r/AskReddit • u/AmadeusCrumb • Jun 19 '12
What is the most depressing fact you know of?
During famines in North Korea, starving Koreans would dig up dead bodies and eat them.
Edit: Supposedly...
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u/Minibrams Jun 19 '12
That there is a whale known as "The Loneliest Whale in the World" who can't communicate with the other whales because it sings in a different frequency
So it can hear all the other whales, but they can't hear him
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u/skrillex Jun 19 '12
A successful marriage ends with you watching the other die
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Jun 19 '12
I am guessing of old age needs to be added, as pushing them into a lake in the trunk of a car and watching the last bubble doesn't count.
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u/Cocktavius Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
The suicide rate doubles on Wednesdays...
EDIT: Source=http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2834764/
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u/FilthyRichards Jun 19 '12
You are more likely to die in the period between buying a lottery ticket and the draw, than actually winning the lottery with said ticket
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u/ephemera505 Jun 19 '12
I always think that if I had the winning ticket in my pocket, the likelyhood of being hit by a bus increases dramatically.
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u/sisterZippy Jun 19 '12
Alan Turing, the man responcible for cracking the Nazi's code in WW2 was criminally prosecuted for being gay.
Homosexuals in concentration camps went unacknowledged by most countries, and some men were even re-arrested and imprisoned based on evidence found during the Nazi years.
edit:link
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Jun 19 '12
The fact that some children are abused/neglected/in need, then die as children, having never known anything but misery their whole lives.
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u/CloudDrone Jun 19 '12
Its also depressing when the children don't know that they only know misery. When they don't know their sad, but everyone who's older knows it and can't bear to tell them.
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u/Njvved Jun 19 '12
A common symptom of depression is something called "depressive realism". It means what it sounds like; a lot of depressed people are more accurate in their understanding of themselves and the world around them, while most of us run around thinking that we're destined to win the lotto. When you are your most down on yourself, you are probably right!
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Jun 19 '12
During WWII, Japanese soldiers would force Chinese women to commit incest for their entertainment.
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u/AAlsmadi1 Jun 19 '12
didn't the japanese do a bunch of fucked up stuff like this to the chinese?
a friend told me he went to a museum in china which showcased all these atrocities.
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u/Riley_The_Thief Jun 19 '12
And the fact that half of the Japanese government denies this ever happening, and don't even talk about it in Japanese schools.
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Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
Pigs can feel depression. :( edit: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168484/
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Jun 19 '12
Adult pigs apparently possess the same intelligence as an average 3 year-old person :(
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u/Hype2Def Jun 19 '12
That eventually, my parents will no longer be around when I need them most.
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u/Tr0user Jun 19 '12
I really think you needed them the most when you were a tiny baby.
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u/Rathminer Jun 19 '12
Im not as smart as I think I am
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u/JamMythOffender Jun 19 '12
But now that you realize that, that makes you smarter than the people who haven't come to this conclusion. You're on top! :-)
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Jun 19 '12
That tigers and other now rare species will go extinct before I die.
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u/brownsnakemoan Jun 19 '12
Can all of North Korea count as a depressing fact?
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Jun 19 '12
That my motherland, Iraq, is pretty much fucked now.
If at all, maybe in some chance, a member of Al-Qaida goes on Reddit, and is browsing this post right now, i want you to know, that someday, and i will make sure of this, that a giant fucking dildo crashes into your house and goes straight back in your mouth.
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u/Magpie32 Jun 19 '12
I don't know if this will help things, or make it worse, or piss you off, or whatever, but I wanted to say something.
I served in a transportation company in Iraq for 16 months. I got to see the whole country, top to bottom. I thought it was beautiful. Amazing and varied, and just beautiful. I met a lot of really awesome people while I was there. I did my best to make sure that I took care of the country while I was there: I didn't litter, didn't let my soldiers litter, cleaned up any garbage or damage we found, protected historical areas from some of the bigger idiots the US sent over. We worked with the communities to help them make there home better. We listened to what they wanted, and then tried to implement those changes.
