this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2026
311 points (98.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

41230 readers
1355 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !uspolitics@lemmy.world


7) No Hit-and-Run questions.
Please don't delete your post for no apparent reason. If you plan on deleting a question later, say so in the post, or if you feel that you have a good reason to remove it, message a mod beforehand. It's not fair to the ones who took their time to answer, and it's not in the spirit of the community.


8) No Bots.
Posts or comments from bots, LLM's, AIs, Neural Networks, Transformers, or Marvin the Paranoid Android are not welcome in AskLemmy. Real humans only please.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Kinda sorta copy/pasted question from Reddit. But wanted to see what your answers are like on here!

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Comrade_Squid@lemmy.ml 6 points 9 hours ago

Me and my brother lived at our grans in our mid to later teens, we lived in the living room, and as teenagers do, we would be up till late playing video games and browsing the web on our laptops, my brother had the latest macbook and we had the latest consoles. Late one night in the AM, I had been gaming and my brother was probably making music on his mac, the living room was not well concealed from the outside, gaps in curtains, windows on the foot path and being on the ground floor. A knock on the door, young and dumb, I answered, it was a tall mid to late 20s guy, a little sketchy looking, he asked if we knew of a party near by, he had been looking for it and wasn't able to find this party. Me and my brother had no clue about a party. He left and we closed the door, and that was that, but then another knock at the door, same guy, but this time his eyes were darting about through the front door, he asked us if he could come in, which was an obvious no, on attempting to close the door, he wedge his foot in the gap. Me and by brother had to shoulder the door to close it.

We didn't leave, just felt freaked out and a little trapped. It was one of those moments where I hadn't reflected all that much at that time, but now in my 30s, I do find myself thinking what if.

[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

I was living with my sister in a condo. We frequently played pool at a place across the street. It was a sort of yuppy pool place, not a biker bar. It was located on the end of a strip mall. To get there, we walked to the end of the row of single story condos, then through some bushes and into the sidewalk, jaywalked across the street and into the parking lot.

So we're doing this and just as we reach the sidewalk on the other side of the street, a car pulls out of the parking lot, like normal, and turns in our direction. Just behind it another car pulls out very quickly, not like normal, it overtakes the first car and forces it up onto the sidewalk where we are walking. Suddenly like three other cars pull in from multiple directions. We are literally standing in a police arrest scene. So glad when the perp went up on the sidewalk, he took care not to run over us. I guess the cops never expected people to suddenly emerge from the bushes and cross the street just at that moment.

[–] CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I was like 12 and I was baby sitting two ~eight year olds. Went to the local elementary with them to use the big toy. There was a group of three boys there and one had what looked like a real gun, yes this was in America. I said NOPE! and immediately turned my kids and myself around and got out of there as fast as possible

The other one was when I was about the same age and my best friend and I were walking around in the neighborhood by her house. It wasn’t a nice area but it’s not like anywhere I spent time was. Some man in his like 40s probably rolled up to us in his big yellow car and started talking to us to get in his car and go to his house, he was drunk, we told him if he told us where he lived we would walk there if he would go buy us beer. He kept hitting his chest like in the wolf of Wall Street and talking nonsense, I tried to scoot away to look at his license plate but he snapped at me to come back. Eventually we got him to agree to go buy us beer in exchange for us walking to his house. As soon as he started driving away we ran as fast as we could back to her house and called the cops and told them everything, including where the guy lived since he told us

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I was just moved to Italy. I knew no one and I had to do some history assignment for Uni. I went to the city archive looking for some documentation and I was incredibly lost.

Some middle age man approached me and starting helping me around. He talked with everybody there and they all respected them. He was really nice to me all the time. I got into the archive and got everything I wanted. But I was more creepied out each minute. The guy had starting talking about how spaniards(me) and italians needs to be friends because our shared history of friendship with Franco and Mussolini. At the end he asked for my number, he really looked like he was trying to recruit me. I gave him a fake one and moved away. Never got near that location again in all the the time I spent in the city.

[–] 9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 57 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (5 children)

20 yrs ago...

Driving through upstate new york with my family. Passed through a small town looking for some food and/or gas.

One house had nazi banners hanging openly on the front of the house. Not flags, they were like those big vertical banners behind hitler during speeches.

Nope. We can hold our pee and get gas later.... drive a little faster and get out.

As a canadian, i was shocked.... i thought stuff like that only existed in the deep south.... we were 3hrs from the canadian border or something.

In hindsight, it explains a lot about the current state of affairs in the US

[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

I live in Albany, NY. It's a city of about 100K people, and it's pretty diverse. I've found lots of pro nazi shit on peoples houses within 10 miles of the city limit.

I sort of think, people were always Nazi douche nozzles, but trump made them brave about being open and upfront with their hate.

[–] diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 13 hours ago

1 downvote is the house owner

[–] Nautalax@lemmy.world 7 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

In upstate New York one of my college friends borrowed my car and was driving around with it. My car had a Norwegian flag decoration on it and some guy pumping gas at a gas station mistook it for the Confederate flag, pointed at it and said, “yeah the South will rise again!!!” while my (Asian…) friend was also filling up. When she got back she had a lot of questions for me about what kind of flag it was since she wasn’t familiar with the Norwegian one.

