30 People In This Online Group List Things That Have A Much Darker Reality Than One Might Think
They say two wrongs don’t make a right. While that is wildly contextual, as there can be cases where doing two wrong things could possibly make things right, speaking of necessary evils and the like, it doesn’t account for the degree of wrongness—as in how wrong something is.
But even worse is when people are made to think that something isn’t wrong. Or maybe they just never really cared enough to see the whole picture. Whatever the case may be, some things that look quite innocent might end up shocking some.
Redditors have been discussing just that. A thread with nearly 19,000 upvotes and over 9,000 comments has people sharing all of the wrongs in the world that are not just bad, but are actually made worse because of how not many really bat an eye about it.
Bored Panda has collected some of the best responses from the now-viral thread and compiled a curated list which you can find below. Vote and discuss the various submissions, and while you’re at it, tell us what are some other things that are much more messed up than some might think.
More Info: Reddit
This post may include affiliate links.
dev_doll said:
In America, land of the free, land of opportunity, I pay a health insurance company 1/3 my pay check. Just so I can pay an additional $4,000 before they will help me with surgery and medication costs. Gonna have to get a 2nd job just to pay for health insurance.. this should not be an issue in a 1st world country. ETA "what most people consider a 1st world country" And No this does not include state federal and local taxes, Medicaid or social security which is paid out of every check. Yes I spent 2 weeks shopping around this was the best plan I could find to fit my BASIC needs. And the gov't decided I made too much money to qualify for assistance.
greendino71 replied:
As a Canadian I can't even fathom going into life crippling debt for necessary medical issues.
My buddy had cancer, went through it for years... never paid a penny for it.
Yes we get taxed for it, but I can go get stitches at the hospital and the only thing they need in return is my ID and Healthcare number.
How ridiculously sexualized everything is.
I don't mean this in a pearl-clutching, "offensive to good family values" way. I mean that twelve-year-olds are being convinced that they need to buy clothes and makeup that make them look eighteen. I mean that high schoolers are convinced that there's something wrong with them if they don't lose their virginity by graduation. I mean that the entertainment industry compromises the health of their talent to make them look good for one shot, one show, one music video.
And so often this problem is framed as "you don't need to do/look like/act like X to be sexy!" You almost never hear people saying, "Hey, actually being sexy is not that important and it's okay if you don't want to be."
And this begins in infancy. I've seen onesies for boys that say "Ladies' man," for example. Seriously?
Drug overdoses… how many result in brain injury/death. Before working in critical care, I naively thought overdose = stop breathing = dead.
So many get a round or two of CPR, left with a severe brain injury from lack of oxygen, and left to finish out a miserable life of a tracheostomy, feeding tubes, ventilators, recurrent infections of nearly all body systems, in an understaffed nursing home… Especially if they have no family who can be found (or willing to compassionately withdraw care).
On the note, it’s extremely [messed up] the lengths we go to to keep people alive. Especially when it is clearly past their time.
As someone who took an overdose as a suicide attempt I can tell you I didn't even consider the awful possibilities of what could happen if it didn't kill me. I'm so lucky I didn't end up with liver or kidney issues. At least with death I wouldn't have suffered, but then I wouldn't have had my amazing kiddies.
mr_oranje said:
In America (at least), you can pay strangers to kidnap your kid from their bed in the middle of the night and take them to a reform school.
DawnDeather replied:
Yup. Happened to a friend of mine when he came out as gay to his dad. Woke him up at 3 AM, threw him in the back of a car and drove 9 hours straight to a reform camp in Utah. He's trying to sue his dad because of it.
hkm316 said:
Breeding dogs with horrible health issues, like French and English bulldogs who struggle to breathe their entire lives because we think they’re squished faces are cute.
IiASHLEYiI replied:
Spider Ball Pythons are another example of an animal that should not be bred. These snakes have neurological issues that leave them unstable, and give them a very pronounced head wobble.
They can potentially drown in their water dish; in severe cases, the snake can't even strike its food properly - that food usually being a thawed frozen rat offered with feeding tongs. It's very sad seeing videos of Spider Ball Pythons.
Whether you like snakes or not, you cannot deny that it is horribly cruel to continue breeding an animal with neurological issues.
pizzadazze said:
Influencers sharing their child's ENTIRE life on social media. Feel so sad for these kids.
