By David Futrelle
Love works in mysterious ways! A couple of days ago, a lovelorn — or at least horny — young Redditor spammed every relevant subreddit he could think of — from r/relationships to r/AmITheAsshole — with a post asking for advice on a very particular romantic dilemma he found himself in.
On the off chance that this was a real post and not just a trollish experiment, I thought I’d share his post with you all, as it’s one of the worst things I’ve seen since, well, this past Tuesday.
Our lusty Redditor, a twenty year-old fellow who calls himself BrettTheBeast, wonders: Would it be so wrong to hit on a girl whose life I ruined in middle school?
And yes, he really and truly did ruin her life:
So, in middle school, there was this girl i used to pick on because she was fat. I called her horrible names, stole her things, put a picture of her head on the picture of a pig and put it on her locker, and i gave her a nickname that followed her all around school, and was just awful to her. She always ended up crying and she actually transferred to another school (either because of me or her parents just moved. I heard 2 stories.)
You put a picture of her head on the picture of a pig and put it on her locker? She may have CHANGED SCHOOLS because of you?
Now look, i KNOW I WAS AN ASSHOLE for that. But i was 12 and my family has a very negative view of overweight people. I feel horrible about it.
Clearly you don’t feel horrible enough about it.
[W]hat i want judgement on is this.
[I] discovered her on Facebook again and she’s actually pretty damn hot now. She dropped all her baby fat and has grown up to be quite doable. The only fat on her now is her breasts (seriously, she’s, like, an F cup.)
Jesus Christ, dude.
And, i got to thinking. There’s something i want to do. I want to add her as a friend and send her a message to “apologize”.
You can tell that this will be a really heartfelt and sincere apology because he can’t even use the word apology without putting it in scare quotes.
And also because of this:
I do feel guilty, but i have somewhat of an ulterior motive. I want to apologize and ask her to meet up for coffee with her. While there, i want to make a move on her.
Excuse me for a second.
Ok, I’m back.
I was thinking i apoligize and start complimenting her on how beautiful she’s become and maybe make a move on her. Just rub her leg or something.
“Yeah, so sorry about stealing your shit and that pig picture on your locker! Don’t mind me while I KINO ESCALATE on your leg, which isn’t as fat as I remember it!”
I haven’t talked to her yet, she probably doesn’t even remember me.
Uh, dude, I’m pretty sure she remembers you.
Would this be scummy of me? Would i be an asshole if i hit up this girl with the intent of trying to seduce her?
Er.
Signs point to yes.
If you’re looking for a silver lining on this, pretty much everyone on Reddit agreed that, yes, this guy is a huge asshole. Even the creeps in the Ask The Red Pill subreddit.
Well, most of them, anyway. Then there was this guy:
Somehow he managed to make a followup comment that was even worse:
I just …
That’s enough posting for the day.
H/T — Relationships.txt (@redditships) on Twitter.
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It’s great the way these awful, awful men tell the rest of the world via the internet that all women should stay at least 50 miles away from them at all costs.
I had a guy who was in my homeroom in middle school and high school, for 6 years…he basically made fun or ignored me, for all of those years.
About 2 years after we graduated, he was hitting on me in a bar, and I asked him straight up if he didn’t remember me, and why was he bothering me now? He said, “I’ve never seen you before tonight…I’d remember somebody as pretty as you!”
I called him by his first and last name, and said he had been in my HR for 6 years, so I was going to call bullshit on his nonsense.
Turned red and fled…
No, we remember. And if this guy goes through with his “plan”, I guarantee she’ll remember, too, and it won’t be fondly.
Speaking as someone who was the skinny, knock-kneed version of that girl in middle school (with frizzy hair and glasses to boot), I can tell this guy that she remembers him all too well and wouldn’t do him if he were the last man with a working penis. In fact, I can tell him quite definitely that she hates his fucking guts and wouldn’t cry if he got splattered by a runaway train. And that if he ever does approach her again, she’s going to look at him with all the loathing that is due to a pile of flyblown dog shit on the sidewalk that she just stepped in with her best shoes on.
The question is, will he ever listen?
The fact that he used to torment her is probably most of what’s turning him on. She managed to escape him once: I hope for her sake that she continues to stay out of his way. Too bad you can’t change planets or universes the way you can change schools.
Oh my gods. I hope this guy falls into a tar pit or something. JFC, that is just so low and disgusting I don’t have words.
If you’ve seen any horror movies, you know that she’s probably been fantasizing about enacting a terrible revenge for all these years, and he’s about to make all her dreams come true.
Felix, I hope so!
Definitely a troll, looking through his history (which is the same level of awful and desperate as this post).
7 months ago he was 18, a month ago he was 19 and now all of a sudden he’s 20. Either he ages way faster than others, or is forgetting the age he’s making up.
