I own a bar and before we opened I reached out to one of those novelty vending machine companies that sells weird stuff and gags. The guy came down to meet to discuss the design of the machine etc, super nice guy. His daughter came too, she was an artist and was going to paint the machine. They sent mockups and got to work, everything seemed good to go ahead of our opening.

A week before we open, I reach out to see when they want to install it and I get no reply. I try again a few days later and get a very formal message to the effect of “we’re super sorry but we’re not going to be able to pursue this opportunity at this time, best of luck”. I’m pissed that time was wasted, the machine was finished, I had seen final pictures with our logo and design etc. I figured maybe they got some bigger offer from like the local stadium to install a machine that they couldn’t pass up.

Months go by, I’ve found another company that’s working on a new machine for us. Original guy texts me “hey, are you at the bar, I’d love to stop by and explain what happened.” I start to tell a customer at the bar about what happened and I’m like, I don’t wanna talk to this guy in my mind, and I look up, and he’s standing outside the bar in the rain. He comes in, and he looks like he’s been to hell and back.

He’s so different this time, very soft spoken, tail between his legs vibes. He apologizes and said they had a family issue that prevented them from moving forward, but they working on getting back on track. I feel bad and trying to be empathetic, and then the guy goes, “I’m sorry, but my wife just didn’t want me working with you because of David.”

“Who the fuck is David?” I reply. “David Devolla” he says. I have no idea who he’s talking about. I’ve never met his wife, or this David person. Then he goes “wait, can I ask you a weird question? Are you straight?” “Yeah man…”

“GOD DAMNT, SHE DID IT AGAIN” he said. I’m so confused right now. He then proceeds to tell me that his wife has been battling psychosis and having major mental issues. Apparently, this David guy was her former boss that fired her, and even though I’ve never met her, or David, and am straight, she was convinced I was having a secret gay affair with David and told her husband he wasn’t allowed to do business with me. What the actual fuck. Dude started creeping me out big time. He came in again a week later and told me he was driving to Vegas the next morning to marry his wife because even though he said they were married, they never actually were, and he believed doing so would fix her mental state. I follow them on Instagram still and I can tell you, it did not. She posts the absolute weirdest nonsensical things and it’s honestly entertaining to watch but also sad as hell. Bullet dodged, the new company is so so much better, but yikes all around. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

This is second hand but I have a sister who I dunno post partem and other things she kinda went off the deep end and was eventually divorced and just generally messed up. She called my wife and told her how I was going to cheat on her and my wife laughed so then she is like. Oh your going to cheat on him. Her issues had stuff revolving around cheating and stuff. Again I heard it from her second hand later but it was kinda funny. I compared it to the monty python sketch about the guy tring to sell very small lengths of string. water resistant. no its not! water absorbent. Super Water Absorbent!

An acquaintance went through the long history of cell phones with detailed proof that the technology was brought here by aliens.

I had a psychologist tell me at 13 that boys my age shouldn’t be interested in sex.

Christmas about 4 years ago, my brother went completely around the bend.

His house was the place for our family, my sister-in-law’s family and some family friends to meet for Christmas. Just before Christmas that year he started texting me about Rittenhouse and how he admire the guy for defending himself. Fast forward to when we were at his house, he would only talk about how important the 2nd amendment was, how he admired Rittenhouse, and to top off the shit cake he admitted to being member of the Oathfuckers, breakers… Whatever those fucking idiots call themselves.

He was aggressive about how his worldview was correct and that I did not know what I was talking about. He had been ramping up his power plays over me the past couple of years and I just let it go to wait to see what his “big” play was going to be. Apparently this was it. He even attempted to rewrite family history as well. We had a paternal uncle that died in the Battle of Leyte gulf and I knew well the family history and did a bit of research on my own to discover what really happened to him. World War II records are not exactly state secrets any longer. Well, because my brother was a big wig at the Veteran’s Administration and had all kinds of government clearances yada yada yada, HE had the real scoop, which conflicted somewhat with what I had read.