Sea_Puddle replied:
Particularly when they make videos to shame them! Like the one when a kid got a bad report card and their mum was videoing them crying and begging them not to upload it to the internet. I can’t even imagine having a mindset like that.
StuffToday said:
Sending 18-year olds to war.
StalinsPerfectHair replied:
What if we just shortened this to 'war'.
What is it good for? Absolutely nothing...sorry, the song just jumped into my head as I read this
Pizza-PhD said:
Alzheimer’s disease. It’s brutal (so much worse than the basic forgetfulness or confusion portrayed in movies).
abilliondollars replied:
I went to visit someone in an Alzheimers-dedicated rest home once. Walked into a common area and there was a room full of people but no one was really there. Was sad and horrifying.
idiodic-genious replied:
Alzheimer's is my genuine greatest fear, having your mind being slowly destroyed and not knowing what is true and who you are is just horrifying.
ThreeNC said:
Tinnitus. I have a mild case and it really sucks. Protect your hearing!
grm12k replied:
Holy [smokes], this. "Ringing ears" might not sound bad if you don't know better, but it's hell when it never stops. I will never have another moment of true quiet, and I can't properly describe how soul crushing that can be sometimes.
Anyone who reads this, please use ear protection.
Dying of natural causes. In movies and tv shows, it's perfectly normal people with white hair closing their eyes and going to sleep after saying something meaningful.
In real life, it's losing speech... then after a few days losing the ability to swallow food... then there's a couple days of groaning and wheezing... the eyes dry up, the lips crack and dry up... the tongue dries up... you have to dab at it to keep it moist, the whole while you are wondering if the person is conscious and enduring this in pain and madness.
The last hour or so is that weird and loud breathing that is both a gasp and groan at the same time. Each breath is a desperate act by the body to keep going until it finally stops.
Having gone through it twice with my parents, I volunteer at a palliative care ward because a lot of people go through this alone.
Dying is simply deteriorating until your body loses the fight. Death is natural, but dying is messy, traumatizing and ugly.
ifeelgodinthizchilis said:
Social media. It has damaged the way we look at ourselves/our bodies and has arguably caused much more harm than good.
Az0riusMCBlox added:
And it has allowed the stupid to have an absurd amount of influence.
Lack of accessibility for disabled people. For most people it’s an afterthought, but for those who need it it can be life-changing, in a good or bad way. One of my friends has a neurologic disorder so that he has to move very slowly and very carefully or he falls and cannot pick himself up. People constantly give him [flack] because he’s in his 30s and he doesn’t look sick, and they think he is on drugs or something.
There have been many times when he had to give up on simple things like going to an appointment or meeting family and friends, just because of some random obstacle thrown his way, and no one giving him the time of day to help (or worse, abusing him). The frustration literally reduces him to tears sometimes. Every time he tells me one of those stories, and there are always new ones, my blood boils.
Be kind to people who struggle to move around. Not every disabled person is in a wheelchair.
gravisj1 said:
The amount of disrespect for the common retail worker...
Am retail worker, I'm not your slave.
fearme101 replied:
I worked in retail for several years. I waited on a woman for clothes, shoes, etc. Helped her and did what I could. She came out of the dressing room carrying everything in her hands. I briefly thought wow is she going to buy all of this? Then she dropped everything on the floor in front of me and left. Man, that made me feel like [dung].
Health and wealth preachers. Not only do they essentially steal well meaning people's money, but they are also leading them astray from truth. Health and wealth gospel is the gnosticism of the 20th and especially the 21st century.
The foster care system. I’m glad it exists for obvious reasons, but good god is it a nightmare. If you have ever looked into adopting a child you will find out very quickly that it costs almost as much as a down payment on a house. In economical terms... the supply is way too large, and the demand is equally large, but the price is set so high it closes a lot of very loving families out of the equation. Not to mention the abuse a lot those poor kids have to go through in the foster care system.
The foster care system is just one of the reasons I agree with abortion. There are just waaaaay too many kids being abused, going from home to home with no stability or aging out of the system and end up on the streets. It's heartbreaking. BTW, I am not debating with anyone about abortion, this is not what my aim is with this comment so I will not be interacting with anyone who tries.
Bitter_Product said:
Obsessive compulsive disorder.
