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Paper ripping in two

People Share The Real Reason Behind Their Last Breakup

Incredibly Satisfying Revenge Stories

Incredibly Satisfying Revenge Stories

When Your Gut Feeling Is Right

When Your Gut Feeling Is Right

Survivors Of Stalkers Share Their Experiences

Survivors Of Stalkers Share Their Experiences

People Who've Walked Out Of The Bedroom Mid-Hookup Explain What Happened

People Who've Walked Out Of The Bedroom Mid-Hookup Explain What Happened

People Share The Exact Moment They Knew They Needed To End A Romantic Relationship

People Share The Exact Moment They Knew They Needed To End A Romantic Relationship
Photo by Charlie Foster on Unsplash

Some relationships are doomed from the start.

But this might not always be obvious to the couple in question.

Sometimes, a relationship could last for months, even years, before one defining moment makes it clear that there will not be a future.

These moments might be things people can laugh about a few years later, or things they make every effort to rid from their memories.

Redditor donutnolikey was curious to hear the moment other members of the Reddit community knew that their relationship was dead in the water, leading them to ask:

"What was your “OH HELL NAH” moment in a relationship that made you leave?"


People are not always who they appear to be.

"I dated a guy who’s ex left him randomly one morning, kissed her goodbye for work and came back and her sh*t was gone."

"Changed her number, and moved back home."

"He never talked to her again, I thought it was super sad and messed up for what she did."

"He use to wake up in the morning crying over her, I pathetically just comforted him."

"But one day I woke up to him emailing his ex girlfriends mother saying he was going to come down to Seattle and kill them all!"

"It wasn’t much later I found out he was served a restraining order from the family."

"Now I see why she left without saying goodbye."- Tay14073.

"We were making out at his house and he kept pressuring me to have sex."

"I was still a young, naive virgin so I refused."

"We started watching a movie instead."

"I went to the bathroom and he stole my car keys."

"Once I was back on the couch he started trying to take off my clothes."

"I was scared so I grabbed my purse to leave."

"That's when he jingles my keys."

"He said I could have them back once I slept with him. I just ran outside and called my dad."

"My dad showed up and threatened to beat his a** if my keys weren't returned."

"Got my keys and got the f*ck out."

"He continued to stalk me for the next 7 years."- UnicornQueefsGlitter.

happy in love GIF by Lifetime Giphy

Couldn't wait to get married.... to someone else.

"She stole my car, drove it from Washington to Las Vegas, and married a guy she met on Xbox Live so he could get residence."- Reverend179.

Came back an entirely different person.

"She went on vacation to have a spiritual awakening by doing drugs in the jungle and came home accusing me of being a demon."- Modifiedpoutine.

"There was a lot of crap but this was the final straw."

"I locked the door before going to bed one night when he was out late with friends."

"He had lost his house key and never bothered to mention it, which was somehow my fault."

"He woke me up by banging on the window and when I let him in began screaming and throwing things at me."

"Telling me to pack up my sh*t and leave and locked me out of our bedroom."

"I slept on the couch."

"Next morning he acted completely normal, like nothing had happened."

"I was gone that day because I no longer felt safe."- swiftsafflina.

More than they could handle

"I woke up at 3am to my partner of 11 years muttering at me when he thought I was asleep."

"His tone was so dark and disturbing I felt that if I hadn't woken up to hear him I may not have woken up at all."

"He wasn't loud so maybe it was the way he was speaking that made me wake up like I did but my brain was immediately on high alert."

"I snapped awake and alert in an instant and just knew that I should just stay still and quiet and not let him know I was awake."

"What came out of him where all sorts of wild accusatory delusions spat at me with so much venom that 6 years later I still clearly remember the feeling of dread that washed over me."

"My whole body was weighed down with it."

"Our relationship wasn't a great one by any means but it was the first time I genuinely felt afraid of what he would do."

