What is the most deceptive thing that you’ve experienced?

My dad used an education savings account to funnel my bar mitzvah money and birthday money in “for college”. Kept telling me I’m so lucky because my college will be paid off. Cheats on my mom, buys a Lincoln MKX, and flees to Russia instead.

I found that pretty deceptive.

I was cleaning my roof gutters, grabbed a handfull of leaves, turned out to be a frog.

HostGator. They raised their prices by quite a bit last time I renewed. So I contacted them and complained. After a while they came back with a "special" offer to renew at the old price but I had to accept it right then. I felt like I wasn't gonna get a better deal and it wasn't my money anyway, so I accepted.

Got the price they offered but they renewed it two months ahead of when it was due, so it ended up costing the same anyway, because now it will be up for renewal sooner. I will be moving away from them before the next renewal.

TL;DR: HostGator can fuck right off

I was raised Mormon. Finally left in my 40s.

I cleared out an old desk at work and found 3k in cash in an envelope. Turned in all the papers I found to accounting but that one. Nothing ever came back to bite me and I gave it all to my brother, he paid rent with it for two months.

When I was young there was this dude constantly hitting on my (now fiance) girlfriend. He hopped in my truck one night cause he was friends with my buddy. They all went into McDonalds and I stayed in my truck and smoked. He was a dealer. I went in his backpack and took his weed stash, hid it in the new speakers I just bought. Dropped them off when we got home and he didnt know until a day later.

Wait did we have to be the deceivers?

My mother passed away, and as an only child with very little other family, it fell on my wife and me to deal with her estate. After everything was settled, we took a getaway trip to unwind and decompress. While on the trip, we were offered a chance to go to a sales pitch meeting one morning. We would be given some really good gifts if we listen to their one hour presentation. We went in with the firm understanding that we were going to say “NO“ to everything, get our free gifts, and leave.

It was a pitch for a Hotel club. You were supposed to get great deals on any hotel anywhere in the world. Just call up, give them the company name and member number, and collect your discounts. They even offered us enough extra memberships that we could give one to each of our kids. It was quite pricey, but we actually had some money from my mother‘s estate, and what they offered was a great deal. We would have eventually over time gotten back in savings the money we spent.

When we got home and began researching it, it turns out that we had been lied to (shocker I know). They just said yes to any question I asked even if it was a bold faced lie. The discounts were only on exotic resorts in places like Key West, Cabo, etc., and for weeks long to months long stays. That’s definitely not us, which made this a complete waste of money. Luckily I kept the contract and followed the cancellation policy to a T. I stopped payment on the check I wrote them, and interestingly, they sent me a check in the mail for the same amount a couple weeks later. Had I not had any morals, I could’ve doubled my money by cashing it, but, while it would have served them right, I didn’t want to be a scammer like they were.

On the upside, we got the “gifts”, so there’s that.

Banks reordering transactions to maximize fees. That is closely contending with the nondeterministic fees that US contract cellular companies charged in the past (and may still). I got on prepaid in 2007 and never looked back. I view both industries as extortionist criminals.

My ex wife.

There was this mommy blogger in the early aughts who decided to have an "unassisted birth", which is a thing where you just don't have any medical care at all. She pontificated often about Big Obstetrics and how they always pushed you for C section because they got paid more, she called midwives "medwives", and all sorts of other crunchy shit like that. She clearly was not terribly confident but was terribly obnoxious and holier than thou. Fine. I think she had NPD or BPD because of her behaviour personally. Just the nastiest person. She did all her own pregnancy care, which apparently was just writing weight down and taking vitamins and that's about it.

Well at 33 weeks she went ripping into early labour, phoned her old midwife and while telling her quite rudely that she wanted an unassisted birth also asked her what to do. The midwife told her to go to ER and that she couldn't help her because it was out of her scope. So she went screaming to ER, could feel baby sitting right at the perineum. The OB takes a look and tells her they have to do a section because baby is breech and obstructed. She began screeching at him that she only wanted to have a vaginal birth and told him he was "birth raping" her, and acted like a hysterical hyena. He managed to convince her how bad things were and that she needed to be delivered RIGHT NOW, and she finally consented and they took her up, and put her under general anesthesia.

She later wrote this vague blog birth story, baby had died because of congenital defects before she woke up, and she wrote a very long set of blog posts about All The Ways The Hospital Was Wrong without really going into why her baby died, and everyone fell all over themselves pitying her and telling her that she was so right about everything. She blogged about how the nurses were so terrible for trying to connect her with social work or grief groups, and when they offered her medication to dry up her breast milk she screeched that they were not supportive of her breastfeeding her 3 year old.

But later on the story came out that baby had a rare condition called sirenomelia, or mermaid syndrome it's sometimes called. It's a birth defect where the legs are fused together into the appearance of a mermaid tail. They have a lot of other defects, including no kidneys, no genitals, heart defects, etc. Sirenomelia is caused by untreated gestational diabetes. So not having prenatal care probably killed her child. That was damn deceptive, making everyone pity her when it was just her own obnoxious ignorance.

Capitalism and the American dream.

Back in 2011, as an intern for a lake club, the place's director called me and my boss, who was the sole IT department of the place. The director was trying to get my boss to quit, doing all sorts of assholeish tactics and pressure, including calling for an "off the record" talk which we both saw him preparing his cellphone to record.

My boss was fired some time afterwards, getting full rights and pay and everything. The club later contracted a private IT support firm, paying 3x what they paid me + my boss. Fuck that place.

If I just say my ex, do I need a whole backstory?

Telling kids they can do anything is a gigantic lie and is pretty much socially required at this juncture. Setting aside the dishonesty, that sets them up for self-loathing when they actually make normal headway for someone starting in whatever social class.

The advertising blasting into our brains throughout the day is also a major contender. Past a certain age we all know it's lies, but damn, it's still lies, and sometimes it manages to subtly influence you anyway.

My parents

the last Presidential election that Elon hacked for the wealthy fucks that need their asses handed to them 50+yo here

Financing offers through the car dealership.

financing at a car dealership, for sure.

don’t believe me, go try it, you walk in ready to buy a car, and 4 hours and a ton of signing paperwork later, you start to wonder if it was all worth it lmao

Many "government" entities in the US are private for-profit companies: Postal Service, vehicle licensing, electric companies, water companies, which control the very infrastructure of everyday life.

Capitalism.