35 People Confess The Low-Key Evil Thing They Did That Haunts Them Daily

Humanity is inherently fallible and prone to mistakes. Each of us has the potential to act slyly, underhandedly, or with malice; it’s simply part of human nature. A key safeguard that prevents most people from acting on these darker impulses is the inevitable flood of guilt our conscience unleashes when we act out of selfishness. Recently, Redditors online have been sharing stories of times they acted heartlessly, knowing there would be no obvious repercussions. The one punishment that always follows is the guilt their own minds impose. In a recent thread asking, "What was the dirtiest, slimiest, most back-stabbing thing you did and regret?" many confessed to the mean-spirited and unforgivable acts they committed, facing the reality of their choices only in hindsight.

#1

Image source: anon, A. C. When I was in 5th grade, my friends and I wanted to be in the talent show. My friend (I'll call her Sarah) wanted to be a part of it. I told her that she needed to slim down if she was going to be in it with us. Sarah was and is still insecure about her weight. I felt like such a [jerk] and regret it to this day.

#2

Image source: laksenlaks, reddit I'm a moderator on a local second-hand facebook group. An old lady put up a very nice bed for a very low price. I deleted the post, and contacted her. Got the bed before anyone had the chance to bid on it.

#3

Image source: TheDrunkenOctopus, untitled02 My next door neighbours kid used to be an inconsiderate rude [jerk] and his parents let him and his brother get away with it. Well one time he put gravel on my windscreen wipers because I saw him out the window doing it, and his parents knew he did this but thought it was a mere practical joke. So I waited until it was dark, and I grabbed some gravel and stuck it right ontop of their windscreen wipers but inside them too. His parents did not think it was funny when it was their windscreen that got scratched.

#4

Image source: autumnx, Johnny Cohen To preface: I was 13 at the time so keep this in mind. I had a group of friends in an AOL chat. The story is about two. Let's call them Maddy and John. I really liked John. Big crush on him. One time Maddy and I were chatting and she said that John was flirting with her so she wanted to ask him out because she never had a boyfriend before. I was devastated. A few days later, John messaged me and asked why I have been ignoring him. I explained that I told Maddy I was going to ask you out (lie) but she beat me to it to see if she could get you to say yes first (lie) because she was mad at me for something (lie). He believed me, dumped her, and we dated for 8 years. EEK! I'm not sure what happened to Maddy. We all stayed in touch maybe a year or two after this, and she had another boyfriend, but I was a 13 y/o.

#5

When I was a starving college student, I didn't drink (for health, money, and other reasons). I also drove an SUV, so that made me the perfect designated driver for everyone I knew. I would drive 8-10 people down to the (only) local bar and just drink iced tea for a few hours. The SUV drank gas like a fish, so the deal was always that everyone would chip in a couple bucks for gas. I soon noticed that as they got more and more drunk I could ask them for the gas money multiple times. They *never* figured it out. Soon, I was grossing $75 to $100 bucks a night. The next day everyone would sober up and complain they had no more money and I would just tell them "dude, you drank a lot last night". #feelsbadman. Image source: Tatsukun

#6

Image source: anon, reddit I went to high school with a kid who drove like an idiot. To make matters worse, he had a huge truck and lived in my neighborhood, so we often went on the same route to school. He would frequently cut me off, and [tailgate] even when I would go over the speed limit. Think of a BMW driver in a compensator truck. Anyways, the final straw came when we were both in the school parking lot, and there were 2 open parking spots near the front with plenty of room for both of us. I was about to pull into "my" spot, when this [jerk] decides to double-park his Mad Max truck in both of the spots. Now, I have to go park in the spillover and school was about to start in 2 minutes. That's when I realize that I possessed a "weapon". The previous weekend, I had bought a gallon of milk from the grocery that had expired early. I must've put it in my car with the intent of taking it to the store and getting a refund, but I was sidetracked on my way to the store and I had forgotten about it. I unscrewed the cap to make sure that it smelled bad, and sure enough, it smelled like [trash]. I waited for everyone to clear out of the parking lots, and I made my way to the truck. Considering it was the south in May, the temperature was going to reach +97° that day, so he decided to leave his windows slightly cracked to let the air ventilate in his black interior/black exterior jerkmobile. I hopped up on the step bar, emptied the entire gallon of spoiled milk into driver side, thew away the empty jug in the dumpster nearby, and headed to class. When we were dismissed at 4, the temp was 99°. It had reached 102° at noon, so I was expecting catastrophic results. Sure enough, he was at his truck screaming at his friends, and dialing the police. The next day, we had an assembly and the school faculty attempted to find out who was responsible for this heinous crime. They never suspected a thing from me.? TL;DR [Jerk] in truck double parks. I pour a gallon of spoiled milk into his truck on a hot day.