Never ever seen a Nazi flag in person and I’ve lived in the Deep South for about a decade. Confederate ones are super common though, albeit less so than just a few years back.

[–] Washedupcynic@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 hours ago

A New Yorker so dumb he doesn't even know NY wasn't part of the confederacy.

[–] TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 2 points 17 hours ago

Well I'm not entirely surprised. Rural areas just tend to lean right. Even in a wider region that is more liberal like California and New York, their rural parts are more right leaning.

[–] zqps@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago

And remember, those are just the dumbest handful of them.

[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 48 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Driving out west in Canada from the prairies to see the ocean years ago. Went through Golden, BC and decided to go into the town proper for a dinner, rather than the roadside chains. It was about 6:10 PM. When we walked in there were about twenty locals who immediately all went quiet when we walked in. We grabbed a table and proceeded to get stared at by the whole room. I nodded at a few with no response. My wife looked terribly uncomfortable. We got up, apologized to the waitress and got the hell out of dodge. Even looking back years later I am still weirded out by that scene. I'm sure that, if we stayed, we would've wound up in some sort of Stephen King short story.

I've had something similar happen. Old school mom n pop diner type of restaurant in a "big suburb" level city, sorta "local famous" kind of place, had seen cars with their bumper stickers around town for years, figured we'd try it one day just for shits and grins. The feeling was not bad enough to leave, we went ahead and ate and paid and left. But definitely had the feeling that we were being, not necessarily watched overtly, but they were keeping an eye on us. Everyone. Wait staff, other customers. No idea why. The whole time just vaguely uncomfortable feeling that you can't really put your finger on. After we left, my wife and I both at pretty much the same time were like "ok that was creepy right?"

Stephen King was what I thought of too. Specifically the scene in (I think) one of the Dark Tower books where they go into the restaurant that is owned by vampires or whatever they were.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] LucidNightmare@anarchist.nexus 32 points 1 day ago (5 children)

Does anyone else find it odd that a lot of day old accounts make their first post here specifically, or is that just a coincidence?

[–] atro_city@fedia.io 0 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

If they post interesting stuff, who cares?

[–] SharkAttak@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 46 minutes ago

Reddit is very interesting, yeah.

We need to leave ... now.

[–] JessyKenning@lemmy.world 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Well just about every askreddit post I've made was removed and then reposted by a mod. I can see why people would want to try here.

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 3 points 18 hours ago

that's not a bad idea, though

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 17 hours ago

askreddit so overmoderated by the sub filters and reddit AI.

Could be a lot of lurkers finally found something worth posting too.

...or as history has taught me, BOTS

[–] OctopusNemeses@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

There was a pretty noticeable moment a few years ago when lemmy seemed to spring to life with activity. Mainly those screenshot posts from other social media or those newer image macro things. I'm 99% sure that's when somebody turned on bots to make lemmy look more lively.

[–] DaanBanaan@lemmy.world 47 points 1 day ago (1 children)

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vuurwerkramp_in_Enschede

I live in this city. We were watching the fireworks depot burning from what we thougt was a safe distance...After the first explosion we knew we were waayyyy to close and left right away. Just minutes later the whole neighbourhood was gone.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works 88 points 1 day ago

I kinda had the opposite happen.

I was working for a charity doing some reconstruction in an ex war zone. That weekend was a major festival. I’m not of the area nor the religion so I volunteered to keep an eye on our camp instead that weekend.

I finished my breakfast in the canteen and was about to walk the perimeter and do my checks when, inexplicably, I decided to stall and have a second coffee. Something I never did.

As I went to sit down a massive explosion happened outside, shattering the entire area me and my clipboard should have been in. I wouldn’t have stood a chance. The canteen we were in was made out of shipping containers and probably saved our lives.

[–] sveltecider@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 day ago

I knew there was a mountain lion somewhere in the area once when I was hiking. Got tf out immediately.

[–] WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 21 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm feeling that right now for this planet, really badly.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 63 points 1 day ago (9 children)

Three hours down a very remote hike with no phone service, a schizophrenic guy asks what we'd do if someone tried to kill us right now

[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 day ago

Only correct answer: "What are the chances that there's two people here with that intention"

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] LordCrom@lemmy.world 52 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I trust my spidey sense. When the hairs on the back of my neck go up and i get that feeling in my chest, i listen to it.

Its gotten me out of an armed store robbery, 2 ither street level robberies, 2 houses that just didnt feel right, multiple encounters with dangerous animals ( gators and 1 panther).

My wife just thinks im paranoid.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] martin@lemmy.caliban.io 24 points 1 day ago

In our local pub in Scotland, they had a DJ in the back room on a Friday / Saturday night. One night some guy bumped into me and I felt something hit the floor by my feet, I looked down and it was a 12 inch serrated kitchen knife with tape on the handle, i looked up and it was some wee wideo ned. So I went over to my mate old him to finish his drink quickly as possible because we're getting the fuck out of there tonight.

[–] SUDO@reddthat.com 213 points 2 days ago (21 children)

I was hiking with my buddy and felt a bit uneasy. Like my skin felt fuzzy, it was hard to explain. I yelled "Run!" To a friend, we ran down the mountain and dodged getting hit by lightning a few seconds later.

load more comments (21 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›