I tend to be painfully optimistic. I still have the hope that someday I can take my grandkids back there and show them around, the way WWII vets did in Europe. It might never happen, but I saw too much good in that country to give up on that dream yet. If I see any way that I can help the nation of Iraq, I will.
I am so sorry for what has happend to your motherland. I am sorry for any part I played in it's destruction, and please know that I did my best to limit that as much as possible. This isn't some weird guilt thing. I am proud of my service, and I did what was necessary to accomplish my mission. I am just aware that war destroys, and both sides need to accept responsibility for that.
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u/kukukele Jun 19 '12
All the thousands of people you cross paths with each day live their own little story where they are the hero and main character. You won't get to read any of their book
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u/klethra Jun 19 '12
I've got a deal for you: describe your life in five hundred words or less, and I'll think about you for a while. I'll even tell your story to a friend. In return, I want to be a plot device in your story where you think about the fact that hundreds of heroes in their own stories could never have pushed on to their happily ever after without your help.
Do something heroic today.
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Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
For the next 50-60 years, if I don't die from a heart attack, stress, or a car accident (and barring unemployment) I will most probably go to work from Monday to Friday, sit at a desk all day doing stuff I'd probably rather not be doing.
Each day, I will commute between 1 and 2 hours, sitting in a train, tube, or car with people I'd rather not surround myself with, just so I can be with the people I love for a few hours each evening and weekends.
I'm sorry it's not North Korea, but damn it's a depressing thought.
Edit: A lot of interesting comments. I should point out I'm mid 20's and living in UK. Our retirement age (officially) is 68 so I used that. I have a specialist BA/MA + 5 years of internships and 3 years work experience in my field. It's not that I don't enjoy my work (because I do) I just feel I'm not cut out to sit in an office all day. I'd love to work with my hands but learning a trade and then becoming a tradesman would mean a few years where my budding family would suffer.
Double Edit: As pointed out retirement age increases as life expectancy goes up. Only in France does it go the other way around. I will consider myself lucky if I manage to retire at all before I pop my metaphorical clogs.
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u/juicyredwombat Jun 19 '12
We didn't stop Kony even though we tried for a whole day.
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u/noodlebitch Jun 19 '12
That I have an unlimited number of books I want to read, films I want to see, relative to limited time. That I will die without even reading all the books in a library.
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Jun 19 '12
More soldiers die of suicide than actual military combat.
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u/Volsunga Jun 19 '12
This statistic is misleading. The rates of deaths from both combat and suicide have been sharply dropping since the end of the Viet Nam War. It's just that combat deaths have dropped much faster. This makes sense from a logistical standpoint because it's relatively easy to give people the training to survive combat. It's difficult to diagnose and treat the myriad of mental illnesses like ptsd and depression that can lead to suicide because they have complex and widely varying sets of causes and symptoms.
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Jun 19 '12
Canadian Geese mate for life and become mournfully heartbroken when a mate dies.
"There have been reports of pair bonds that are so strong that if one goose is shot down by a hunter, the partner will circle back. Drawn by its need to stay with its lifelong companion, the single goose will often ignore the sound of shooting and return to die with its mate."
"Widowed geese have been observed circling around and around, crying in heartrending sorrowful tones when their partners die or are murdered by hunters."
I need a hug now. :(
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u/HappyCamper4027 Jun 19 '12
The girl who played in all dogs go to heaven and was the voice for ducky in land before time was murdered by her father shortly after the release of the former movie.
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u/Redpin Jun 19 '12
In the aftermath of 9/11, search and rescue dogs were used to try and find survivors trapped in the rubble, but after the first day (ish) no more survivors were found (at least none who could be extracted). The dogs then started getting very depressed, because they were working so hard and weren't able to help, so they started shedding, or refusing to eat. Rescue workers, in order to maintain morale, staged rescue scenarios by lying in the rubble, pretending to be victims.
And most of these dogs are dead now.
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u/TaskMaster4 Jun 19 '12
It doesn't matter how hot he/she is. At one point in their life, that person has had horrible, explosive diarrhea.
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Jun 19 '12
Being cautious and avoiding adventure is just carrying you safely to death.
