Thank you for posting that link. I watched with the sound off, and was in tears by halfway through. Several of the reveals apply to me, and I’m sure to folks I know. Like many people, I try to mask my worries with a positive attitude and cautious optimism, and it often doesn’t occur to me that others are doing the same.
Update: I found her parents’ obituaries via Newspapers.com, and I think I may have had a run-in with her father. The obituary said he was a “self-employed XYZ home improvement salesman” and shortly after I first moved out on my own, I got a postcard stating that I could call an 800 number (mid 1980s) and someone would come to my house and do a free test, and I would get a gift as a result. Since I liked free stuff, and still do, I called that number, and a middle-aged man came by and did the test - and proceeded to launch into a very high-pressure sales pitch that went on for a couple hours before I told him that he needed to leave my place, immediately, or I would call the police. To my surprise, he actually did pack his things up and depart.
I learned a lesson that day! I don’t remember the free gift, but it wasn’t worth it.
There was a guy featured on Forensic Files who murdered his wife and set fire to their house to cover it up. He eventually got out of prison and remarried. Recently he commented on his Facebook page (in connection with dry conditions in his western state): “Yikes! Be careful with fire.”
Another Facebook ex-con who was convicted of killing two of her children “liked” someone else’s comment demanding that Facebook reject registered sex offenders.
You gotta draw the line somewhere, apparently.
Perhaps he’s establishing his next alibi.
And yet occasionally you’ll find out things about people (on Facebook or whatever) that will make you happy for them. Just this year I was trying to remember the name of a woman who I remembered vaguely from grad school. I hadn’t seen her or heard anything about her since 1977. I hadn’t tried to do a search on her before (as I have on some people I knew back then). Back then, she was one of a group of fellow grad students that hung out together, although we were studying in various departments. We were mostly going for a Ph.D., but a few of us, like her, were going for a master’s degree. She was planning to be a cellist.
So I found a website that gave her history up until now. After getting her master’s in music performance, she played in several orchestras, none of them really top ones. I know that it’s hard to make a living from such orchestras, and it’s necessary to have side jobs like teaching your instrument to pupils and playing in small groups for recordings of various sorts. This website said that she tried to do this for a few years, but then she decided to go back to school. She then got a bachelor’s, a master’s, and a Ph.D. in mathematics. She’s been teaching at a college for a while now.
She was the one among my friends back in grad school that I would have least expected this to happen to. This shows how badly I underestimated her. I think it’s wonderful that her life has turned out so well.
One of my biggest surprises was a boy who was a bit of a goof-off but I could tell he was actually very intelligent. Googling him revealed that he was a veterinarian with a master’s degree in ruminant digestion (I had no idea such a degree actually existed!). His specialty was pretty obvious - it was taking care of cows in dairy farms, and specifically adjusting their diet for optimal health and milk production. I don’t think he was ever in private practice.
I have a great deal of clinical experience in ruminant digestion.*
*I’ve eaten lots of hamburgers.
Same here LOL.
Social Media has also tossed me a few curveballs WRT classmates who were LGBT. Most really weren’t surprises, but there were two (both men) that totally knocked my socks off. Him, gay? No way! Now, in one case, looking back, I can kinda see it, but the other one? That was a big shock.
I’m just glad they can now be who they really are.
I find out stuff about my own relatives this way. Like the fact that one of my Aunts is in a lesbian relationship. She recently got married to this woman (who might be gender fluid, she’s pretty flexible with her pronouns.) After my Aunt spent her whole life dating men, I did not see that coming. I wasn’t even sure if she accepted LGBTQ people, much less that she was one. But Facebook made it obvious she is madly in love.
Try being the family tech support. Since I’m a programmer, the assumption is I can fix any issue with laptops, phones, etc. Judging by browser and download histories, we have several folks who’d really like to try some alternate* lifestyles, but apparently don’t wish to go public. I just delete as many tracks as I can and fix the original problem. Sometimes I’m tempted to quietly point out all the breadcrumbs they’re leaving behind, but life experience has taught me that silence is usually the better path.