My god you would have thought I shot his dog he was so pissed when I attempted to speak about what I had learned. To this day I don’t know what his play there was, it was just utterly bizarre.

His final power play was he TOLD me, not asked, but TOLD me he was going to teach my two boys about guns and how to shoot. I had to tell him FOUR FUCKING TIMES that NO, HE wasn’t teaching my kids shit about weapons.

My wife works in Pediatrics… That’s not going to fly. Not to mention I’ve already given them instruction on how to handle firearms in case they come across them for what ever reason. They can pick a gun up, check the safety and clear the chamber of both automatics and revolvers. Sure, they may not be able to shoot the dick off a fly at 400 billion yards, or strip clean and reassemble a 1911 in under 3 seconds blind folded, under water with depth charges going off less than 6 inches away while humming the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. But they can keep themselves and those around them safe.

Needless to say that was when I punched the big red button and went nuclear on our relationship. Our father died about 2 years after the above event and I had not been in contact with my brother, or my Dad. Dad was being taken care of by this brother, so when I cut that relationship, so did my relationship with my Dad… Which honestly his attitude was going much the same direction anyway. I didn’t even go to Dad’s funeral… Which was completely bizarre.

You see our Dad was in the Navy for 4 years back in the 1950’s. Dad talked about that time and he seemed to have liked his time in the Navy, but it just something he did to get out of his small hometown in West Virginia. It was never a career goal and he spent his entire time as a medic. To see my Dad’s funeral you would have thought that his entire life was spent in the military. My brother made it an entirely military funeral with troops, 21 shots and the whole thing. I understand the military does this for all veterans and I don’t have a problem with it, except my Dad didn’t identify as being a military person AT ALL. He was in the Navy 70 years prior and while he would tell stories and use his medic training on occasion, it was never a part of his personality.

Needless to say I’m very glad I live 400 miles away from what is left of my original immediate family. I miss my sister-in-law as she is a very sweet and caring person and their son. I really wanted my boys to know their cousin… Oh well.

Dad likes money, and might be poly.

IRL I feel like I’ve had people talk to me about things that I don’t understand and which clearly aren’t happening outside their mind, and it’s hard to beat that for WTF. Online, there’s so many contenders I can’t really pick one.

Probably not the most unhinged but a few weeks ago a coworker told me that Trump is the only president in history whose net worth went down after becoming president.

He’s not FAR right so I usually hear him out and use kid gloves to counter his arguments but I involuntarily replied, “are you out of your fucking mind?!”

My bio father just passed away. I was talking to his best friend of 45 years, basically his brother, and he casually dropped he was raped as a boy. I had asked about my fathers sister, because a lot of that family is scattered and a mess, the daughter of the sister “something happened” is all I know. And he said molestation, and then that he too, was molested by a man as a boy. I was really proud of the 68 year old mam telling me that.

But fucking, add it to the list. Men need a fucking ‘me too’ because I know so, so, many.

Not one particular thing, but had a friend of a few years suddenly turn evangelical christian after being a pretty chill gamer dude and often hilarious troll online.

Just one day does an about face and now every single fucking conversation comes back to “The Lord” and his faith and Jesus and prayer and do I want to join his church and please let’s talk more about the Kingdom of Heaven and also Trump isn’t that bad, he means well, the people at church say so.

Just no, fuck off totally. I can’t deal with someone always trying to push some utterly delusional moral superiority on me, It’s literally like having someone you know die.

I also had a sibling go full Qanon, which seemed to pivot to just spiritual shit and talking to aliens as of late. No contact, so I don’t know the details or what happened to the shadowy cabal of pedophiles since they were actually found.

I met a real life Aryan Brotherhood nazi one time. I was somewhere between 10 and 12 at the time. I have a whole post about it (it was in this community about if you’ve ever met a truly evil person) . But anyway, he preached a sermon to my friend and I about all the things you might expect. The best part was the 5 minute section on evil catholics (I was/am catholic). I sure as shit didn’t tell him I was or that I’m half Syrian.