"I was afraid to speak up but also afraid that if I stayed quiet and let him keep on his rambling that it could progress into something worse and if it came to it I could never have fought him off."

"That's when it really clicked to me how seriously he needed professional intervention and that I was not only unable to help him but also that I needed to get out from under the same roof as him as soon as possible."

"Paranoid schizophrenia is a b*tch and the available mental health care in our area is a joke."- Wonkeynut.

Delayed validation.

"She crawled through my doggie door at 1:30 am, went through my phone, and then asked me why I was talking to another woman."

"Oh, I forgot to mention that I broke up with her a month earlier."

"We were not in a relationship when she pulled that stunt."- OLPopsAdelphia.

On My Way Cat GIF Giphy

Over sharing?

"My ex would tell me about all the dreams he was having about killing me in vivid detail."- slightjudgment_.

Gaslighting, much?

"My ex would lie about sh*t and make me question my own reality."

"F*ck you bruh."- Suwaveh.

sally kohn gaslight GIF by The Opposite of Hate Giphy

Lack of sympathy.

"Ex wife started an argument with me one morning when I was headed to the funeral of a childhood friend."

"I asked if she could not do this right now."

"Her response was “ohhhh, poor you.”

"That was the beginning of the end."- Slydermv.

To assume makes an a** out of you and me...

"Was with my ex for six years."

"We had a shared apartment and when I came home from work one evening he was standing in front of the door with packed suitcases."

"I asked what was going on and he said he could no longer be in a relationship with me because he wanted children at some point and he could not imagine a life without."

"I replied completely perplexed that I also want to have children someday and that he knew that."

"Surprise: he assumed in all seriousness that I could not breastfeed children with my A cup breasts and that our child would starve miserably because too little milk fits into my tatas."

"He didn't break up with me that night, I did."- Dangerous_Slice6032

At some point, you just have to cut the chord.

"My boyfriend at the time has given me forewarning that his mother will move in with us after marriage."

"He’s a mummy’s boy."

"I acknowledge this is not a dealbreaker for other people but I accepted this is mine and responsibly walked away."- Tiarakitty

Listen Mothers Day GIF by Cartoon Hangover Giphy

A sad and dangerous secret.

"I lived in a pub at the time with my then wife."

"I ran it while she had another job."

"She'd come home from a bad day and scream at me in front of the customers."

"She used to go to house parties and stay out all night."

"I later found out shed stolen stock and was on coke."

"Then the final straw was when she punched me in the face 'in her sleep' giving me a black eye."

"The next night i wake up to her making weird angry sounds."

"Thinking she was having a nightmare i tried to comfort her."

"All I hear in the silence and darkness was 'you make my skin crawl'."

"'Touch me again and I'll give you another black eye'."

"She left the next day before I woke up, having cleared out the safe of all the cash."

"I couldn't pay the staff, or the brewery fees."

"The business folded a month or so afterwards and I ended up tending bar elsewhere."

"I never cheated, didn't lie to her, never ever raised a fist to her let alone hurt her."

"I was sure i had done something to cause it.. was I a bad husband?"

"Turned out she had raging bi polar disorder and some other issues she had kept a secret from me our entire relationship and was off her meds for years.'

"Genuine fear."- Haunted_Entity

Sometimes it takes another pair of eyes to see clearly

"Basically his cousin told me my ex used to physically intimidate his ex gf of 5 years."

"This was after he lied about his ex ever existing, and lied about being with her for 5 years, and lied about how they were not friends."

"What broke the camels back was when one morning while I was working from home he asked to go get coffee together."

"I drove us, because he never wanted to drive."

"As we were driving he kept asking me leading questions if I was happy and I told him: 'I am having a stressful morning, could we get back to this important conversation later in the day, when I can be emotionally prepared?'”.

"He began yelling, screaming and punching the center console of my car."

"He then opened the car door to attempt to jump out of the moving vehicle."

"I stopped the car and caught my breath."