It’s only ever referenced in a funny way, and sometimes it is funny and ridiculous. But on the flipside it really effects people and can ruin lives.
unsexme replied:
I’ll add is that a lot of OCD is invisible since it’s about thought patterns. Not everyone with OCD will be obsessed with germs or safety (though the process of checking is really common), and the things they are preoccupied with and even the compulsions they act out may just exist in their head or in solitude.
_hunnuh_ elaborated:
As someone who is diagnosed with functional OCD, you hit the nail on the head. That’s the one thing I try to explain to others who don’t quite get what it is. I have my tendencies and my subtle routines of course, but it’s nothing life-breaking. But it’s the thoughts, especially in solitude, that are the toughest. Over analyzing every action, reflecting on conversations that happened and analyzing the way things were said or how they could’ve been handled differently, and the complete inability to make it quiet in your own head are all things I just deal with. In the same way that some struggle with physical routines, equally difficult to deal with are the mental ones.
I have OCD. People with OCD won't even talk about some of the terrible, terrible thoughts that are part of the obsessive thought process, thoughts that you don't want to have and that you can't control, thoughts that make you feel like a terrible human being. Mine have included the things that I am most against/horrified by, like horrible racist thoughts and raping of children and those thoughts won't go away so you have to do the action to clear them. That's the compulsive part. And then sometimes the compulsions themselves are horrible. I've had picking compulsions that have caused me to bleed profusely and I can't stop. And I don't have it as bad as some. I've had some mild checking (is the light off, did I leave the oven on, did I just run someone over) problems , but for some people, they take over your life. The idea that OCD is about putting things straight on a table is such a joke.
Low_Delivery_3453
The history of Japan. Japan wasn't always this UWU ONIIIIIICHAN country.
jarNO_WAY
I still believe the war crimes in Nanking to be the worst event of all of human history that I know of. Reading about it literally made me puke. There's a statue of a Nazi in Nanking who stopped as many atrocities as he could. Think about that, the NAZI is the good guy telling others to tone down the violence.
[Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)]
People either seem to view it as a joke disease, or react like, “oh, yeah, my stomach gets upset sometimes too”.
They don’t realize how painful, isolating, and horrible it can be. People have straight-up committed suicide because of the impacts of IBS. Without having experienced it, it is basically impossible to imagine how much it [messes] your life up to be legitimately afraid of food. It’s like having a chronic illness AND a severe eating disorder all rolled into one.
I sometimes wonder how much different my life could be if I weren’t constantly trying to manage the trade off of “do I avoid eating so I don’t get sick and then risk passing out/being too hypoglycemic to safely drive/etc, or do I eat and basically give up on all my plans for the next 24 hours because of the likelihood that I’ll be incapacitated?”
Omg yes, I sometimes get stares if/when I use a disabled toilet coz my IBS is acting up. Sometimes I need the closest toilet coz it comes on suddenly and it can be quite embarrassing. It's painful and uncomfortable. People complain about me being a "fussy" eater but the fact of the matter is my body just generally doesn't like food and will find ways to tell me at every opportunity.
Jehovah's Witnesses
For those born in, social isolation is forced upon them. Only permitting them to create a social group within the religion. They also advise those kids to not go to college, and that they should spend all of their time going door to door. They socially cripple them, and then convince them to sabotage their own independence. That way when they turn 18, if they're not towing the Jdub line, they'll often just be kicked out ASAP. All while losing their entire social network, including just basic life advice from their own parents. In many cases, it sadly does lead many of those children to return to their dependent state.
It's a much sicker power dynamic than people expect.
no_seas_carepicha said:
Obese animals. Everyone laughs and thinks chunky animals are cute and funny but it’s really sad.
garbageman2112 replied:
I read a recent review of my dog's vet from some dude that was flipping out because the doc told him his dog was way too fat and unhealthy. The doc jumped on yelp quick and told him that she had warned him of the weight gain over the years and that her job is to stand up for the health of her patients. And now she treats my puppy.