#7

Image source: curly_Q, Anurag Sarkar In middle school, my best friend and I made a fake screen name (IM) and messaged her ex to make him believe it was coming from a hot model (we got pictures of some random hot chick off the internet and made a fake MySpace profile). Then we convinced him she was going to meet him on his street corner in an hour to do dirty deeds and he believed us and waited outside for an hour at 2 am. Twist is that he had a girlfriend at the time and we took screenshots of the whole conversation and sent them to her inbox on MySpace. Still feel guilty.

#8

Image source: anon, Pavel Bekker I don't know if this counts, but I used to work at a restaurant and there was a couple in there with their baby. He was in a high chair and was definitely less than one year old. I noticed the kid looked like he was imitating my hand movements from across the room, so I starting moving them and watching him. He was definitely following everything I was doing, although a little jerkily, and he was mirroring the movements with his hands. I was quite impressed. He was obviously bright for his age. After a few hand gestures, an idea occurred to me that was too delicious to pass up. I moved my fist to my forehead, and sure enough, he goes to imitate. He pushes his little hand into a ball, thrusts his fist up rapidly, and bonks himself in the face. There was this really confused look on his face like he was trying to figure out who hit his forehead. I did it three more times because it was hilarious.

#9

Image source: wearethefreaks I used to have anorexia in early high school years- was hospitalised for a couple of years, came back to school. It took me an hour to eat lunch, cutting a sandwich into 36 pieces and the like. There was a girl who sat with me every lunch for the whole hour, every lunch. For like a year. Then started to talk to people more and ended up abandoning her. Didn't even realise. By the end of high school she was totally alone. Still, teenage me did not even realise. It wasn't til two years later when i looked back that i realised how [awful] i had been. Teenagers are [jerks]. Hope you're doing ok yasmin.

#10

Image source: Some_no_name, Herlambang Tinasih Gusti A girl who sat in front of me in high school was very obese. She turned around and said something nasty to me. So, I put a few pieces of tape on a sheet of paper, did the ol' pat your back with a distracting comment; She walked around the rest of the day with a, 'WIDE LOAD' sign stuck to her back. Regretted it when I realized how many people were laughing at her all day.

#11

Image source: anon I left my fiance for another woman on the day we were supposed to move into our new house. I woke up at 5 am, left her sleeping in the hotel, grabbed all my stuff out of our shared storage unit, and drove it over to the new house. My name was the only name on the house. When she showed up later that day, I walked out on the porch and told her it was over and to please leave. Then six months later, after the new relationship burned out, she took me back, and I did it again. I am a terrible, terrible person.

#12

Image source: anon, Solen Feyissa Was young and mad. My dad's email was opened on the computer. I told his boss to go to hel but luckily my dad was let off the hook because i misspelled hell.

#13

Image source: Uday23, Getty Images Invited a friend to wingman me when I knew one of the girls was a lesbian. I liked the other one. Sorry bro.

#14

Friend started talking to/developing feelings for a girl we went to school with. I knew said girl and knew she was the female equivalent of a male playboy (enjoys stringing guys along, new guy every week, that type of thing). Unfortunately friend had been single for a while and so any female that showed him the slightest bit of interest he fell head over heels for, started planning the wedding - you get the picture. Me and her still talked fairly often, so one night I not so subtly let on that my friend was after her. She reacted how I knew she would, telling me she was more focused on being single and I should let him know that. We made a pact that I'd distract his attention, and she'd start hinting at other guys when she talked to him. So, we did. I took him out a lot, she started replying later, and eventually took him out clubbing with her where she got on someone else in front of him. The look on his face was crushing, but I knew I had to do it sooner rather than later because buddy was falling, *hard* and it was only going to end up with him sinking back into depression. I still feel bad about kind of jeopardising it without letting him find out himself, but he has a new girl now and they're doing just swell, so, alls well that ends well I guess. Image source: anon