"I drove us back home and began packing my things."

"I stayed the night at his cousins house and he revealed to me that this wasn’t the first time."

"I’ve never cried harder in my life because so much made sense."

"My ex practically spoke non stop about his ex and I was 19, he was 24."

"U didn’t have a concept of boundaries, manipulation, healthy relationships, etc."

"Once his cousin revealed that: everything clicked."

"Why he felt guilty about his ex, why he was paranoid about people hurting him, why he was unable to have stable moods."

"I left as quickly as I could and never looked back."- OhmeOhmy7202

How insensitive can you get?

"My (now ex) wife, I'll call her Beth, had an ex boyfriend reach out to her on social media."

"I found out later turned into phone calls."

"All of which she tried hiding from me.:

"Which is bad enough."

"My mom had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer (and I was the lucky one who got to tell her!) and decided she wanted to die in her home state."

"Couple weeks later, Beth tells me she thinks i should fly up to visit my mom for a long weekend, and told me she booked a ticket for me."

"The night before the flight, she says we need to talk."

"She tells me she has been talking to her ex, and she's going to fly out to visit him 'to find out if she has feelings for him', she'd be staying at his house while she's there, and she 'can't say it won't be in the same bed'."

"Yes, while I was still trying to process my emotions and feelings about my mom dying, and while I would be visiting my mom, my ex was going to go visit her ex boyfriend, and stay at his house during the visit."- Wick_E_Scratch

There are those who look for a sign, as to whether or not they should stay in their relationship.

And when their sign is as bizarre and unsettling as several of the above stories, it might make them all the more grateful to have gotten out when they did.

From Your Site Articles
reddit

The Worst Cases Of Mass Stupidity People Have Ever Witnessed

"Reddit user AdmirableFlow asked: 'What's the most severe case of mass stupidity you've ever witnessed?'"

A group of people running through the trees in the desert
Photo by Jed Villejo

Humans seem to get swept up in group mentality and ignorance far too often.

Just because 10 of your neighbors jump off of a bridge, should you?

Celebrity fads, diet fads, Black Friday sales...

The masses love to blindly join in on the crazy.

Or the fun. it's a coin toss.

Redditor AdmirableFlow wanted to hear about group mentality that wasn't too bright, so they asked:

"What's the most severe case of mass stupidity you've ever witnessed?"

There is no greater group of followers than people who run every time Apple puts out a new product.

Same phone, just a thousand dollars more.

The Dodge

happy tom cruise GIF by South Park Giphy

"Scientology."

Supersaiajinblue

"The rich ones at the top are just in for the tax dodge. A lot of the ones below them are in it thinking they can shmooze with the rich ones at the top and become one of them some days. So yeah dumb but with a layer of greed involved."

Doright36

Bad Socials

"Before social media, I just assumed people were mostly educated. Boy was I f**king wrong."

"Not only was I wrong, but now I myself feel stupid for believing that for so long."

Vitzdam-

"Up until my early 20s I felt like I was smarter than 90% of the people around me, being generous. It seemed like so many people were just complete morons, and I had this massive smug sense of superiority feeling that I was just more intelligent (and thus better) than most people."

"As I aged, I began to realize how far I'd shoved my head up my own a** and I understood that while I might have been naturally gifted in some ways, there were others in which I was the 'idiot' and other people were capable and intelligent. I felt like a real a** for feeling so much better than others, and I felt humbled."

"And then everything since about mid-2015 happened and I've really started to wonder if maybe I was just right for the wrong reasons before..."

TypicalAd4988

Without Fail

"Maybe not the most severe, but one that everyone here has personally seen at least once in their lives. When at an airport and the gate agent says 'We're about to commence boarding. Please remain in your seats until your group has been called.' And then half the people were waiting standing up and crowding the gate in a scene of utter chaos. Every time, without fail."