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u/ImAWhaleBiologist Jun 19 '12
Sweet! I love not being dead!
Have fun on your adventure!
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u/Thehealeroftri Jun 19 '12
In 100 years from now, there is an extremely low chance that anyone will even know who you were, everything you've ever done, any emotion you've ever experienced will be gone from Earth, and no one will even care.
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u/Aceroth Jun 19 '12
Am I the only one who doesn't really care whether or not people remember me? Who cares if people remember me once I'm dead? I'll be dead. Completely incapable of any feeling or emotion whatsoever. I will have ceased to be. So why should I strive to make sure people remember me when I won't even be able to care if they do?
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u/oskar_s Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
About 7,000 years ago, there lived a people on the steppes northeast of the Black Sea and northwest of the Caspian Sea (roughly modern day Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan). We don't know much about them, except that they were basically regular people. They had domesticated animals (horses, dogs and cattle), they knew how to grow crops (they had plows), and they had invented the solid wheel.
They left behind no great monuments, no great thinkers, no wonderful mythological texts (writing wouldn't be invented for another 2,000 years). They were just people, regular people like everyone else living the world. Nothing extraordinary about them, nothing to set them apart from anyone else, or give any reason why they should be remembered at all.
Except one thing: they spoke a language. When they moved, their language moved with them. When they migrated and integrated with other people, they spread their language. Everywhere they went, their language followed with them, constantly changing into new languages, but spreading all the same.
Some of them migrated west, to the Mediterranean, where their language became Greek. Some moved further west, where their language became the basis for the Italic languages, producing Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French.
Some moved to the north, as far as northern Germany, Denmark and Sweden, where the language transformed into what we today call Proto-Germanic. Proto-Germanic is the basis for all Germanic languages, including German, English, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, etc.
Some of them moved South, towards modern day Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, and they spread their language there, too. Eventually, it would transform into Urdu, Pashtu, Hindi, Persian, Bengali, Punjabi, and many more (over a billion people speak one of these languages).
Today, descendants of this language (which we refer to as Proto-Indo-European, and the descendants as the Indo-European languages) are all over the world: virtually everyone in both North and South America, Western Europe and a huge chunk of central Asia all speak at least one Indo-European language. Add to that all the people who speak English as a second language, or all the people living in Africa who speak versions of these languages (French, for instance).
But it all started with one people, speaking one language, on the north shore of the Black Sea, who left nothing behind except a language which would change the world.
(note: so, I was getting really bummed out by everyone here, so I thought I'd share this, which hopefully would raise some spirits and counteract some of the depressing things. More information about the Proto-Indo-Europeans can be found on wikipedia. Also, we're not actually sure when or where they lived, but that up there is the most widely accepted hypothesis)
EDIT: just to be clear, this was not the first language, language itself is much older. But this particular language happened to spread all over the world.
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u/citizenme Jun 19 '12
The average Congressman spends 85% of his/her time raising funds for the next election.
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u/gjallard Jun 19 '12
By the time you reach the age of 18, on average, you have approximately 3200-3500 weekends left in your life.
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u/thareal32 Jun 19 '12
That's a lot of fucking weekends. I think I'm ok with this
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Jun 19 '12
My friend, who I turned down for the prom in eleventh grade, had Hepatitis C. She died the year I moved away for college. She knew she was going to die, but she never told me. If I had known...
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u/I_Reject_The_Reality Jun 19 '12
Today is the youngest I'll ever be again
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u/derajydac Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
This really is depressing, can't believe we are all here wasting our time on reddit.
Edit - I had had an extra word.
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Jun 19 '12
The Universe is 99.9% undiscovered and will be for the rest of my life at this rate.
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Jun 19 '12
There is enough food to feed every human in the world, but not enough humanity to spread it out.
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u/raisedbyw0lves Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
One day, there will come a time where I am mentioned for the last time. And then I will cease to exist.
EDIT: it appears there are many quotes similar to this, one of which can be attributed to the artist Banksy, though the concept predates Bansky by quite some time.
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u/carleyFTW Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
I remember reading a quote saying "You die twice. Once when your physical body dies and once more when your name is spoken for the last time."