#15

As a commuter in a large city, regularly ran into a girl in the subway who danced and asked for donations. At a certain point, had come to realize she was homeless and was in the subway every day. Became familiar enough that, one day, she said she needed help, so I offered to hold some of her stuff in my apartment. Turned out to be several dark trash bags of papers and other items: maybe she was a hoarder; I don't know, because I held the bags for her but didn't go through them. Days turned into weeks, and then, ultimately, my flatmates were moving out, so we had to give up the apartment. I told the girl repeatedly that I was moving, and that she had to come and get her stuff. Gave her multiple chances, knowing that she was homeless and possibly not fully rational. In any case, after she missed deadline after deadline after deadline, and multiple grace periods, I told her I had to put her bags on the curb one weekend. I did--and she showed up the following Monday, and asked where her stuff was. At that point, it was gone. Still feel bad about it more than 20 years later. Never saw her again. TL; DR: Agreed to hold a homeless girl's possessions. Had to get rid of them when I was moving, and she came to get them too late. Might have been all she had left; still feel bad about it. Image source: Station51

#16

Image source: macabrepencil When my dad suggested I shouldn't work such long hours as a freelancer for [low] pay and maybe find a better paying full-time job, I answered, "I can't, I need the money. Or what? You're gonna support me with your pay?" Conveniently forgetting he did raise me till I was of working age. I felt like an absolute slimeball that day, especially when I saw that look of hurt on his face.

#17

In 4th grade my school had this huge booksale and one of my friends bought this super sparkly obnoxious multicolored diary. We all thought it was perfect. Anyway this one friend of ours had been really pissing me off all week, told me I wasn't pretty enough to be Belle when we played princesses, [stuff] like that. Diary girl and [jerk] girl were best friends. I went to diary girl's locker to move the diary to [jerk] girl's locker to frame her for stealing it, but couldn't find it. Diary friend caught me there and I said I just wanted to see it because it was so pretty, so she was like yea sure but when she opened her locker she couldn't find it either. I decided to stick to the plan and blame [jerk] girl for stealing it. I got in SO much trouble for starting rumors and got lectured by our teacher in front of my entire class. Then my teacher actually caught [jerk] girl with the diary, turns out she had actually stole it. It was a really weird turn of events. Image source: TheLasagna_isOK

#18

In 3rd grade my friend and I had a joint Runescape account. We worked pretty hard and leveled up the character close to the max. I changed the password without telling him and sold it. Image source: theLorknessMonster

#19

During arguing I said to my ex-wife "Your breasts look sad". After all, she did breastfeed three of our children... Now, after years I still feel really bad. I was an idiot. Image source: genus

#20

An old friend of mine and I were in a fun run when we were coming up on the finish line. We were tied and I guess we non-verbally, mutually agreed to pass through the line at the same time. Like a complete [jerk], I broke out into a full sprint and came out in front of him. I haven't seen him in a long time but thinking about this still makes me feel like [trash]. Image source: Hitlers_Gas_Bill

#21

Image source: Real_Adam_Sandler, KEEM IBARRA A friend asked me with tears in his eyes to spend the night over on the day his brother [passed] at a young age. This was at another town where I'd either spend the night at his place or a hotel. I chose the hotel because a girl I liked was gonna be there.

#22

I pretended to throw the ball for my dog but I really didn't. Image source: anon

#23

Image source: scruffbeard, timbo637 When I was maybe 5 or 6 I poked a hole in my parents waterbed and blamed it on my little brother.

#24

This is kind of hard to believe but bear with me. I really like old books and I had this crooked public library in my neighbourhood, before I went to Canada for college. The library was in terrible shape, almost nobody used it effectively and there was this old little lady as the librarian, who did everything by herself. So I'm going abroad for college, about two years ago, and I said, hey, that old cottonhead won't see me again, so why not I just "steal" some books off? Nobody cares about the library anyway, I can just fill them up in my bag because the thing doesn't even have a CCTV system. I can act like I was just looking at something and walk away. I did so, but my proportion of theft is prodigious, if I'm not mistaken I filled an entire luggage with books of differing size that day. For some reason, I still feel like trash when I see those stolen books on my shelves. I'm pretty sure nobody cared about them, but it feels like I exploited the old lady's age as a justification for theft. Image source: anon

#25

Was pissed off at a friend whilst at his house, so went into his fridge and stabbed his bowl of jelly. Image source: -Todd-

#26

Image source: thudly When I was a teenager, my cousin was this big player, womanizer, [jerk]-and-proud type who would play the nice guy, bang a girl, and then never call her again, laughing about it to everybody when she was all in tears after. You know the type. One time this really nice girl started crushing on him. I kind of liked her myself, but she only had eyes for him. Finally, after a few days, I just straight up told her what she was in for. "Here's exactly what's going to happen if you go after him..." It was back-stabbing my cousin of course, and I had motive to do it, but I didn't care. She ignored me, of course, and my prediction came exactly true. She actually tried to get together with me after, but it was more of an insult at that point. I basically told her, "Well, I told you so." And I walked away.