-Dixieflatline

Rushed

"The great toilet paper rush at the start of COVID. There was nothing about COVID that threatened the global toilet paper supply, and yet people just started panic-buying it and artificially creating a huge shortage."

"(We would eventually realize that there was a small uptick in toilet paper sold for private use, as many people were going to the bathroom at home more than at work, but no one realized that at the time and it had nothing to do with the panic - people just started buying more because people were buying more)."

Notmiefault

Seriously?!

Skin Care Girl GIF by Lillee Jean Giphy

"Thousands of people during the pandemic thinking the vaccination made their skin magnetic. What in the actual hell."

MonParapluie

Everybody thought they were about to become a member of the X-Men with the Covid vaccines.

Still waiting on that proof.

Celebrity

"People waiting in Dealey Plaza for JFK Jr. to show up."

ggrandmaleo

"That's the first thing that popped into my mind. and they stayed there for days, didn't they? someone was interviewing people in the crowd and lots of people seemed to think other celebrities were also coming back/out of hiding. Someone was looking forward to seeing Robin Williams."

chrisgee

"You could simply declare the entire MAGA and QAnon movements to be mass stupidity and you'd not be wrong. Propaganda is a helluva drug and under-education is real. Fear and prejudice go hand-in-hand with under-education."

NbleSavage

Schemes

"Anyone who keeps getting involved in Ponzi or MLM schemes."

"For decades the public has been warned on what to watch out for to avoid these schemes, you would assume that the vast majority of people would have learned by now that these schemes are fraudulent and just can't work out. Yet somehow here we are with thousands of these companies still up and running and thriving and even more people being taken advantage of by them."

TheSameButBetter

Open Up

"My local park's playground has a push gate."

"Every time I watch grown adults stare at it for like 20 seconds then go 'I think it's locked is there another one?'"

"To which I walk up and... Push the gate open."

"What annoys me about this is they want to catch an attitude like I'm an a-hole for it."

3ao7ssv8

Challenges

ice bucket challenge news GIF Giphy

"Those public challenges that CLEARLY risk health, i.e., 'the tide pod challenge.' Next time, just let things sort themselves out on their own. We can use fewer idiots in the world."

"The ice bucket challenge was at least kind of cute and DID give ALS a lot of media attention/awareness and raised a lot of money."

LadyVaresa

I liked doing my ice bucket challenge.

Do you have anything to add? Let us know in the comment below.

mass stupidity

People Share The Best Little-Known Movie Facts They Know

movie set
Chris Murray on Unsplash

Easter eggs, bloopers, trivia, behind the scenes anecdotes... cinephiles live collecting them and sharing their knowledge with others.

Some trivia is well known—like Eric Stoltz was replaced by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. Other tidbits are more obscure, like Arnold Schwarzenegger was first considered for the Michael Biehn role of Kyle Reese in The Terminator.

Some stories are conspiracy theories or urban legends—like the body in the forest on The Wizard of Oz set.

But what about just film facts? The obscure ones?

Keep reading... Show less

The Weirdest Things People Have Witnessed In A Rich Person's Home

An illuminated mansion at night
Photo by Daniel Barnes on Unsplash

It's no secret that as a person starts to make more money, they may forget how difficult they had it when there was less money coming into their bank account.

Not only are rich people often incredibly out-of-touch with the realities of most people's lives, but what they choose to prioritize and bring into their home is often pretty bizarre, too.

Already side-eyeing, Redditor Jerswar asked:

"What's the weirdest thing you've witnessed in the home of a rich person?"

Love Can't Be Bought

"Rich grandparents had a brand new house built, had a $100,000 splash pad built for their only grandchild who has never visited them at their new house."

- wyoflyboy68

"This reminds me of when my sister built her house. She had a barrier-free ground-floor apartment built in it, so my grandmother could visit. She never did."

- P44

A Separate Hoarder's House

"I had a rich neighbor growing up who'd always invite us over for parties and always insisted on giving us gifts and leftovers. They did this with every guest."

