40 Times People Outed Themselves As Awful Parents After They Humiliated Their Kids

The moderators running the 'Insane People Facebook' subreddit spoke to Bored Panda about how some people fixate on getting attention on social media far too much.

"If social media causes you to neglect important aspects of your life, like work, family, friendships, health, then you have a problem. If it's causing you emotional grief or becomes the central focus of your life then it's a problem," they warned what folks should look at to see if they need to dial back and reprioritize.

It's no secret that some individuals bend the truth quite a bit for the sake of getting likes on social media. According to the moderators, common sense is very useful when it comes to identifying online lies. "We can often tell by reviewing a user's post history or other users may point out that the poster is not being truthful," they shared some of the things that people can consider when judging whether an internet user is trustworthy.

The r/insanepeoplefacebook mods explained that they're all volunteers, so there isn't necessarily someone "on duty" 24/7. "Moderation is basically a hobby for us. We do have a large mod team distributed across multiple continents so we have pretty good coverage," they said that they have a great team and they all do their best to create a welcoming, friendly environment.

"Furthermore, users have the ability to report rule-breaking or offensive content. When enough reports are detected a bot will automatically remove the post and the mods will review the removal," they explained how things work.

The mods stressed to Bored Panda that they don't allow members of the subreddit to post someone's personal information, such as names, usernames, locations, etc. They're also very strict about content that features children and do their best to remove them when they come across them.

During an earlier interview, Bored Panda spoke about the r/insanepeoplefacebook subreddit, its history, and community with a couple of moderators. They noted that it’s great to see the sub having become so successful over the years.

According to them, a new generation of moderators took over from the old guard. The subreddit really took off during the 2016 US presidential election when Republican Donald Trump went up against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

"I've been here for four years or thereabout when we had 300k subscribers. The community has grown rapidly since the 2016 election and now has 2 million subscribers. It's become much more political over time as well," one of the moderators told Bored Panda.

 "The subreddit can get very busy just because of the number of people who use it. Our biggest challenge is generally interference from other communities but we do have tools that deal with that. That's probably our biggest challenge," they told us.

"It's a fun subreddit to moderate because our users are very engaged. Never a dull moment," they said that the job of a moderator is pretty fun.

Another moderator, u/Merari01, stressed that the sub has gotten incredibly busy since the 2016 elections. 

"The subreddit has gotten a lot more busy since then and like most everything else since 2016 can get pretty partisan at times. The team moderates fairly and equitably within the existing ruleset. One thing we do not allow is when people try to use the subreddit to post something racist or bigoted and that's something we look out for," they explained.

One thing that r/insanepeoplefacebook is known for is inspiring the creation of other similar subreddits. And that’s a cause for celebration among the mods. "It's great! It's a measure of success when a subreddit branches off into other communities."

u/Merari01 said that the moderators of the sub tend to be as busy as they want to be because there’s always work to be found.

"You can micromanage and check every comment made, but who has the time for that? Mostly we check the queue and the front page of the subreddit. We're all experienced enough to see when a post is made that will likely attract problem comments. In that case, we often choose to lock the post. We're all volunteers here who moderate as a fun hobby and no-one wants to continuously press F5 to stay on top of rulebreaking material in that case," the mod said.

"We have an experienced team that communicates with each other about moderation and policy issues and our community can be funny and empathetic. Like with all social media it has its downsides in that sometimes negative things get posted but all in all the good far outweighs the bad," the redditor shared with us.

Social media and popular culture expert Mike Sington, from Hollywood, knows that people can start bending the truth quite a bit just to get some attention online.

"Getting clicks and amassing followers on social media is how success is defined. For many, it becomes addictive, and the more attention your social media gets, it actually creates an adrenaline rush. The monster feeds itself,” he told Bored Panda previously.

"A good sign of people going overboard in seeking attention and recognition on social media is when they start exaggerating or making things up. If you find yourself doing that, stop and check yourself, and maybe realign your priorities in life," Mike gave some good advice about when to tell that there’s a problem with how you view social media.

"If a post seems particularly outrageous, or too good to be true, it may be made up. Even if someone else is posting the same thing, that doesn’t make it true, because it could simply be a re-post from the original poster," the social media expert said.

"Your instincts can usually tell you when something is made up, and old-fashioned online sleuthing can usually confirm it," Mike told Bored Panda.