toxic people of all.
I know religion isn't for everyone, I understand that, but for me learning about religion as a child was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I personally am grateful for the role religion has played in my life. I know it's not the same for everyone, but one of my main fascination points in life is religion. I don't really talk about it a lot, but having faith has gotten me through some of the worst times of my life. I don't think removing religion from childhood, or even humanity is the way forward, there are some of us who get a lot from it. I'm sorry for all the people who have suffered due to religion, but equally there are a lot of us living fulfilled lives due to our religion and faith. There has to be some kind of healthy middle ground, surely?
Don’t teach your kids religion in THIS way. This is just messed up. But there are lots of families (mine included) that teach religion in an open, supportive, helpful, and healthy way that allows you to ask questions and seek answers for yourself. I’m very grateful to be Muslim
I know it's not shameful or wrong, but a buddy and mentor died suddenly in a car accident several years back. I think of him often but especially when I glance over my Steam friend list and see how long he's been offline. I still send him messages once in a while and pretend for a minute he'll log back in and call me up to give me an update on his kids and ask me how my wife's doing, set up another time to play guitar together and get sushi.
The author of the post noticed some recurring themes among the answers. "Most of them involved a sexual plot, or something along those lines, which is very interesting to me," she said.
This is indicative of a broader pattern, too. When Michael Slepian, Ph.D., who is the Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics and author of The Secret Life of Secrets: How Our Inner Worlds Shape Well-Being, Relationships, and Who We Are, surveyed 50,000 research participants, he discovered that the most common secrets we keep include a lie we've told (69 percent), romantic desire (61 percent), sex (58 percent), and finances (58 percent).
I was extremely socially isolated as a child and tried to make friends with the coyotes who lived in the woods by our home. I caught one in a snare and fed and kept her. I wanted a friend.
That‘s so sad. I hope now you know, that friends aren‘t caught and kept in a cage. Friendships are mutual. And i really hope, you have found real friends now ☺️.
All throughout middle school, there was someone who tucked unwrapped Hostess Devil Dogs into the toilet paper dispensers in the bathrooms, so that when you pulled some toilet paper out, the devil dog would fall out into your hand. We had to have an assembly about it. That person... Was me.
"I believe that it's often difficult to navigate between the impulse to share a secret and facing potential consequences due to societal standards," Key_Nectarine_1969 said.
"To vaguely quote somebody's confession, 'I still pick my nose and eat it.' Societally speaking, people would judge you. They'd most likely assume that you're immature and, well, gross. Even though the percentage of the population who do this is pretty high! It's difficult because society is hypocritical and judgmental."
"I do believe that online platforms help with this," she added. "They create a sort of anonymity that's basically the equivalent of a safety blanket."
Stole over 1,000 wafers from church because I really liked the communion wafers & didn’t know where else to get them. I felt really blessed & cursed for a long time.
One time I went outside at like 2AM and put the garden hose nozzle into my b******e and sprayed some water into it, then I farted it out onto the lawn. Basically gave myself an enema with a garden hose. I did this because I was bored. My neighbour saw me and told my dad (lived at home at the time).
The hard part of having a secret is having to live with it, alone in your thoughts. As Dr. Slepian wrote, when the only venue to work through it is your own mind, you are not likely to find the most productive way of thinking about it.
Like a carousel that just never stops, each time you think back on it, you may go through the same motions, have the same negative thoughts, reiterate the same regrets, and find yourself getting nowhere.
It often takes a conversation with another person to escape the loop.
I write Guardians of the Galaxy fanfic. My favorite author in the fandom likes my stuff… It’s so much fun, and I wish I could talk about it with people irl…
I feel you, I used to write a lot of Harry Potter fanfiction (especially about Tom Riddle), but I didn't want to tell my classmates, friends, even my parents. It was my secret, though I uploaded some and got positive comments.
i found a dead rat in a field when i was younger and kissed it bc i wanted to say goodbye
That‘s so pure and sweet. Also dangerous because the rat might have been infected. Luckily you were fine.
When I was younger I joined a international dating site that I figured was a scam. Put a black square as my picture and gave myself a fake name, and then looked through there users. And after about 10 minutes I had like a 100 messages. Most of them were messages telling me how handsome I was or how these women fell in love with me at first site. Now I knew it was a scam but when ever I felt down or got rejected for a while I would pop back on the site and read a few messages. Yeah it’s kinda cringy and probably pathetic but it made me feel better. I would just turn off that logical part of my brain that knew it was a scam for awhile and just pretend I was this popular and desirable guy. And it honestly got me through the day sometimes.
Why not? There is nothing wrong with dreaming abd escaping reality sometimes. As long as you realize it‘s not real.
Once I got off the subway in NYC and I was super early for an appointment. So I picked a random guy and just followed him on foot for like 30 minutes, pretending I was like a private detective or something. Always kept about a half block behind. He turned this way and that, and eventually went into a building I had lived in 9 years earlier. It was weird, and so was I.
Haha. I used to do that as a little kid. Pretending to be an 'international spy'! I think there was an Usborne 'How to be a spy' book that I had.
We got super drunk and ate a ton of spicy food in New Orleans. Back at the B&B, the food started to come out the back side. I was sitting on the toilet s******g bricks of fire. At that moment, the booze decided to hang a u-turn. The trash can was out of reach and I couldn't risk standing up from the toilet for even 5 seconds. The closest receptacle was the bathtub. I managed to turn in such a way that I could keep s******g in the toilet while projectile vomiting into the tub. Both ended up clogged, and there was no plunger. I had to call the owner to explain that I had destroyed both their toilet and their tub simultaneously.