"They were also hoarders but built a separate house to keep their crap in. It was filled with whatever they bought but never used and even never got out of the packaging it was delivered in."

"They told my mom to take a box of what she wanted, and for s**ts and giggles, she did. It was a knife collection and sharpener set."

- MUSTARDUNAVAILABLE

Unusual Art

"I was at John Waters’ house for his birthday and he has a room set up as a lifelike recreation of a meth lab (it wasn’t a real meth lab, it’s an art piece)."

"He told me that when Bill Clinton visited him the secret service agents were extremely concerned about the room."

- writeleahwrite

Weird Pet Relationships

"One client had a whole separate house on their property just for their dogs. They'd referred to it as the 'dog house,' and I was expecting like maybe a little building in the yard where they kept their toys or something, but this was a fully furnished home with king-sized beds and a huge playroom on the main floor."

"They had a full training and feeding staff to care for the dogs and everything. They lived in their own house and would come over to visit. Seemed like a weird dynamic to have with your pet..."

"One client didn't have a litterbox for the cats, their cats I guess didn't like using the boxes in the basement and they didn't want to put boxes upstairs so they put down pond liner and kitty litter across an entire room in the basement and had their housekeeper run a rake through it daily."

- daabilge

Special Needs Kitty Mystery Mansion

"As a kid back in the Mesozoic Era (I'm old), my best friend and I used to play in a converted racquetball court and lounge under the old West Coast mansion her family had lived in since its construction."

"The stairs to it were hidden behind a closet off of the abandoned servants' quarters. Halfway down the stairs was a wine cellar. A decoy as the actual wine cellar for the home was under the kitchen….. Another staircase behind a rack of dusty bottles led two stories down to our giant play area beneath this."

"At the beginning of WWII, before Pearl Harbor, my friend’s paranoid WWI vet grandfather had dug out the space over fear of Japanese (or German) invasion. Her dad made the giant room regulation designed for racquetball years later. Maybe originally squash. Not sure, but the lounge area was also glassed off above it so one could look down into the court like a gallery."

"It was really neat. Also upstairs in the living room was a wall straight out of an old mystery novel. If you pushed a spot just right, the wall opened to a hidden room. Super tiny and had a button to ring certain other rooms in the house as the home had these already to call for staff. My friend's mom said it was so if someone quickly had to hide, they could alert the household of danger."

"We used to pretend to be on Nancy Drew cases all the time... so fun."

"The family was wealthy, but despite the amazing home, they lived a completely pretentious free life. Normal cars, camping vacations, frugal living as sport."

"But they were philanthropists too, especially supporting organizations like the humane society. One thing about this family’s home was all the cats. I loved kitties but had a mother who preferred her animals well-seasoned. The family had the space so they always had, and were looking to adopt out but often didn’t, at least 20 rescue cats, many with special needs."

"I’m old, I didn’t know how to write that. Special needs kitty mystery mansion really is actually an appropriate description..."

- waltersmama

"Special needs kitty mystery mansion with hidden panic rooms and decoy wine cellars is like, the best possible fever dream."

- ConneisseurOfDanger

A Unique Viewing Experience

"In Naples, FL., I was at a house with a sensory deprivation room. Flat black walls with acoustic dampening baffles, in the middle was a coffin-like bathtub. It had speakers and a flat-screen display in the lid."

"I heard that the room cost over $100K to build."

- frank_sarno

A Christmas Village

"They had part of the house permanently decorated for Christmas and it included a fully decorated Christmas tree that was suspended upside down from the ceiling. Which was pretty awesome."

- lithecello

New Meaning to "Don't Take Your Work Home"

"My wife and I used to babysit for this wealthy couple when they went on ski trips etc."

"Except for the children's schoolbooks, there wasn't a book, magazine, or newspaper in the house."

"The man was a publisher."