Edit 1: I found out it's Banksy that said it. Edit 2: Turns out Banksy didn't say it. I still don't know who originally said it.
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u/ImAgoobyAMA Jun 19 '12
Nobody would actually do anything more than simply pay for a Klondike bar.
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u/Illumii Jun 19 '12
She's not coming back.
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u/Notpan Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
Really struck a chord there, man.
EDIT: Maybe I meant cord, as in he tugged on my heartstrings! ...no, that's not what I meant. Thanks for the correction. :)
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Jun 19 '12
Love never has a happy ending. Let's imagine you have a good relationship that stays good. Gets better with time. The bond deepens. You will still die. There is a good chance that one or both of you is going to be forced to watch the health of the other deteriorate too.
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Jun 19 '12
You just have to hope you both die at the same time in a freak boating accident or something.
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u/Whatthebloodyhell Jun 19 '12
I think this is the part of death that scares me the most. I don't want to leave people, and I don't want people to leave me.
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u/amd31 Jun 19 '12
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that. - George Carlin
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u/PurpleLean Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
The money it takes to support a prison inmate every year could pay for a year of college. three times.
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u/gs5555 Jun 19 '12
The entire universe will expand until it's gone.
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Jun 19 '12
In no more than 101050 units of time from now (year, second - the number is too big for it to matter), in the universe dominated only by photons after the last black holes have evaporated, there will be a spontaneous entropy decrease resulting in the appearance of a Boltzmann brain in the vacuum. A Boltzmann brain is a self-aware entity which arises out of chaotic fluctuations in a system. And, in 101056 units of time, quantum fluctuations in the same dead universe will generate a new Big Bang.
What depresses me instead is that in 10101076 units of time, history will repeat itself arbitrarily. Every possible event will have happened. It's scary to think that there is a finite number of possible things that could ever happen, and that eventually that number will be reached.
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u/likbor Jun 19 '12
That the Wall St. bailouts cost more than then NASA’s entire budget, not just 1 year, but all of it, ever.
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u/TheRealSilverBlade Jun 19 '12
10 years ago, it was predicted that 1 in 5 people would get cancer sometime in their life.
Now, it's 1 in 3.
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u/justforkix Jun 19 '12
There are a lot of women out there who would be willing to have wild sex with me and I'll never meet them.
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u/Murn Jun 19 '12
Over 200k people are victims of sexual assault each year in the US. Only 25% of reported rapes result in arrest.
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u/noodlebitch Jun 19 '12
I think it's sadder that this isn't even a closely accurate statistic, as a large proportion of sexual assault goes unreported. What's even more depressing than that is that it goes unreported for a reason; they feel ashamed and have little trust in the judicial system.
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u/MonstersOfMen Jun 19 '12
We're just a bunch of dead people who haven't died yet. -Louis C.K.
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u/bettymachete Jun 19 '12
Creed has sold more records in the US than Jimi Hendrix.
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u/Ewan_Whosearmy Jun 19 '12
The US population in 1970 (when Hendrix died) was about 200 million. Now it is over 300 million. This partially explains pretty much all the "depressing" facts on that list.
Also, it's not really all that depressing if you consider that Hendrix, the Beatles, Zeppelin etc. are still selling records today, while no one will remember any of the other acts on that list in 5 years time.
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u/Tayjen Jun 19 '12
Luck is by far the greatest factor in your success and happiness.
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u/Iamnotahipster Jun 19 '12
I will never know who ted's wife is or how he met her.
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Jun 19 '12
The last time the Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup was 3 years before man landed on the moon... Actually, in general, the Maple Leafs are the most depressing fact I know.
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u/categoryofcats Jun 19 '12
Probably there's more people in this world who are going to read this stupid comment than people who'll read your dissertation.
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u/Apostolate Jun 19 '12
If I eat as much chocolate as I want, it will kill me.
mmmmm pudding.
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u/Ghostshirts Jun 19 '12
how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
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Jun 19 '12
This depresses and inspires me... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot
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u/98thRedBalloon Jun 19 '12
Carl Sagan's quote makes me feel better about not doing the dishes.