I let my cat get too fat and now I'm in the process of treating the diabetes she got from it. She doing WAY better now, lost lots of weight and is almost off the insulin, but man do I feel like an ass for letting it get that far. I'd like to stress that I do take good care of my cat, I didn't overfeed, I just didn't pay enough attention to the fact that the amount of food that's recommended on the bag actually made her gain lots of weight. She's now a happy, healthy kitty who gets compliments from my vet on how well she looks for her age :)
gorosheeta said:
Microplastics, the lead paint of our times.
itsleslie000 replied:
I’ve recently heard about this and the scary part is I don’t even know how to avoid it. For example with drinking water, water bottles have microplastics but tap water is also not 100% safe either (my tap is pretty good compared to most city’s) so how exactly can they be avoided in a situation like this. ITS WATER WE CANT REALLY JUST NOT DRINK WATER? thanks!!
All future life on Earth will contain microplastics. There is no undoing it.
Chocolate.
Two-thirds of the world's chocolate is made by child labourers in West Africa. Approximately two million children work on these chocolate farms, mostly in the Ivory Coast. It gets worse: those children often end up working on those farms because they were trafficked across an international border, and have their passports stolen so that they cannot go home; this turns them into child slaves.
Hershey, Nestle, Mars, Cargill, and Mondelez have been named as companies that benefit from the child slavery used to make their chocolate. The next time you eat a Milky Way or a Mars bar, remember that some kid lost their childhood, their family, and their freedom to make that bar for you.
P.S. Want to eat chocolate without guilt? Look up the Fair Trade movement, or Slave Free Chocolate. Yeah, it costs a bit more, but why do you think normal chocolate is so cheap to begin with?
Fortunately, there are some really, really good brands, at least in the UK, that guarantee not to be involved in child labour or trafficking, and they provide names/places etc. of what they are sourcing and how, and how they are paying fair wages to growers/croppers. It means paying probably 10 - 20 percent more for the chocolate, but man, is it worth it. Also, while we are on this subject, please research the production of gold and diamonds and rethink buying either.
OverallSafety791 said:
Civil forfeiture. You probably already think it’s [messed] up, and it’s even more [messed] it than you think it is. Even the name is gross.
TheSnowSquid explained:
Say you sold your old car for cash. On the way to the bank you get pulled over and the police find the 5k. If they even suspect that it wasn’t gotten legally they can take it. Then not only do they not have to prove that it’s illegal you have to pay legal fees to sue to get it back.
I peg your pardon, WHAT? Police can take whatever they want at will, as long as they state a suspicion? Do I understand that correctly? Where in h3ll is that legal?
Being an adult with ADD. A lot of people see you as awkward and loud, but the truth is that your brain is operating completely differently than theirs through no fault of your own. Having been on meds for a time, it is night and day: my brain goes 150mph, but with meds it slowed down to 55. And getting medicated for it outside of your formative years is a real struggle. Most doctors will think you’re just after a high, but you’re literally sitting there going “I can’t THINK like other people do and because of it, I am suffering and need help.”
Edit: I’m out of date and did not realize that ADD is an outdated term. It’s what I’ve always called it. But technically ADD is now called “inattentive-type ADHD.” It’s ADHD minus the hyperactivity, basically.
Oh and ADHD is like the dumbest name for it. It's literally inaccurate. ADHD is super complex.
93yourcultleader93 said:
Withdrawal
Jmac0585 replied:
I have a friend who did every drug he could except one: heroin. He didn't do heroin. I asked why, he said His dad was a preacher. When he was a young teen, One night at 2 in the morning he was woken up by loud knocking at the door. It was one of the members of his dad's church, asking the preacher for help getting off heroin. My friend said he watched this guy go through withdraws for a couple weeks, and swore he'd never do heroin.
Note: even prescription drugs can cause withdrawal if you stop taking them suddenly. It's always best to check with your doctor in case you need to slowly reduce your dosage.
Jaimaster said:
Recycling.
What, you thought because you did the right thing that the waste gets recycled?
Ha!
For decades it was exported into Chinese landfills by the literal barge load. Now China have banned the import of "low quality" recyclables, and this material instead sits in storage in many western nations as we collectively wonder what the heck to do with it all.
ColorfulBosk elaborated:
I work in the plastics industry. Something many people don’t realize is that the majority of plastics are not recyclable. The logo with a number in it, which looks really close to the actual recyclable logo, is in fact just a resin identification logo, that tells you what kind of plastic it is. It looks really close to the recyclable logo design, intentionally, so you think by actually throwing that plastic in the recycling bin, it get reused. The vast majority of plastic types are not recyclable, and the few that can be recycled and reused, only a small percentage actually is, because that’s just not profitable to go thru that effort.