- Texbadger349

The End of Laundry

"I knew someone who didn't like to do laundry so she just bought new clothes for each of her 4 kids every week. They were always high-quality or designer clothes. At the time, all her kids were 10 to 16 years old."

"What would happen if they liked an item a lot and couldn't find it again? Why not just teach the kids to do their own laundry? Why not hire a housekeeper who can do it?"

"There are so many options, other than spending thousands every month just to avoid laundry. Plus, they rarely donated it. Just bagged it up and threw it out. I never could wrap my head around it."

- coffee-jnky

Can We Be the Trivia Guy?

"I know someone who's worked for a very rich person, probably worth billions. He had more than 100 staff on site, including chefs for the staff...all while divorced and living alone. He had a 'trivia' staff member... someone hired to tell him interesting facts and stories daily. That was his only job."

"Someone else was hired to maintain his shoes. Polish, shine, the works."

"If I didn't hear it firsthand, I wouldn't have believed it."

- mambo-nr4

A Mud Room, Indeed!

​"I used to work as an exterminator, mostly pest control. This had me walking through houses from the poor to the rich."

"One day, I pulled up to a four-story mansion with more rooms than I could count."

"I spoke with the lady at the door and got started. As I sprayed, I noticed there wasn’t much furniture in the house. As I went, I made a game of counting the furniture I could find. Over 50 rooms and the whole building had 13 pieces of furniture."

"Pretty odd, but then I went into the very last room, a mud room right by the door I came into."

"I stopped as I walked in, completely shocked. A huge, full-sized (alive) adult pig stretched from one end of the room to the other, resting on the tile floor. I’m talking five or six feet stretched out across the room. Flies buzzed around its head as it stared at me."

"Suddenly, the lady (who I hadn’t seen since she let me in) said, 'Oh, don’t go in there. She doesn’t like men,' and then she walked me out, paid me, and went back inside."

- Moist-Exchange2890

His Very Own Hot Wheels Garage

"Buddy of mine has a car elevator."

"Instead of just building a bigger garage, he stores his cars stacked onto each other, like some kind of Hot Wheels accessory. It's very surreal."

- SmackEh

Make Yourself at Home

​"My friend's dad growing up was one of the top lawyers in our state. Their house was so d**n big, I got confused (lost as h**l) on all the staircases they had everywhere. They would split in a few places and lead to banisters that had different connections to different parts of the house."

"They had a room just for dishes. Her mom had a huge room for sewing and another for different crafts. They both had an office. Many guest rooms. A small kitchen in one part with a sink, coffee pot, and fridge. Their main bathroom for guests had heated floors and rainfall showers and everything. I LOVED HER SHOWER."

"Her room had a balcony and a table outside."

"They had a pool and hot tub. Horses and a barn and lots of cute barn cats."

"I was very poor and had a messed up situation in my childhood. I stayed there a lot and they would even take me for weeks in the summer because my mother was not there. They are really great people."

" They didn't give handouts or anything, I would literally scoop up horse shit and clean stalls and help with everything for those horses when I stayed. I wanted to help."

"They had a maid, but we still cleaned up after ourselves. Their kitchen was gigantic, and I always loved the fancy pasta water arm over the stove. I had so much fun cooking with her mom and us having the big dinners (Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas) with them."

"They were so magnificent and beyond anything I would have ever experienced without them. I got my first pair of cowboy boots from them for Christmas. Her dad bought me a plane ticket one time out of the blue because I wanted to visit my grandmother. Never forget them."

- xNinjaNoPants

So Much Wasted Food

"A very rich person I know does not eat leftover food. They will cook a feast and after, everything goes straight in the garbage no matter how much is left over."

- duckduckroosebolton

"My husband won’t eat leftovers because he thinks it will give him diarrhea. His family is preoccupied with food poisoning but doesn’t know any of the actual food safety rules."

"Oh well, more for me."

- jendet010

"My brother-in-law’s family does this but they are middle class. It’s such a waste!"

