Ask Lemmy

Yeah, I really didn't like my buddy's girlfriend. I could see right through her, and she was changing by buddy for the worse. She was convincing him that his image was shit, and it really damaged his confidence. He'd change his outward appearance for her, dropped his entire lifestyle, but she had abandonment issues so wasn't ever happy with any partner.

Turns out she was a narcissist, like bonafide. What went down next:

1. She graduates college with a STEM degree, while having freeloaded in his house her entire senior year (his mortgage)

2. She breaks up and moves out of nowhere, this several months after she insisted on all the other roommates get kicked out to "take it to the next level"

3. He goes suicidal, makes two attempts, but finds another lost soul to have a fling with, which starts to bring him out of the depression

4. Ex-girlfriend finds out about new fling, drops by house at 1am after having left the club (driving drunk, I'll add)

5. Makes a huge scene out front of his house, I'm there for my "shift" on suicide watch, she ends up kicking me in my fucking kidney while I was squatting and smoking a cig

6. He ends up depressed again, 3rd suicide attempt and he doesn't survive

7. I'm a pall bearer at 25 for my best friend since 8th grade

Fuck that bitch.

My great aunt's husband. I had a bad feeling about him the moment I met him when I was a kid. Turns out he was a paedophile that got two of his granddaughters pregnant and was sent to prison. He died a few years ago and the family held a wake for him and I had to explain why I wanted nothing to do with him. WTF.

Yes. Customer. Was clearly smooth talking con man others aspire to be. No one else believed me. Or questioned how he was going to set up the kind of construction operation he claimed to run. Literally weeks after moving to the area.

Boss took the bait. Even introduced the guy to other friends and customers. Guy promised them all a bunch of work but needed down payments for materials. Vanished about a month after the checks cleared.

Met a guy at a house party that everyone seemed to like. Had some interesting stories, but he mostly came off as a self obsessed dickhead.

He later became pretty noteworthy in the industry he worked in.

10 years on from when I met him, turns out he’s at best a serial sexual assaulter, and a serial rapist at worst.

Russell Brand and the recent revelations that he's abusive and probably a rapist.

He gave me danger vibes from the very beginning, all the way back to 2008ish. I was actually surprised when it broke news this year; I had assumed he'd been caught way earlier and was already through the "apologizes" / stays off social media for 6 months / comes back "enlightened" / media forgets about his crimes cycle.

There was this guy I met at the dog park who talked nicely to everybody, especially to the ladies. He would be the kind to always greet you, offered to share his snacks. He seemed to always be at the center of the conversation.

He tended to orbit around my now gf and for a long time he forcefully sticked with us, all good there at the beginning. But as soon as I started going out with her his behavior changed. Instead of being a direct ass to me he tried to monopolize my girlfriend's attention, being overly attentive, stomping over me when I was talking, always trying to dominate the conversation.

Now, his true color started to show when I confronted him when he was trying to impose his lifestyle on others.

He attempted to get a mutual friend to drink with him, which is by no means bad, the problem was than this mutual friend was a recorying alcoholic.

He tried to coherse her by using social pressure, saying that you should enjoy (which is true, but he doesn't get a say in how anyone else "enjoy" THEIR LIVES), but I standed against it. The few times we drank together I was able to keep her from overdrinking, sooooo he started to invite her without acquaitances.

Long story short:

1. He got our mutual friund hooked again to the point of losing her job.
2. I untintentionally got the best of him, such as "women are less value than the historical sites they destroy in feminist rallies" and regarding his own girlfriend who doesn't want to have kids "she is to young to know that". He once asked this out of nowhere "how old do you think they are?", whes referring to two teenagers who were clearly 15 at best.
3. It turns out that majority of the dog owners dislike this guy. But, no one ever said anything because we all thought he was well liked in the cammunity.

My mom did, it was Jared Fogle while he was visiting the elementary school she works at a few years before the arrest, we all know what happened.

Of course. I’ll just speak generally instead of specific stories.

Judging people based on their charisma alone is a terrible approach. Many likable people are great, but others just say what they know other people want to hear. People pleasers that will always choose the popular option, not the “right” one… And some people can be very talented at using manipulative tactics to gain support even though they spread a lot of pain. The classic popular bully.

The reverse can also be true. Some extremely uncharismatic/unpopular people are amazing at heart. And can be trusted to do what’s right even if it’s unpopular.

That’s why it’s best to not make knee-jerk or immediate judgements. Listen to your gut, pay attention to details, and try not to let the opinion of others influence your opinions or decisions too much.

The new boyfriend of a friend of mine.

She thought, he's super nice, then told me he was jealous of me, because I'm a man befriended with a woman. When we met, he seemed constantly worried about not seeming beta, weak or somehow "unmanly". She thought he's just a bit nervous.

Yeah, turned out he was absolutely ready to rape her, stalked her after she broke up and sent her "presents" over two years. Really really pathetic little guy.

My sister's ex. Though a lot of her friends had the feeling, he sure as hell charmed her and my parents. Dude was a manipulative cokehead who stole thousands from her. She's fine now but fuck that guy.