Recycling isn't a bad thing when it actually happens. This is about the fact that very little of what's "recyclable" actually is, and that little bit usually isn't recycled.
I don't know about other countries, but here in Australia. Almost all apartment complexes, skyscrapers and hotels and many other structures in this country built in the last 10-20 years are built using PE (polyethene) cladding. It's the cheapest type of aluminium sheets on the market and the reason why it's cheap is because ITS MADE OUT OF PETROLEUM. Highly flammable and WILL cause buildings to burst into flames and deaths are almost an inevitable when they do catch alight.
That's right. Who in their right mind ever thought it be a good idea to build buildings out of petrol ? Especially in a hot country like Australia where summer temperatures can reach as high as 51 degrees Celsius.
And many people are completely unaware. Both myself, firefighters and other construction workers and labourers have commented many times on how those buildings lasted more than 5 years without sinking in on itself or bursting into flames.
It's [messed] up
echoes_of_the_moor said:
The fact that we spend more time with our co-workers and at work than we do with our own families. This is extremely messed up as a parent of a 4 year old. I see her maybe 3 hours a day.
TheMrBigT77 replied:
I did a zoom job reference for a friend and mentioned about work life balance. The two HR people on the call were very impressed that I felt so strongly about it. Like, doesn't everyone? Seems not...
a_tiny_ant replied:
I'm still afraid that mentioning workers rights puts me on some blacklist. Ineligible for promotions or contract renewal.
Every societal dynamic is founded on competition. Everything we do is setup in this fashion. Whether man made or by our natural tendencies. Our lives can be summed up as winning in various degrees and losing.
yosemite369 said:
The fact that most of us wouldn’t know how to survive if [excrement] hit the fan and mass production of goods halted. I live in a state where water is scarce and couldn’t farm if I tried because it’s so dry.
Main-Yogurtcloset-82 replied:
I read somewhere that if the power grid went down and production halted something like 60% of American citizens would die due to us no longer having the skills to hunt and gather. And I kind of felt like that was a [messed up]thing to say. For example, I live in a very densely populated city. Hunt and gather WHAT? Sure squirrels and raccoons, even rats but a city of hundreds of thousands all hunting small animals at the same time would deplete the population fast. There is also no edible growth.
It be different if we lived out in the boonies or in a more wild state like Wyoming or Montana, but for the average American they live in a place where there really isn't anything to hunt and gather to begin with.
ShaDow_R3PlAYz said:
Corporations selling your information for profit. Some people just don't understand how [messed] up it really is. Also ISP monopolies. [Screw] em.
Scalessz replied:
I guess I usually don't understand it because I don't know how much it really affects me, I mean, I don't know what they do with that info honestly.
nerevisigoth explained:
They mostly just try to sell you [stuff] that other people like you tend to buy. They might also try to sway you to a political view using persuasion tactics that worked on other people like you.
Beyond that, nobody cares about your data unless you're pretty important.
Soulmates. The idea that there's only 1 person out of almost 8 billion that you're capable of having a lifetime relationship with is just ridiculous. That and the fact that it's often used to excuse crappy relationships at best and abusive ones at worst because it's "destiny" and a lot of religion or new age beliefs back that. The fear of missing out on that one person makes for the wrong kind of vulnerability. Sorry but all of you are amazing enough to deserve a myriad of beautiful relationship opportunities.
I think there is such thing as a soul mate, BUT I also think you can definitely have more than one. I also think they can be in different capacities too. For example.... I have had life long friends, strictly platonic that I 100% believe are soulmates. My kids, in their own way are my soul mates. Obvi, my husband is my soulmate, just a different capacity.
Load More Replies... Death - knowing your death is near, for instance when diagnosed with a deadly and incurable disease. It's much, MUCH more frightening, disorienting, cold and definitive than I believe one is capable of grasping if not directly confronted with it. I'm biased because my mom is deadly ill, but I hadn't fully understood the concept of dying until my mom got diagnosed. I've heard people say that they'd be okay with living a short life if that were to be their fates, and I just can't help but feel they have no f*****g idea what they're talking about. Death is part of life, but there is no future after death for you. Without knowing whether there's an afterlife of some sorts - that's it. Your turn on this earth is over. It scares me sometimes.