*to them, anyway.
I am the relative my family learned things about on FB. I came out as asexual on a “coming out day” a few years ago online but I’d never admitted it to them in person. I’m sure they weren’t surprised but knowing it probably answered a few questions.
This has risks. My grandfather does not have Facebook and my Aunt kept this a secret from him for quite a while, until my Mom decided he “deserved to know the truth” and outed her to my grandfather. My Aunt has since blocked my mother and wants nothing to do with her. I think it’s terrible to out someone who’s LGBTQ, and my Mom had no business doing that, but when you put that stuff on Facebook, it’s bound to get out.
Hell, I remember making an innocuous post about putting too much garlic in a soup, which then caused my allergy-ridden husband to get sick. I said I “accidentally poisoned my husband” and when I went to his family gathering, eeeeeeverybody knew about it.
When I first went to work in the state court system, my job was to transcribe minutes from the board that regularly reviewed Dept of Human Services cases involving children in state care. I was depressed every day. It was my first introduction to that world, having grown up in what I now know is a healthy love-filled home with responsible parents.
Now, after over 30 years with the courts and exposure to hundreds of murder, rape, and abuse cases, I really have seen everything. I am saddened to say that absolutely nothing that people do to each other or their children surprises me anymore. This certainly may go a long way to explaining why I can sometimes be very negative about people.
For the posters noting the “over the top” story about the girlfriend in the basement being held hostage. Note that there is no report at all of the girlfriend being held against her will. Based on the plain reading of the OP, said girlfriend was free to come and go. The idea of the hostage is identified by the OP as pure speculation. The husband may just have wanted to keep the “scandal” of having an extra room-mate in his nuclear family.
I know this feeling. I pointed out in another thread that I’d done software development for a law office, and when I entered actual divorce/childcare cases into the system, I wanted to shower in bleach. The lengths people will go when love turns to hate are unfathomable to most of us (I hope it’s “most”).
But the stuff I found on family laptops was benign and relatively harmless – just embarrassing kinks if made public. Trust me, it wouldn’t move the needle much for most of us.
I’ve wanted to start a thread about this – maybe “What event destroyed your faith in humanity?” but never have. I’m pretty sure it would be a depressing read.
I’ve heard a lot of grisly things in my career as a social worker, first when I took a class in child welfare policy, then as an intern working with people who had abused or neglected their children, and finally in my current job at an agency which supports survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. I’ve heard things that haunt my dreams.
That said, social work helped restore my faith in humanity. There are so many bright, dedicated, compassionate people in the world, and I work with them all the time. It’s not as demoralizing when you’re part of a team.
I just can’t imagine too many women choosing to live in a house with a wife and kids upstairs, especially if they’re being abused on a regular basis. I haven’t seen the “Girl In A Box” mentioned in this thread, but that did cross my mind when I saw her post - and for much of that time, she was indeed able to come and go as she pleased too, but was always told that “The Company” would find out if she tried to escape.
That’s definitely going on in this case. I don’t know what’s happening now, and I’m not going to ask because it’s NOOB and I don’t want to know anyway.
I can barely imagine the horror that these victims go through. Being cautious about what is said in the OP does not in any way diminish my or everyone’s concern about the situation. The issue I point out is that we don’t know enough to draw a conclusion. The case you cite is horrific, and by no means unique. What we don’t know is how frequent it is. How many people are trapped in this situation compared to the number of people who are just found a cheap place to stay. The OPs situation is clearly something that needed investigating-for many horrible things that were going on. But let us not make a logical fallacy of assuming that since we know of some kinds of events that means all events are similar.
I overshare, and mentioned once that I had pulled a knife on my father when he was getting rough with dropmom. This pissed off my brother because he and dropdad were among Seattle’s finest lawyers and others checked out their Facebook pages.
Never thought anyone would be interested .