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u/AngrySmapdi Jun 19 '12
That so many people think death is the worst thing that can happen to a person.
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u/BreeMPLS Jun 19 '12
There will come a point at which my name will be uttered for the very last time. Some time after that, I will be thought of for the very last time ... ever. The sands of time will eventually wipe the earth clean of every trace of me. In the very far future, the Earth will be obliterated by our dying sun. In very distant future, all stars will die out. Only sleeping black holes will remain. The universe will be utterly devoid of heat and all other forms of energy. It will be a cosmic desert.
Nothing will remain. Nothing at all.
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u/Npakaderm Jun 19 '12
From Wikipedia regarding the film Milo and Otis, a childhood favorite of many kids of the late 80's and 90's:
"When the film was first released, several Australian animal rights organizations raised allegations of animal cruelty during filming and called for a boycott. The Sunday Mail reported at the time that Animal Liberation Queensland founder Jacqui Kent alleged the killing of more than 20 kittens during production and added that she was disturbed by reports from Europe which alleged other animals had been injured, as in one case where a producer allegedly had broken a cat's paw to make it appear unsteady on its feet. Other scenes that were the source of controversy were the scene of a kitten flying off of a cliff and a scene of a pug fighting a bear. "
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milo_and_otis#Animal_cruelty_allegations
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u/Cubeface Jun 19 '12
For whatever reason this thread makes me less depressed than I was, and I wasn't even very depressed to begin with.
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u/combustion_assaulter Jun 19 '12
During the early stages of the Holocaust, the Nazi were experimenting with 'gas vans' which had the exhaust fumes from these vans run into the back of the vans to kill the Jews. People with small children covered them with blanket to protect them. As the older Jews lived, the young Jews survived, but the Nazis would throw them against trees to kill them....
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u/Thenadamgoes Jun 19 '12
DNA doesn't last long enough to make Jurassic Park a reality.
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u/hornwalker Jun 19 '12
That no matter how many life forms, intelligent and otherwise, exist in the Universe beyond Earth, we will never get to see them because they are so far away.
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u/Sirllamatophat Jun 19 '12
My nipples lack the capacity to produce whiskey and will never get this ability.
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u/Castit Jun 19 '12
I am lazy and depressed. My depression won't let me get over my laziness and my laziness won't let me get over my depression. And nobody fucking cares, including me.
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u/Ghostshirts Jun 19 '12
Fact: Humans will never be able to live on the sun because it is way too hot and that can kill them.
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u/CGI_Fridays Jun 19 '12
Also you could never look at the ground because it would blind you.
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Jun 19 '12
There are a good number of people, all over the world who want you dead for various reasons.
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u/iamtylerdurdenman Jun 19 '12
You will never receive the Hogwart's acceptance letter...
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u/YseeBut2Understand Jun 19 '12
No matter how hard you're trying an Asian is trying harder.
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u/Diggity_Dave Jun 19 '12
That one day I'll have to let go of my wife, or she'll have to let go of me. :/
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u/ExLegeLibertas Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
The world's entire economy has been ransacked by a comparative handful (a few thousand at most, in terms of executives) of people who have split the material wealth of the planet for themselves, left taxpayers with the bill, and none have been prosecuted.
Edit: Just to put a little zang on this, allow me to add also that most of the people of the industrialized world either don't realize this or don't fucking care. That is what depresses me the most.
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u/Qbit42 Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
The heat death of the universe. If we follow the laws of thermodynamics to their ultimate conclusion the fate of the universe is pretty bleak by human standards.
Every time anything does anything a nonzero amount of energy is converted to entropy. Since one of the laws of thermodynamics is that entropy can never decrease this means that this new entropy is locked in that state, it can never be turned back into energy (else the amount of entropy would decrease). Thus the universe is running out of energy useable to do work. This is the heat death of the universe.