I looked at some of the threads out of morbid curiosity and can say that life on Seagull Island would definitely be too good for this little shit.
FelixRay,
That’s the exact plot of the cheesy early 2000s slasher movie, Valentine.
I hope this woman takes sweet, sweet revenge on this asshole. The possibilities are endless, and utterly delicious.
@#AmI TheAsshole:
Yes. Full stop.
@FelixRay, you read my mind.
I wouldn’t mind life imitating art on this one. (OK, OK, maybe not reaaally… but yeah, maybe really.)
@Simoleon:
Well, I have heard that douchebaggery ages a person pretty damn fast, but…yowza.
I guess he’s going to be an actual forty-year-old virgin by this time next year.
Yes–he should totally hit on her, and she should totally agree to meet up. (If he doesn’t, I hope she reads about this and looks HIM up.)
What happens after that is up to her. (Hell, some troll could even look him up and pose as her. CATFISHED!)
@Simoleon
Yeah, “troll” was going to be my guess; his story is just too pat. (Apologies to Pat Benatar and also to pats of butter and pats on the back. You know what I mean.)
BrettTheBeast: Look at me — I’m a terrible human being. Please, please, please notice my awfulness!
Lots of dubious assumptions by the OP, including that she’s single, forgiving, eager for his incredibly valuable validation, and willing to reward him with sex.
So, back in high school I was a band dork. There was a kid (we’ll call him Danny) who used to make fun of me, call me names from the bleachers, throw wet towels at me, and just generally be an ass. Years later, when I was in my thirties, Danny messaged me on match.com. Neither of us knew who the other was. He was all “hey, you’re from [hometown]? Me too! I like the way you look! Want to get coffee sometime?”
We flirted back and forth for a bit and then moved on to email. When I logged in the next day to check my email, I was like “whoa, wait, what’s this? Why on earth is Danny XXX writing me….OH SHIT, he must be that dude from match.com!”
I decided to play along, so I wrote back casually, just a generic reply, knowing he’d see my real name in his inbox. You never saw anybody ghost so fast. I think he was embarrassed.
But then Danny tried to connect with me again on LinkedIn some years later, so maybe he genuinely doesn’t remember tormenting me in high school. I never forgot, though. I doubt this poor girl has forgotten either. This guy ruined her life and now he thinks he’s doing her some kind of favor by using her for sex.
@PeeVee, @Buttercup
Damn! What a couple of jerks. You have my sympathies.
I’ve never had the experience of a former tormentor suddenly finding me attractive. But I did meet a guy through the personal ads who wasn’t interested in me. I met him again a few years later, again through the personal ads — but this time he planned to adopt and wanted a wife/mother. And this time he was interested — but he didn’t remember me. Nothing came of it though, because I wasn’t interested either time. He didn’t have much of a sense of humor, which a guy needs if he’s going to understand me.
I had a few bullies in junior high whose names I honestly don’t remember anymore. I probably wouldn’t be able to recognize them now either, since I’m terrible with faces. So it’s not impossible that I could be friendly with some of those guys and not be aware of it. Unlikely though since I live on the other side of the country now.
None of them tormented me to the level that this dude claims to have, though. And I definitely remember the name of the first little asswipe twerp who sexually harassed me.
If any of my childhood tormentors contacted me to apologize, I’d probably be glad that they’re probably not such huge assholes anymore, but I’d certainly not be inclined to kindle any kind of interaction with them beyond that. They’d certainly never get into my pants, since I’m ace and uninterested in dating. If they did try to segue into that topic, I’d no longer be of the opinion that they’re likely to be any less assholey now.
If common human decency isn’t enough to tell him the answer (and clearly it isn’t), I’d refer him to the episode of Friends where Julia Roberts guest stars.
Apparently Chandler was mean to her throughout high school and when they meet again, she agrees to let bygones be bygones and goes out to dinner with him. Except it’s all a cunning ruse to leave him stranded stark naked in the ladies’ in revenge.
Now, granted IRL this would just confirm the “women be bitches” narrative, but this guy needs to take it as a horrible warning that rejection might not be the worst thing to happen if he goes ahead with his plan.
As some here have suggested, this whole thing could be completely fabricated. Nevertheless:
@Bekabot
Yuck, yuck, yuck – I think you’ve nailed it 🙁
When 7th grade started, a brand new middle school had opened up and the 3 or 4 elementary schools in the area dumped all the 5th,6th and 7th graders into it. I was a painfully shy kid. In my new homeroom was a girl that came from a different school than I had that pushed all my buttons. So, introverted me tried a halting conversation with her. A group of boys I didn’t know informed me that she was super weird and that I must be weird too for talking to her. By informed I mean pushed me to the ground and said nasty things about me, and her. Cowardly shy me didn’t speak to her for two years. Mean kids continued to berate her. I never spoke up against this, since my position on the school totem pole hovered near the bottom.