About 10 years ago we lived near this family that were friends with our family. The couple was a little older than my wife and I but not by much. The wife and my wife liked to hang out, but whenever I went over to their house, it seemed like the husband was very flirtatious with my wife. No huge red flags or anything, just joking a lot and laughing a lot and seeming interested. I didn't really say anything to my wife, but I always had a bad feeling about the dude. I think she thought he was just being friendly. We moved away from there for many years but ended up moving back about 3 years ago. We didn't really live in exactly the same area, so my wife and the other wife chatted from time to time, but didn't really hang out. She did call my wife though when her husband started cheating on her with someone from work. He apparently was very open about flirting with other women and when she found out he wouldn't stop seeing/sleeping with the girl from work. She told my wife that he told her he always regretted that they had as many kids as they did (4) and that it was her fault. So, turns out all my bad feelings about this dude ended up being true. The really crazy part is that the dudes wife still won't leave him, even though he is basically openly cheating at this point. It's sad. He's such a loser.

My mother in laws friend was a roided out prison guard who had zero empathy. He was very kind to people but just could not understand when anyone had a hard time with anything. I fixed his computer and he refused to pay me because it looked easy so he figured I wasn't really working.

When his wife asked for a divorce he strangled her so hard it broke her neck. He then held her under water in the bath tub for almost an hour just to be sure. Then he tried to end himself by jumping off the second story of their house but survived with a back injury.

MIL actually showed up to court as a character witness. He spends most if his time these days in "protective custody" because a lot of the other inmates know him from when he was a guard. We still get letters from him and he is still a dickhead.

Yea, one was arrested for sodomizing his adopted child. The other one was arrested for showing himself to a minor

Quite the contrary. I had a good feeling about the principal of my sons new school, and he was part of the reason why we went for the school.

He didn't last another year there. First he was not seen for months, and now we know that he was convicted for possession of child porn.

Until then I generally had a feeling that I could assess people quite well. Now, that feeling is shattered.

no my gut feelings are always wrong, some free advice for you scammers out there

Yupp and it still messes with my head. A friend's friend was hanging out with our group for the first time and he was super chill but the way he spoke just seemed really off and I couldn't explain it. As we ended the night his friend was gonna take off by himself as my buddy wanted to chill for the night. The next morning the guys sister calls my buddy and tells him that her brother hung himself. I know logically i couldn't have known but my gut told me he shouldn't have been leaving without my buddy. No drugs or alcohol were involved that night we were all 100% sober....

My ex. I had weird feeling from the start, because they wanted to spent time with me 24/7. my ex was so superkind, helpful and always giving me compliments and i quess i got hooked on that cause they felt different being overly nice. I will not share whole the story, but when i was with them, i started to notice patterns. So shortly my ex sexually abused/raped when i was sleeping, this happened atleast 3 times. And their excuse was sorry, thought you were sleeping. They were pressing to do other stuff too, i quess you can probably quess, but if i declined i got silent treatments and they were moody and annoyed. When my ex was pressuring to do videos on Pornhub(i declined ofc) i started realise that this is so fuckin sick, i started to have insomnia, depression, getting angry and started to have social anxety. Relationship ended when i discovered that they were cheating +6months with their friend without protection ofc, and all their excuses were blaming me for being moody, angry and suicidal, yeah after all that i think not many women will be sane. They werent sorry or take accountability. I wasted 10 years because i was too stupid to realise that that wasnt love. I still feel like a idiot. Therapy has been huge help for me and i know that it will take years to recover. I shouldve listened that gut feeling because i ended be in relationship with a sosiopath or something similar.

Bill Cosby comes to mind. Creepy and not at all funny. Never understood the appeal.

This just happened last week: we have a new cooperation partner since this summer. One of the employees who is in regular contact with us is always super nice and friendly to everyone. Everybody likes her. It was a bit too much for me and I told my boss that I had a bad feeling about her.

Last week, based on a rumor, she tried to turn a long-time colleague against us. I'll spare you the details. The important thing was: I was right, she is a snake.

Elon Musk when he first became well known and my entire friend circle and work colleagues worshipped him.

What happened? Elon Musk.

Orion Acaba from the first campaign of Critical Role. Granted I was many years late but the chat shown in the video really seemed to like him.

Usually just small things, with coworkers and how long they'll last. We get contractors that come into our group every so often when a need arises. Unfortunately, it's hard for contractors to get hired on full time unless they get lucky and a FT position opens up. It takes weeks/months for someone to get good at the job we do, even just understanding the full process takes awhile for someone to get their head around. You can usually tell pretty early on how quickly somebody is catching on and whether they're going to make it.

There's some people that come along who are extremely talented, charming, and/or intelligent that I know would be an absolute perfect fit for our group, 99% of the time those people will just find a job somewhere else. They're great workers and they're not going to wait around if another opportunity comes, which they're usually smart/connected/talented enough to see plenty of opportunities come up. The other, unqualified people who we sometimes get stuck with, inevitably make some sort of simple, yet expensive error that gets them let go. It's like seeing an easily predictable scenario, but being powerless to do anything about it.

Absolutely, my shitbag-dar is on point. I have too many to choose from. How about the "good Christian" guy in college who ended up body shaming a friend if mine into becoming overweight because he preferred overweight women, then cheating on her and beating her? Or the piece of shit who played off that he was so nice that got a new car and proceeded to try to get every girl in the friend group to go for a ride... Yeah, you guessed it, he tried to assault multiple women in that new car of his. Yeah, the list goes on and on. Honestly, I have met more than enough openly shitty people who had more good in them than so many of the well liked people.