I worked with a guy that told me that he would start shooting Democratic politicians if his wife left him. He was a hardcore Republican Mormon from Orange County, CA.

“Abraham Lincoln was a fascist.” when debating politics with a friend.

I didn’t take the bait. I didn’t delve into why he felt this way but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious, but I wasn’t going down that road with him so he could justify his authoritarian views.

The Aunt that never finished elementary school once told me:

“I don’t believe in evolution, because I didn’t believe a baby could be born smarter than its parents”

I was 10-13 years old at the time and just didn’t have the patience to deal with that level of stupid.

My coworker once started a conversation by casually asking if I’d ever “done anything” with a cousin. Obviously the conversation ended with him revealing he’d fucked his cousin and me saying WTF progressively louder and louder for at least a minute. I work from home now.

Oh jeez… heads up: a lot of racism and very vile unhinged shit being described: (seriously, it’s gonna make your blood boil if you read this, last warning):

So my older brother is a racial supremacist and hates black and brown people.

And I already know what you’re thinking when you hear the term “racist”: “must be a white dude in southern rural US”

No, no no no. We are a family of immigrants. We are non-white. We’re from China.

The first time I heard about this was like sometime around 2017 to 2020. My older brother was complaining about African Migrant workers living in China… a country he no longer has citizenship status in… because he went through the US citizenship process to become a citizen of a multi-racial immigrant country…

So… to reiterate: a non-white immigrant is complaining about other races in his ancestral country that he has no citizenship in… let that sink in…

Literally “White Replacement” Conspiracy Theory, but replace the term “White” with “Han Chinese”.

He complains about ethnic minorities in China “getting special privilages” (aka: “affirmative action”) 🧐

So he dislikes CCP, not because of human rights violations against minorities… no no no, not that, but because CCP is “doing too much to help minorities” (in his view at least, whether or not the CCP actually help minorities in reality is a whole another thing)

He believes there’s a secret plan by the CCP to replace China with African Migrants because of the population crisis… so he thinks the government just wanna fill up the loss of population with random foreigners…

And he calls black people “cockroaches” that “keep spreading too much” by “having too many kids”

But guess what: HE FUCKING COMPLAINS ABOUT TRUMP BEING RACIST AGAINST ASIANS 🤦‍♂️ fucking irony lmfao (he’s a registered Democrat… I’m pretty sure… supports progressive polities when it comes to wealth, but opposes progressive social policies… so… a social conservative but fiscal liberal??? (is that even a term?)

Dude is so fucking lost into conspiracies, they make my parents look like saints. My parents used to be very prejudiced, but eventually come to be more accepting of multi-culturalism and the idea of living in diversity after spending so much time in the US. And now my mom has to be the one to shut down my brother’s bullshit rhetoric he spews in the livingroom.

Oh, also kinda anti-vax about the Covid vaccine, but somehow okay with a tetnaus shot when he stepped on a nail.

And this is this is also the brother that abused me as a child… constantly fighting me… then want to play with me when bored and has no friends to talk to… then wanna fight me and discard me after he uses me.

Seriously idk why he even became a US Citizen…

The only reason he didn’t vote for trump (or so he says, it’s not like I know what he marked in his ballot) is because he isn’t white, had he been born into a white family, he’d totally vote trump.

I’m so glad, I didn’t end up being brainwashed by those insane beliefs, jesus fucking christ.

No idea where the fuck he got that shit from… so fucking vile…

But then again, he was abusing me when I was around 5 or 6… he used zipties to restrain me when he deemed me “annoying”, played with fire at home, maybe his psycopathy is a gene, maybe a gene that luckily I didn’t get? Random mutation?

Idk… my parents aren’t even this vile in their worst moments, must be a random mutation. Or maybe its environment. Or maybe the internet’s fault.