I once attended a "silent disco" event at a park, but I didn't have any headphones. So, I just danced along with everyone to the silent beats, pretending to hear the music. It was bizarre to dance in silence, and I couldn't tell anyone because they'd think I was crazy.
Drove my car into a tree no seat belt trying to un-alive myself, failed and ended up with a badly broken right arm and left hip like total hip replacement. Everyone in my family thinks it was some accident and I've been too embarrassed to admit it wasn't.
How do you feel now? Please seek help. Life is precious, i hope you find the will to live again.
I downloaded Grindr bc I thought maybe I was gay but after a few dudes started messaging me I was like “no” and deleted it
I would do role play chats in these online browser games when I was like 9-14. They'd ALWAYS turn sexual but because I was so innocent at the time I didn't know how to continue, so I'd just... "bite" them, run away, and block them lol.
Better this way. You saved yourself. I have the feeling the counter parts were a lot older, which would have been awful.
I get really awkward and self conscious outside alone but really wanted to watch a movie in the cinemas and BF had no time to accompany me. Guess what, I went there alone, bought the tickets, watched the entire movie laughing and came back home like I did nothing. Still one of my greatest secrets.
Was in a thruple for 3 years on the DL in the deep religious south. I was a nurse at the local hospital, hubby was a principal at the jr high and our gf was head of the English dept of the school district the next town over. Our close friends knew, but not really something I can talk about in the break room ya know. Relationship ended for various reasons, but was sure fun while it lasted….
I’ve always been a slim guy so a couple years ago once I started to gain a bit of weight I looked in the mirror and saw my a*s looks pretty nice, like a girls a*s. I was so damn lonely that I bought myself some female underwear, tights to cover the hair and a skirt and did a photo shoot. Then proceeded to pleasure myself to them. The immense amount of shame I felt for enjoying it put me into a pit of despair. Have not done it since yet sometimes still miss it.
I was in the woods in the middle of the night tripping. I decided to shove snow inside me. Wanted to know what it felt like. It felt cold.
When i was 15 my friend and i were alone at her place and she was trying to slice apples with mandoline in the kitchen and ended up slicing a good 2 inch skin off her palm. I dont know what came over me as she was screaming and ran to the living room but i saw the 2 inch skin stuck to the blade and picked it up and ate it. When she came back to look for it and asked where it was i pretended i didnt know. I never told anyone.
TW: My dad was involved in dog fighting when I was a child. It’s not something I talk to anybody about. I’ll never forget our pitbull whiskey. She was a mean fighting machine. Of course, I never saw her that way because she was so loving at home. My dad brought her (and I) to a house one day to fight her son. She completely shut down. She didn’t wanna fight him. She had never lost a fight until that day. She managed to survive but not without significant injury. I was devastated. It was my first and only dog fight I had witnessed and I was scarred. When leaving, I remember asking my dad questions. “Why did whiskey have to fight?” “Do all dogs do that?” My dad was equally as devastated but probably not for the same reason. Fast forward a few months Whiskey was doing better. We were sitting in the living room when a next-door neighbor girl came over with potato chips. Whiskey end up biting her in the face bad. My dad knew what was going to happen next so he took her out back and ended her life. I 100% blame it on the dog fighting (and my father) My dad cries anytime we’ve ever talked about it. The guilt will forever be there. This isn’t something I ever talk about with anybody because my father is a changed man and he is still my father. EDIT: not weird… just traumatic.
Was drunk at an escape room with coworkers. It was an extreme one where you are handcuffed the entire time. I decided in my drunken state that it would be bad**s to dislocated my thumb and slip off the cuffs like the movies. It wasn't. We got kicked out, my coworkers were weirded out and I had to go to the hospital. I quit a few weeks later. White collar wasn't for me.
gathered apple seeds cuz I heard they had cyanide in them back when I was trying to find ways to self yeet
When I was 13, my family got like 12 bottles of buffalo ranch stuff from a food pantry. For some reason my dumbass decided to grab a bottle and start chugging it like a beer. Acting drunk and all, even though I didn’t understand what I was doing.
I would later learn that my mom was/is an alcoholic, and I was most likely mimicking her behavior due to trauma. Luckily I only drank one ranch bottle(that I remember anyway).
I think the ranch blackouts start at one bottle. (RA- Ranchers Anonymous can help!)
I had a baby by c-section and didn’t take the stool softeners—-found out the hard way that I should have.
After mt first c-section, I do not recall being told to use stool softeners. A few days after leaving the hospital, I got to experience the closest thing to natural childbirth when pushing out that poop baby
Had sex with a potential girlfriend's mom while the prospect was passed out after a house party.I was drunk, she was drunk, mom was drunk, her dad was not in the picture.
I've been to a nudist resort multiple times and a nudist beach a couple of times.
I love it.
Too bad all those places are 5+ hours from where I live.
Maybe it's because I'm from Europe, but this one doesn't weird at all
I found some tablets in a hotel room , decided to try one, I think it was acid, started hallucinating crazy s**t!!
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I set a vending machine on fire accidentally while trying to get my snack unstuck. Whoops.
I set a vending machine on fire accidentally while trying to get my snack unstuck. Whoops.