- outlawjoseymeow

An Art Enthusiast

"Not weird but a Van Gogh, just chillin' in the hallway. I took a selfie with the flash on, whoops."

- Raccoon_Expert_69

"When I did executive level IT support years back, I found a Monet dangling haphazardly on an office chair in the CEO's extra office (which was unused for storage, and had an extra desktop computer I would sometimes use for quick tasks when on that floor)."

"Another time, I was admiring a Joan Miro coffee table book in his main office, and when his assistant noticed, he showed me into a side room I didn’t realize was there, which had a mini gallery of original Miro drawings."

- spymusicspy

It's amazing what people will spend money on when they have the money to spare. It would be so interesting to see how much more a person would explore a hobby if they had the money to spend.

rich people stuff

People Explain What Happened To The Popular Kids In School

A cheerleader
Glib Albovsky/Unsplash

Being in high school is such a pivotal moment in a young adolescent's life.

They discover who they are and where they want to be. They start making tough decisions about their future and forge bonds with individuals who may continue to influence them as they navigate the world post-graduation.

But as it often happens, we all drift apart due to going to different colleges or embarking on other adventures.

It's not until several years pass that we wax nostalgic about our youth and wonder about the people with whom we once roamed the halls, carrying our textbooks and fixated on inconsequential matters that seemed like a big deal then.

Curious to hear from strangers online, Redditor Just_Suspect5904 asked:

"What happened to the most popular kids in your school?"

The following Redditors opened up about acquaintances that left an indelible mark on their memory.

The Parents Were Wrong About Him

"One of my best friends was from the wrong side of the tracks, poor, had a mullet and wore Metallica shirts way before they broke into mainstream."

"He was extremely popular because he was crazy smart, very talented and driven. Everyone wanted to be his friend and he was very open about being nice to everyone."

"Many many parents were like 'don’t hang out with that John Smith boy, he’s on drugs and a bad influence' (He absolutely was not, it was the Satanic scare of the late 80s and 90s and he liked Metal Music)"

"He worked his as off all his life and is now pretty damn wealthy with a house, wife and kids in California."

"When we chat it up on the phone he is the exact same person I grew up with. Crazy funny and extremely kind."

– Vitaminpartydrums

No Chance For Goodbyes

"Most popular kid in our school was a guy named Josh. Insanely outgoing and friendly, he could befriend anyone he talked to within five seconds, and always did. Active athlete, was on the football team. Straight A student. Very devout church-goer. I didn't meet him until later in high school, where he was part of a Dungeons and Dragons game I joined. Always put on a great time role playing. While we didn't get close, we had a couple extraordinarily memorable times during our senior year of high school, very fun and meaningful times that stood out strongly to me then during a shitty part of my life and are still remembered fondly by me twenty years later. Josh was going places, and he'd make a difference somewhere."

"We lost touch after high school. Three years later he fell asleep behind the wheel of his truck and hit a tree. Died on impact. Found out through another friend who'd kept up with him, and we went to his funeral. I'd never seen a church so packed full of people for something like this, hundreds and hundreds of people. From our school, from his church, from all over life, the church was legitimately full."

"To this day, one of my few true lifelong regrets is letting my anxiety get the better of me when Josh's pastor asked people to come up to the mic and say something about Josh. I should've told everyone of our ludicrous all-nighter digging his truck out of the mud in a forest he'd gone mudding in after an evening school performance where we were all still in khakis and polos, finishing at three AM and somehow ending our bedraggled a**es at IHOP after getting it out."

"I should've told everyone how we found out our DnD GM was moving away on short notice, and we high-tailed it to his place after school and literally ran out of gas in that f**king truck getting there, then flooded the engine refilling it from a Jerry can, stuck with our GM who didn't want anyone coming to say goodbye and ending up late in the evening laying in that truck bed talking about science and philosophy and religion, three teenage dudes waiting for that goddamn f'king truck to get to a drivable condition so we could say goodbye to our friend properly before he disappeared from our lives."

