The older you get, the more experience you have with all kinds of relationships and social interactions.
When we’re kids, we think that everyone has the best intentions. However, we quickly learn the hard way that some of the people we meet will affect our lives in negative ways.
Eventually, this life experience helps you avoid dangerous people by giving you a list of red flags to watch out for when interacting with folks for the very first time.
A whole host of people took to Reddit to share the red flags that, in their experience, instantly prove that someone is untrustworthy.
“They constantly talk trash others.”
There’s a pretty big difference between run-of-the-mill venting about a co-worker after a busy day, and constantly filling up conversation by throwing around insults at people who aren’t there to defend themselves.
“When they flat out ignore what you say and talk about themselves.”
Self-obsessed people? Cancelled.
Wanting to share something about you or your life is perfectly normal and should be encouraged, but being the only one who can talk about themselves is ignorant at best.
“People who talk about another person’s private matters.”
If someone tells you not to tell anyone about something, it shouldn’t leave your lips. Bottom line. When you take a person’s secret and blab about it to others for the sake of ‘juicy gossip’, you’re breaching another person’s trust big time.
“When they openly brag about screwing someone over.”
In certain situations, hurting the person you love is unavoidable. However, there needs to be a baseline level of remorse associated with what happened.
If you’re proud that you caused someone else physical or emotional pain, who’s to say you won’t go onto do the same thing to a new victim?
“When someone borrows something and never attempts to return it.”
Giving back something you borrowed is common courtesy. If you need to borrow something for longer, just say something rather than avoiding a conversation about it all together.
After a while, borrowing isn’t borrowing anymore—its stealing.
“Mistreating service people, children, less intelligent people, and animals.”
This is personally my number one red flag when meeting new people, particularly on a first date.
If we’re in a restaurant and my date is belligerent to the waitress, a nearby family, or even a homeless person at the entrance, it is a surefire sign that they do not have respect for people.
“When they judge others for the very things they’re guilty of themselves.”
Go ahead and call people out on their crap, but don’t be a hypocrite about it. You can’t criticize someone for doing something that you yourself have done.
“When I catch them lying about something very small with no consequences if they were to tell the truth.”
Little lies often lead to big lies. If there is the potential to hurt someone’s feelings, white lies are pretty normal.
However, if there is literally no reason for the person to be lying about something, changing their story is obviously second nature to them.
“I don’t trust people who never say ‘I don’t know.'”
Nobody knows everything . As humans, we have to sometimes admit that we have no idea how to do something. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
“If someone happily tells you they’ve cheated on someone before.”
This is another one of those scenarios in which remorse is key . Nobody is perfect, and sometimes we make mistakes.
However, if somebody intentionally hurts another person and isn’t sorry about it, run for the hills.
“One Better Syndrome, where no matter what your experience, your history, your anecdote, theirs is better, worse, funnier.”
Constantly having to one up someone can go two ways, both of which are equally sleazy: The person could constantly interrupt your stories with feats that are more impressive, or constantly interrupt your confessions with events more traumatic.
This is a tactic in order to always be the best, most pity worthy person in the room, and it’s a major red flag.
“Not respecting my decision when I say no to something small.”
This one goes along with the ‘little lies turn into big lies’ theory.
If you tell someone not to order for you at dinner, and they disregard you by doing it anyway, they have no problem ignoring your wishes for their own benefit, which could lead to larger breaches of consent later on.
“Repeatedly not following through on small things.”
Again, it’s in the little things.
If someone tells you they’re going to send you a link to a song and never does, or promises to text you and they don’t, again and again and again, they have zero ability to follow through on the things that actually matter.
“Someone who constantly interrupts you while you’re speaking.”
There’s just something weird and uncomfortable about people who consistently try to fit their opinion where it doesn’t belong, especially when they’re talking over you in order to do it.
“When they give non-apologies after doing something wrong, like ‘I’m sorry to see you feel that way.'”
Let’s be clear on this one: You don’t get to decide whether or not you’ve hurt someone.
Even if the hurt you caused wasn’t intentional, if someone is upset, you can clarify that it wasn’t intentional but still apologize.
“When they can’t be happy when their friends succeed in the ways they haven’t.”
Envy can be a dangerous thing.
Your group of friends should be people who lift you up, not bring you down, and when someone you care about succeeds at something, your happiness for them should always come before any envy that you have for their situation.
“When their opinions on the same topics change depending on who they are with.”
It is normal for your personality to change slightly depending on where you are and who you are with—it’s a social survival tactic.
What isn’t normal is changing your morals and values simply to appease different groups of people.
“Passive aggression, like instead of telling me what the problem is, doing a bunch of petty stuff and expecting me to know why.”
If you have a problem, just tell me what it is. Don’t get angry at me because I’m not a mind reader and turn a likely small issue into something much more drawn out and serious simply because you wouldn’t say what was on your mind.
“Someone who talks too much and then visibly turns off when it’s not their turn to talk.”
We’ve all been in a situation similar to this: you’re chatting with a group of friends, one friend is leading the conversation, and when another friend has something to say, you can tell that the original friend has completely lost interest because the conversation is no longer about them.
“When they litter. As soon as someone throws a wrapper out the window I immediately lose all faith in that person.”
Even kids know to clean up their own mess, so there’s really no excuse for this one.
“When they put a hand on your shoulder, squarely look you in the eye, and confidently say ‘Trust me’.
This is an odd one to explain logically, but it’s never proved me wrong. There’s something about saying ‘trust me’ that makes me trust a person even less.
“When they come on REALLY strong seeking my friendship.”
It is normal for an extrovert to want to be friendly and make connections when they first meet you. It is not normal for someone to immediately want to be ‘best friends’ before they even know you.
“When a person tries too hard to be somebody they obviously are not.”
Sometimes you can tell right away if someone is putting on a show. Having a bit of a ‘social persona’ is only natural, but trying to con people into thinking you are a completely different person is a major red flag.
“Anybody who will tell you their IQ number.”
This one’s pretty self explanatory. Not only is it bragging, but it’s likely totally irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
“When they have to keep saying ‘Believe me'”
Again, if someone has to make it very clear that they are trust worthy to the point of stating that they are, they probably aren’t.
“Intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes.”
You can tell a lot about a person by the ways in which they express emotion through their eyes. You can fake your facial expressions, mouth movements, and body posture, but it is very difficult to fake a gaze.
“When they regularly repeat the question before answering.”
In my experience, people often repeat questions back at a person if they have no answer, and they’re using extra time to make one up.
“When they tell you all their exes are crazy.”
Remember the earlier point where we talked about people who trash talk other people? This is especially important when someone you’ve just met is talking about an ex.
If every single one of a person’s ex-partners was ‘crazy’, there’s a very particular self-made pattern there, one of a narrative that has been twisted to suit this person’s ego.
“They give too firm of a handshake.”
Weird one, huh? Well over 65,000 people agreed with this one.
While too weak of a handshake can be indicative of things like nerves or anxiety, too firm of a handshake is an odd way of showing that someone isn’t afraid to be rough with people they don’t know.
“Their phone background is a selfie.”
Your phone background is usually something you care about more than anything, right? So it would be odd to have your background as…yourself.
Don’t get me wrong—you should be your own first priority in a safety sense. But there’s just something extremely unsettling about a person who makes themselves their own background. I can’t back this one up with any stats, but trust me, try this one out. It works almost every time.
h/t: Ask Reddit