Two years later, in ninth grade, the junior high hand a “computer room”, with a DEC PDP-8E (have I mentioned I’m older than dirt?). I found my calling and what I’m good at. I was a natural at programming and spent all study halls and lunch periods in the computer room. One day, there she was sitting at one of the teletypes. She had loaded up (and by loading I mean running a paper tape through a paper tape reader) a programming language that wasn’t taught in the computer course. She looked cuter than ever to me and I thought it was totally cool she was teaching herself computer stuff. So, once again I fought down the shyness and tried talking to her. What I blurted out probably sounded like man-splaining. She didn’t give me the time of day. I slunk off.
I still wish, all these years later, that I could tell her how cool I thought her being interested in computers was and how pretty I thought she was. I found her on the internet, and from all the sites that she’s active it seems she blossomed at college and has led a great life. That at least makes me happy.
Anyways, I certainly remember every one of the kids that was mean to me or her and I wish them nothing but bad things.
Re: BrettTheBeast being a troll
Good catch.
What’s scary to me is this whole story was, like, not even that extroardinary by the standards I’ve seen in my own life. This level of bullying, and the bullies being this far into denial about their abusiveness, is *common*.
TBH it’s part of why I don’t like visiting my home town. Some of my tormenters from back in HS still live or work there, and will still shout insults at me if they see me from their cars.
That narrative about bullies growing out of it? Total crap. They just get better at hiding it, including from themselves.
@Kat:
Awfulness duly noted. Elliot Rodger dodger!
* * *
Ahem. I know I’ve told this story before, but it bears repeating here:
There was this guy I had a crush on in middle school. Grade 7, to be precise. He led me on at a school dance one time, which is what led to the crush. And months later, he insulted me horribly in front of a roomful of other kids as we were waiting for our buses home one afternoon. Told me not to look at him, and called me an ugly name. Well, that cured me of my dumb-ass crush on the spot, and from then on, I hated his motherfucking guts with the passion of a billion blue-blazing suns.
Thankfully, no one laughed at me as I sat there with my face buzzing like a hornet’s nest, wishing the ground would just open up under my feet and swallow me. I think they were all as stunned as I was at the abruptness of it all. I was like that the whole way home, on the bus for an hour. I never shed a single tear. Shock is a helluva drug.
Even more thankfully, it was the last I saw of him for a while, as it was nearing the end of the school year and he was graduating Grade 8. We ended up going to different high schools, so I was spared the sight of him for over a decade. I half forgot about him, but I never forgot the insult. It tainted all my subsequent crushes even to this day, and made me unable to approach any other guy I liked. High school was hell thanks to that. Uni wasn’t a whole lot better, either.
Later, I heard things about him on occasion. None of them good. It seems that my former crushboy was an asshole not only to me. One time, he drunkenly hit on a former boyfriend’s divorced sister, and she rejected him unceremoniously. That made me chuckle.
But what really got my gloat was the day I happened to walk into my doctor’s waiting room for my annual checkup and prescription renewal. I had contact lenses now, and I’d gained weight in all the right places. I was now twice the age that I’d been on that fateful day, and about ten times better looking.
And there he was, sitting on one of the chairs. He was no longer that cute kid I once had the stupid crush on , but I remembered him nonetheless. I mean, it’s not like his face wasn’t burned into my memory or anything. I remembered him telling me not to look at me, and calling me that god-awful name. I remembered EVERYTHING.
And then I just LOOKED at him. With my most scathing death stare.
And he just turned purple, and shrank down in his seat like he was wishing the ground would open up and swallow him.
Not a word was said, but I have no doubt that he remembered exactly who I was. Even though I’d finally grown into my looks, and he’d grown out of his. Yeah, I thought — sucks to be YOU, eh dude? Now you know. Have fun living with that!
* * *
On the off chance that this guy’s story actually checks out and is true, I hope this girl gets as much satisfaction from rejecting this troll as I did with mine.
I had an experience somewhat like this, minus the fat-shaming. In eighth grade (so about the age of these young folks), three boys in my class decided to make my life miserable. Dunno why, I think they were just bored and thought harassing me was fun. It went past school, too–they made sexually harassing phone calls to my home, which turned out to be their big mistake. My parents warned them once and then involved the police, who promptly traced the number because the idiots thought they could hide behind that # trick that hides the number from caller ID. They were promptly brought to the station, forced by their mortified parents to apologize to my parents (I chose not to go because fuck them), told never to contact me again to the point of never speaking to me at school, and given a hundred hours of community service.
Obviously, I’m not advocating contacting the girl. I suspect it would be better for her to live her life without ever devoting another brain cell to this selfish POS. But it would be ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS if now, in our twenties, one of those guys actually contacted me to tell me “So sorry I ruined your life that one time but I think you have nice tits, want to have coffee?” Excuse me while I go laugh my ass off and also fuck you.