"I'm nearing forty, and I still regret not saying how great of a guy he was to a short, scrawny, long-haired metalhead weirdo like I was in high school. Because he was. He was going to make a difference. I suppose, given all the people at his funeral, he still did."

– token_bastard

Some failed to make much of an impression enough to stand out.

However, a discourse on cliques was started in the thread.

Unpopular Majority

"My HS graduating class was 952 people, I do not even know who the most popular people were, lol."

– CorruptDictator

"My class was about that size and I remember always thinking that many of the high school stereotypes you would see on TV and film didn't seem to apply at a school that huge. People who might have been the school bully in a smaller school are properly segregated, and people who might have been an outcast in a smaller school could always find a clique of similarly minded weirdos. Popularity was never a school-wide thing because the orchestra people, the jocks, and goths, the potheads, etc. all had their own separate leaders. Also as a result we would often have a lot of cross-clique friendships and mixed parties where most people tended to be generally cool with each other."

– soretti

The Thing About Bullies

"Apparently the cliques happen in medium size schools because my exceptional small school only ever had one kid that could represent each kind of classic clique. I think the school bully trope is strange because from my experience people are a d*ck to different people in different ways that might be considered bullying. Like orchestra kids might have been a group but perhaps there was a bully within that group that picked on other orchestra kids"

– Mediocre_Scott

New York City Does High School Different

"Same. it was 850 kids in my class. NYC. so no 'campus' just a single secure building (one of my schools was actually inside a sky scraper), kids didnt leave to get lunch (without cutting class), nobody drove and there was no parking lot to hang out in, there was no Football team, and just none of the tropes you see in the media. A lot of us worked after school. 80-something languages were spoken. everyone was from somewhere else, so there was no 'new kid in town' tropes. we didn't even have lockers!

"We also don't all go to our 'local'; schools, so the kids you went to school with in Elementary school are a different set of kids than from your Jr High, and are a different set of kids from your High School. And on top of that, you also had your own set of friends from your 'hood/block, so its not like you ALWAYS were with the same kids all the time all through childhood."

"Like on TV, the kids you are in class with, are also from your neighborhood and you hung out with them outside of school, and they were also the same kids you played on sports teams with. in my world, those were always different sets of kids."

"Extremely different from all the Suburban High School TV and Movie sh*t."

– super-antinatalist

People closely examined more about the differences between popular/unpopular demographics.

Privilege

"Small town."

"There are always exceptions, but most kids who were 'popular' were friendly, outgoing, well dressed, and emotionally stable. That happened because they came from families with more money and better educated parents."

"Those parents often provided better mentoring, ensured they went to college, and as a result the kids ended up professionals who did reasonably well for themselves."

– BeKindAndWorkHard

Assumptions

"This is a very unpopular and underreported reality, as the unpopular kids desperately want to believe the popular guys end up working at the local gas station or Walmart once their days as sports stars or heartthrobs are gone. While the nerds go on to become rich and successful exactly because of reasons that made them unpopular in school."

"Unfortunately for them, popularity is often based on social status and people skills. Two key assets in life at any age."

– Kalle_79

Study Shows

"I remember reading a study that says high school bullies were more likely to be successful than the average student from their class. Once again because outgoing people who are willing to have that aggressive personality are likely to be able to succeed more than a passive timid person. If that bully grows out of being a bully they're still going to have that outgoing aggressive personality."

– Tritium10

Misconception

"They're doing fine. Contrary to what Reddit would have you believe, most of the popular kids in schools weren't bullies in my experience. They were kids who for the most part were nice, had a stable home life, and maybe happened to be fairly athletic."

– GoldenFrog14

I managed to keep in touch with a handful of people from high school; therefore, I didn't think about anyone else from my class year.

That's why I never considered going to my high school reunion.

It's because I realized there was never a time when I wondered about how the popular students at my school were doing these days.

Have you?

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