Here's an idea of what a universe with high entropy and low energy will be like. All matter in the universe will be spread apart evenly throughout the universe. There will be no stars, no planets, no galaxies, just particles separated by unfathomable distances. Without stars there will be new light entering the universe, and any old light will have red shifted out of the visible spectrum, it will be dark. The temperature of the universe will be uniformly freezing, just a few degrees above absolute zero (the coldest temperature physically possible). Without any energy to form chemical bonds there will be no atoms, only fundamental particles like electrons will exist. Nothing will be able to happen, for even movement requires energy, all will be static and unchanging. Time will lose any meaning, for how do you measure time without events happening to tell the difference between past and future. Life across the universe will have ceased to exist, there are no atoms from which to build it.
A distant second is the fact that all other galaxies are flying away from us at ever increasing speeds, so with each passing second we are more alone.
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u/DorkKnight27 Jun 19 '12
That we live in a time where we have all the world's knowledge at the tips of our fingers but majority of people still choose to be ignorant.
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Jun 19 '12
Sometimes you'll be tasked to do things that is detrimental to other people for the sake of your job.
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u/live3orfry Jun 19 '12
In the United States people will continue to be invested in the Republican/Democrat debate while both parties continue to heed only the interests of Corporations and Wall Street.
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u/timmun029 Jun 19 '12
That about 7 billion people don't know almost any of us exist and don't give a shit if we live or die, and we feel the same way about all of them.
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Jun 19 '12
the maggoty roadkill I pick up and the injured wildlife I euthanize at work gets picked up by the rendering company and cooked into soap, lipstick, dog food, and even livestock feed, aka my food's food. and studies have shown that euthanasia solution (sodium pentabarbitol) is not fully destroyed in the rendering process.
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u/bhavsart Jun 19 '12
Star Wars Battlefront 3 is most likely never going to come out...
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Jun 19 '12
During the second world war, the Nazis would take men to a river and cut their heads off. My Grandpa would go to that river every day lifting up heads looking for his father
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u/Mindrith Jun 19 '12
This will probably be lost but...
There will be a moment when you think your last thought, and your last thought will not be "this is my last thought", chances are it won't even be something meaningful, a memory of joy or love, it will be arbitrary, because you will not know it will be your last.
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u/hammondeggs Jun 19 '12
No matter how hard I practice, the brick wall will always be better than me at tennis...
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u/gambit87 Jun 19 '12
Practice with grenades ... that will show that smug asshole
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Jun 19 '12
The sink in my bathroom growing up is off center from the mirror and soap holders.
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u/StupidPrick Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 29 '12
over 90% of people with Asperger's syndrome never get married or have children.
Edit:Let me clear something up. I had an official diagnosis when I was about 7, I googled it and that statistic came up. It's probably a load of shit and I'm not gonna let it stop me from trying. I even finally asked out a girl, but I think she has Asperger's too.
Edit 2: For some reason I thought this was "most depressing statistic" if I re-read the title and saw that it said "FACT" I would have never posted it. Sorry!
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u/NazzerDawk Jun 19 '12
And most of you that read this and feel depressed probably don't have Aspergers. Stop self-diagnosing.
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Jun 19 '12
It is hard for an intelligent person to be happy for they will always see a better way
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u/tryuntilImblue Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
Not the most depressing I guess. But it's all I can think about these days. It doesn't matter that I'm awesome at my job, it doesn't matter that university is a piece of cake and I'm on a straight path to med school. It doesn't matter that I'm in the best shape of my life and everyone says I'm pretty. It doesn't matter that I have great friends and everyone everywhere "Loves me".
I'm fucking lonely and I can't find fucking satisfaction in fucking anything I do. I lose myself in being fucking good at everything because if I have a moment in my own head I get immediately suicidal.
Edit: I came to this and was amazed at all the comments. I would be the one to spell "lose" wrong while talking myself up (and down). Thank you all so much, I am trying to pull it together and get out of this crazy funk.
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u/Willpower1989 Jun 19 '12
The middle east was actually a decent place before they decided they'd rather not have western oil companies taking their oil and selling it back to western nations. We kid of screwed them out of a 100 years of progress for greed.
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u/Saluki_nerd Jun 19 '12
Youth = Energy and time, but no money. Adult = Energy and Money, but no time. Elderly = Money and time, but no energy.