#27

In sixth grade a shy awkward boy asked me to the Valentine's Day Dance with a little heart shaped box that had a ticket inside. And a card with roses on it. I didn't really want to go with him, but I was uncomfortable and he went through so much effort, I said yes. On the bus I told my friends and they laughed at me, so I joined in saying how awkward it was and then tossed the card out the window. I still "went" to the dance with him. Meaning I ignored him and talked with my friends and danced with him once. I wasn't cruel, I was so concerned with what my friends thought of me. Acting too good for him made me feel cool during a really insecure time. He crushed on me through out all of middle school and it just fed my self esteem. I was nice to him, but I was aware and didn't care about his feelings. But I always kept that little heart shaped box. And after middle school I looked back and realized what a sweet guy he was. I apologized for how I treated him. He told me he always knew I through that card out of the window. It didn't matter. We never dated. I distanced myself from him, because though he was sweet, I didn't have romantic feelings for him and I knew it would be cruel to hang around. He's turned out great. Went to a great school. Works in a children's hospital. Is an avid sailor. We keep in touch on occasion when he's in town. But I'll never truly forgive myself for how I treated him all those years ago. Image source: cranberry94

#28

Image source: Qubeye The guy deleted his account, but nobody will ever beat the Redditor who poisoned his girlfriend and caused a spontaneous ab*rtion because they had only been dating a few weeks and she wanted to keep it.

#29

Image source: LilGazpacho, asromatifoso In high school, this girl with a peanut allergy started going out with a girl i had i crush on (after I had told her this) so for every class potluck i had with her i would make peanut brittle.

#30

In elementary school my class did an Easter egg hunt. There was a special egg that had glitter glue put on it so that it'd sparkle. If you got that egg, then you got a special prize. I saw this one girl reaching into a bush. This girl was the shyest girl. She never spoke to anyone except for whispering in the teacher's ear when she needed to say something. I instinctively reached into the bush too thinking that she might be looking for an egg. I found the special egg. I now feel awful about stealing that egg from her when she was too shy to stand up for herself. Image source: SmartAlec105

#31

Image source: cfenton23 In 7th grade band, I played a dumb prank by hiding my friend's trumpet. Thought he'd ask where it was and I'd laugh and show him, but he showed up a bit late and we all started. He said someone STOLE his instrument and the director stopped the entire class and made us sit in silence until someone would confess. After several minutes of nobody saying anything, he declared that he was cancelling a planned trip to Disney. Everyone started groaning and some even stood up shouting for the culprit to come forward. I stood up and said, "It was me. I did it." The director said "Thank you cfenton23 for trying to take the fall for the thief but you don't have to do that." After class, everyone congratulated me and thanked me for trying to take the heat and blamed someone else. The person who was blamed eventually kept getting left out of social events and quit band all together while I was proclaimed a hero.

#32

Image source: anon One time in third grade, I farted. It was one of those nuclear waste level farts, and all the kids at my table started freaking out. I didn't want to be caught so I started freaking out with them. I then pretended to sniff my best friend Margaret, and scrunched up my nose and yelled out that Margaret was the tooter. I framed my best friend for the toot that I tooted.

#33

Told on a girl and her punishment was missing high school graduation. I'm 35, I still feel bad about it. She made loser awards for the junior girls she picked on and gave them out at a junior / senior girls event. Image source: gusmom

#34

When my friend Nicky and I were like 7-8 I was throwing rocks into this "forest" around our school, at some point during our throwing I hit a girl in the face and I immediately bolted inside to the bathroom. Sometime later I walked back outside to see Nicky getting yelled at by the Principal, VP, parents that were still around. Literally anyone over the age of 18 was berating this kid, he looked at me to come forward and do the right thing and I locked eyes with him, smiled turned around and walked to class scot free not realizing I had created Nicky's supervillain origin story. Image source: Carameldelighting

#35

I used to spend summers with my uncle who ran a campground and he taught me all kind of useful skills. One was how to make a key that would open all Master locks that were similar. Well back in the 70's just about everyone had the same locks on their garage doors and garage door openers were not around yet or our neighborhood didn't have them. So me and my friends decided that we would collect all of the locks off of the garages mix them up in a bag and put them back on. The next morning everyone came out to go to work and couldn't get their cars out of the garage, the entire block was standing outside wondering what happened. It was really funny for about five minutes, then I felt bad. My dad said it's a good thing our garage is full of [stuff] and we park our cars outside. Image source: bikerwander