I think it depends on how you think of death. I've had 2 incidents where I thought that I was about to die. It wasn't really scary or anything. I remember thinking "Well, I guess this is it. Not gonna make it outa this one. Wonder what it's gonna be like?"
Load More Replies...
This whole list is so frigging depressing. It's life. The whole list is the lives we all live everyday and there's nothing we can do about any of it bc it's all so much which one do you pick to make a little bit better and by what margin is it any better? I need a break from SM after this list.
#23, about civil forfeiture, is not accurate. At least not in Texas. First, the officer needs a reason to search your vehicle to find the money. Then, only if you don't have any way to prove how you got the cash... like a receipt or bill of sale, or even the name & number of the person you sold the car to... will it be seized. Then, if they still seize the cash, a court hearing will be scheduled, you will be notified by mail (keep your drivers license address current) of the date, time, location. All you have to do is show up with proof of legally obtaining the cash. Surely you can get that during the gap before court. You don't have to sue the state/county/city or hire an attorney. It might be a few months between the seizure and the hearing, but you just have to show up. Yes, it sucks to not have the cash all that time, but seriously, how did they end up seizing it in the first place?
Adopting from Foster Care is not expensive, it's just time-consuming and uncertain. We are in the process now and we actually get paid by the state to care for our little boy.
I heard the avg adoption fee in the u.s. is $10,000. A little high for many highly capable and caring families
Load More Replies... Soulmates. The idea that there's only 1 person out of almost 8 billion that you're capable of having a lifetime relationship with is just ridiculous. That and the fact that it's often used to excuse crappy relationships at best and abusive ones at worst because it's "destiny" and a lot of religion or new age beliefs back that. The fear of missing out on that one person makes for the wrong kind of vulnerability. Sorry but all of you are amazing enough to deserve a myriad of beautiful relationship opportunities.
I think there is such thing as a soul mate, BUT I also think you can definitely have more than one. I also think they can be in different capacities too. For example.... I have had life long friends, strictly platonic that I 100% believe are soulmates. My kids, in their own way are my soul mates. Obvi, my husband is my soulmate, just a different capacity.
Load More Replies... Death - knowing your death is near, for instance when diagnosed with a deadly and incurable disease. It's much, MUCH more frightening, disorienting, cold and definitive than I believe one is capable of grasping if not directly confronted with it. I'm biased because my mom is deadly ill, but I hadn't fully understood the concept of dying until my mom got diagnosed. I've heard people say that they'd be okay with living a short life if that were to be their fates, and I just can't help but feel they have no f*****g idea what they're talking about. Death is part of life, but there is no future after death for you. Without knowing whether there's an afterlife of some sorts - that's it. Your turn on this earth is over. It scares me sometimes.
I think it depends on how you think of death. I've had 2 incidents where I thought that I was about to die. It wasn't really scary or anything. I remember thinking "Well, I guess this is it. Not gonna make it outa this one. Wonder what it's gonna be like?"
Load More Replies... This whole list is so frigging depressing. It's life. The whole list is the lives we all live everyday and there's nothing we can do about any of it bc it's all so much which one do you pick to make a little bit better and by what margin is it any better? I need a break from SM after this list.
#23, about civil forfeiture, is not accurate. At least not in Texas. First, the officer needs a reason to search your vehicle to find the money. Then, only if you don't have any way to prove how you got the cash... like a receipt or bill of sale, or even the name & number of the person you sold the car to... will it be seized. Then, if they still seize the cash, a court hearing will be scheduled, you will be notified by mail (keep your drivers license address current) of the date, time, location. All you have to do is show up with proof of legally obtaining the cash. Surely you can get that during the gap before court. You don't have to sue the state/county/city or hire an attorney. It might be a few months between the seizure and the hearing, but you just have to show up. Yes, it sucks to not have the cash all that time, but seriously, how did they end up seizing it in the first place?
Adopting from Foster Care is not expensive, it's just time-consuming and uncertain. We are in the process now and we actually get paid by the state to care for our little boy.
I heard the avg adoption fee in the u.s. is $10,000. A little high for many highly capable and caring families
Load More Replies...