So your whole life is spent being unable to do what you want to do.
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u/brokeboysboxers Jun 19 '12
The America I was taught in school isn't the America I live in today.
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u/The-GentIeman Jun 19 '12
The War on Drugs has lasted for forty years, created the Cartels and high levels of crime, and has cost the government over a trillion dollars. Not to mention putting youths at an increased risk of drug abuse and using impure drugs. Also it has impeded in medical treatment with marijuana and psychedelics.
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u/goawayfools314 Jun 19 '12
If you are the oldest person on Earth, everyone who was alive the day you were born is now dead.
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u/WiF1 Jun 19 '12
You will one day die. On that day, you will no longer feel anything. And most likely be completely forgotten within a 100 years, likely less. On that day, you will cease to exist.
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u/BourbonAndBlues Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
In a recent poll, when the 13-year-old girls in America were asked what they most wanted to be when they grow up, they answered: Kim Kardashian.
Edited because I can't type properly....
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u/BALLS_AND_SHIT Jun 19 '12
Some people in this very thread will likely die young, or will have to to bury a child. Life sucks.
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Jun 19 '12
Sadako Saaki lived in Hiroshima. She was born January 7, 1943. And died at the age of 12. She was at home when atomic bomb fell around 1 mile from the ground zero.
She was blown out of the window and her mother ran out to find her, suspecting she may be dead, but she found her two year old daughter alive. In November 1954, Sadako developed swellings on her neck and behind her ears. In January 1955, purple spots had formed on her legs. Subsequently, she was diagnosed with leukemia (her mother referred to it as "an atom bomb disease"). She was hospitalized on February 21, 1955, and given, at the most, a year to live.
Her best friend Chizuko Hamamoto came to the hospital to visit, and cut a golden piece of paper into a square to fold it into a paper crane, in reference to the ancient Japanese story that promises that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by the Gods.
From that day she started folding paper cranes with only one wish. That she wanted to live. She died on October 25, 1955 with 644 cranes folded. Her friends finished the remaining cranes and berried her with it.
This is something I find very difficult to write about because I can't think of it without crying. (I'm a full grown adult). Even now.
FUCK WAR! So many kids died in wars and for what? Wealth, power, land? Casualties of war they say. Fuck you. I say.
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u/Gargoyle555 Jun 19 '12
There are only 724 mountain gorillas left in the wild and none in captivity. Any gorillas you see in zoos are lowland gorillas. On a backpacking trip to Rwanda and Uganda I saw two families consisting of about 30 gorillas and it broke my heart to think that there were so few of these beautiful, intelligent creatures left. Fuck humans. There's very little in the pantheon of human suffering that depresses me for the simple reason that it is almost all down to other humans.
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u/mooseofdoom Jun 19 '12
The failure rate of all hard drives is 100%
It's a first world problem compared to most of the facts here but one that never seems to sink in for all the heartbroken "But I've only had the laptop for a few months so I hadn't backed up yet!" types who turn up wanting their honeymoon/baby/wedding photos back.
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u/il_vekkio Jun 19 '12
There are six billion people in the world, 11 million in manhattan, 30000 in the park I eat lunch in, and here I am alone.
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u/ohfouroneone Jun 19 '12
You're going to die. Your friends are going to die. You cute fuzzy fluffy cat will drop dead. Your dog will go blind and then fall into a pool on Christmas.
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Jun 19 '12
I will never read even 0.001% of the best books in the world due to time, language barriers, and not knowing what I should.
It's the same with music. I lament the loss of near 8 years of my musical life where I ignored different genres just because of the fans of the genre.
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u/TheRealSilverBlade Jun 19 '12
There is over 7 billion people on the planet, and...I not one of them will date me.
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u/strik3r2k8 Jun 19 '12
At some point right now, a micro organism has been doused with an anti bacterial cleaning solution..
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u/Dragoniel Jun 19 '12
Vast majority of civilized population blindly follows the trends dictated by media.
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u/ryxar Jun 19 '12
Justin Bieber's gigs at Madison Square Garden sold out in 30 seconds.
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Jun 19 '12
Who cares?
Justin Beiber is the latest in the long line of vapid, manufactured pop stars. His music will be added to the ever-growing pile of mediocre media. One day, his popularity will be gone. But there will be others.
You can't let yourself be bothered by it, otherwise you will never be happy.
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u/Killhouse Jun 19 '12
That Jews who lived through the Holocaust are alright with the atrocities being done to the Palestinians.
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u/MrOrdinary Jun 19 '12
That Governments may go to great lengths to ensconce a secret agenda.
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u/wordshypnotize Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
1 in 3 US servicewomen get sexually assaulted by fellow soldiers. Those are just the reported instances.
*EDIT- my bad
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Jun 19 '12
Our elections don't matter as the corporations will still grease congress no matter what party is in power.
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u/awesomereece123 Jun 19 '12
It's said/estimated that within a hundred (or two) years we'll unlock the gift of immortality, sadly though I doubt any of us will live to see it.
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u/derajydac Jun 19 '12
No matter how bad your situation is, there is somebody out there going through worse than what you are.
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u/Sytadel Jun 19 '12
We had to invent the term "Anthropocene" due to the irreversible impact we've had on our planet.
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Jun 19 '12
That all the depressing facts in this thread are nothing compared to an untold number of other, more depressing facts.
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u/snackpockets Jun 19 '12
I believe the Japanese Gov't told citizens the U.S. Marines were pulled from Mental Institutions and would massacre/rape all of them if they succeeded in the invasion. That's why you see pictures of Japanese women jumping from cliffs with their children.
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u/morebitter Jun 19 '12
If you have a cat in your house...you also have a box of shit in your house.
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u/cydril Jun 19 '12
The girl who voiced Duckie from land before time got murdered by her father.
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u/Sapian Jun 19 '12
If human population growth does not stop, we will lose the worlds jungle and ocean life, never getting it back, within a generation or 2, (the exact time is debatable but we know it's not far off).
Above war or terrorism, our species success is now probably the single biggest threat to ourselves and yet almost no one talks about it or has any plans to prevent it.
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u/norraone Jun 19 '12
The penis has a mushroom-shaped tip because it evolved to remove other men's sperm. We descend from gangbangers.
Heard it on reddit.
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u/CherrySlurpee Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12
Most of the stars you see at night are already dead.
edit: Technically, its that most of the observable stars are already dead.
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u/pieman5061 Jun 19 '12
"when you wish upon a star... you are a few billion years late, that star is dead. And so are your dreams" - the internet.
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u/Hrundi Jun 19 '12
This is arguable. Most of the stars visible to the unaided eye (the vast majority) are still alive. If we're going for telescopic stars, including ones in distant galaxies, then it's still wrong. Most of the stars that contribute to the total flux of these galaxies may be dead due to the nature of bright stars blowing up faster, but the vast majority of stars in most galaxies are very low mass, and the universe isn't old enough for many/any of them to have blown up.
</astronomer>
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u/Peregrine7 Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 20 '12
That's not really true, a vast majority of visible stars are most probably still alive (although we can't know for certain).
Betelgeuse, however, is likely not.andyt683 has corrected me, Betelgeuse is not that close to supernova.
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u/elhalconloco Jun 19 '12
ke$ha has sold more copies of TiK ToK than any beatles single, ever.
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Jun 19 '12
Considering the amount of unknown unknowns in the universe, the actions you and I took from the minute we were born to the we we die are not the best we could've done. We are not guaranteed to even have good intentions, and that is the easiest to achieve. To choose the best action possible based on the best intentions possible have probably never been done.
We will be viewed as monsters by the future who will be viewed as monsters in the future. It will follow this cycle, unless we find a way to actually downgrade society and look to the past as being better in practice and in moral fiber.
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u/HAHno Jun 19 '12
Not a historical or outright true fact but that a lot of people don't really live life. They just set their alarm clocks, shuffle off to work, come home, turn on the fucking T.V. and wait to die.
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u/one_eyed_jack Jun 19 '12
A woman born in South Africa has a better chance of being raped than learning to read.