What was your assumption about the world that proved to be false and you ended up being shocked?

If you do the right thing, everything will be alright, but...

View attached image.

basically i always expected the worst and for the most part i wasn't disappointed.
so that's a plus!

I always assumed, as a kid, that no matter the crime, if caught you will go to prison. You rob a bank, you go to prison. You steal a toy, you go to prison (serving less time than if you robbed a bank but still...)

I knew nothing about lawyers and the plethora of ways criminals had to avoid prison, and also that most crimes don't usually involve any prison time. It was quite shocking the day I discovered it wasn't at all like that.

one of my biggest shocks that actually happened to be worldwide valid and not only for me was discovering after some years of teenage struggle that my mind, human mind in general, can actually recreate lots of illnesses, make you feel sick, make you feet everything it wants from headaches to stomach pain, even things that I couldn't remotely relate to the brain (bone pain, difficulty to walk due to foot ache etc.)..
I realized after some years that body and mind are so connected and psychological issues can have so many effects on the body too and not only in your mind and feelings..
I just thought I had a chronic headache due to physical reasons when I was 15.. =P

I used to think I was smart.

You can become anything you want, as long as you work really hard and put your heart into it.

biggest lie ever

that Pluto is not a planet
that hedgehog doesn't carry apples on their back
that alcohol doesn't help to sleep better

View attached image.

There are usually no savepoints in this world.
There are usually no load points in this world.
There is usually no reset button in this world.
There are an innumerable number of players in this world and they can turn themselves off.
Also, the power of others can be turned off.

Oops, there were exceptions.
Some players do not have the option to turn off the power.

Your dreams. God of your faith. Or a demon or a monster.
And this 🌏 too.until now···.

Are there any bosses?
Is there a last boss?
Are there any hidden bosses?
Are there any extension elements?

It's all up to you.Welcome to reality.

I didn't know that I was real.┐(´Θ`)┌

That anything but chicken actually tastes like chicken.

1) That people are smart and reasonable all the time, will understand your correct arguments when presented clearly and logically, and therefore cooperate with your ideas/actions.

A little later, I also had to bring down the following assumptions
2) My arguments are correct;
3) I present them clearly and logically;
4) I am smart and reasonable all the time, therefore I cooperate with people when they are correct, especially if I am wrong.

:D ;D :D

Funny how finally realizing 2, 3 and 4 makes me think people are actually not that bad... See, I still think people are mostly nice, but sometimes we can all descend into some unintended hard-headed, huh, say, "stubbornity"? The key is to realize that, even then, most people are still mostly nice, so we should focus on that side of them.

Here, to balance a little the (natural!) negativity of the thread: news that supports that, at least, there are some people which are sometimes nice: https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-49295967/is-the-bystander-effect-a-myth

And that is why no one is in my blacklist... well, yet. :D

that sometimes people say dumb things isn't because they are stupid or trying to get you angry, but because they legit don't know

Most pumpkin pie doesn't contain any pumpkin.

Racism, homophobia and hate between countries for no other reason than their Historical past doesn't exist.
Actually, scratch that, I didn't know there was such a thing as racism, homophobia and prejudice because you're from a specific country before getting around 15, maybe even older than that for the later.

• I wasn't raised in a specific place or anything, I went to a lot of different schools when I was young because we were moving once every one or two years in the same town. I had friends of different origins, was even jealous of them because to me all the brown shades were so beautiful (I still think that way).
• I saw people holding hand no matter their gender really early, didn't even think that it could actually be something to be surprised about, was friend with all sort of people who liked all sort of people themselves, didn't even know there was a stigma before my father called me "lesbian" while thinking of it as being an insult, I only realized at that time that maybe there was a lesson to take from that. Had no idea that people of same gender couldn't marry before.. Over 20.. I admit. Didn't even come to my mind that it could be a problem.
• I was confronted to nation vs nation feud in person only less than 10 years ago, as I went playing on Tera and there clearly was tensions because German, English and French server were put together and people were judgmental and stupid as soon as meeting someone coming from a country they didn't like because.. Because they were from that specific country, that's it, no other reason. I did study WWI and WWII and a lot of stuff, never thought it could change the behavior of people nowadays and spent a lot of time telling to French to stop speaking French in front of people who don't understand the language. It's rude. Especially when they do speak English when needed.
• Also I discovered that in other language that my native one (French) there was a neutral gender. I love it. You have no idea how ducked up we are in French when it comes to that language problem.

Was I naive or something ? Maybe. I wasn't raised in places where you didn't see racism or homophobia, I wasn't taken away from scenes where people would insult each other using specific words referring to skin color or for the gender of their partner. I just thought that those people were weird and they were the large minority, that people were all just like me, except a few who were just stupid.

When I began to play on international MMO servers, I began to understand that a lot of prejudice were related to really stupid stuff, would they be cultural, linked to the education and even the structure or choice of words. I'll give a few example :

• French sentence structure is different than English one. I learned English mostly on my own and tend to write as I would in French, especially as I was learning or when I was tired or wouldn't read back what I just wrote. I understand after some time that the way I was reading it with my French eyes wasn't the same for someone who is native English speaker (or have a better knowledge of its rules). So when I was friendly, others would think of me of being rude and I had no idea how before someone explained to me that the way I wrote was rude, it's only after discussing the matter for several hours with all the people who were there that we realized that yes, sometimes we assume that the other part knows what is right or wrong and if someone writes X langage well enough, the mistake passes as something wanted rather than what it is. A lack of knowledge.
• Most of the prejudice / clichés you learn about people from a specific nationality are related to cultural habits and Historical judgments. Carina, my best friend, is German. We had a lot of rough patch because of this as German and French aren't raised the same way at all and what is rude for French is only normal for German and the reversal. Sometimes when we have a heated discussion, we have to check that and see what is normal or not for the other. Most of times we avert problems simply because it's just cultural.
• When you say to a French "omelette du fromage", you make them cringe. The sentence is wrong, you basically just said that the cheese owns an omelette. Yes, Dexter did it wrong.
• All what we often consider as common pop culture isn't (is it "pop culture" or another word ?) I was raised watching Dragon Ball, the series was released in France in 1988 while it was released in NA in 2009. On the other hand, I never heard about a lot of stuff people show me and are flabbergasted that I never watched those as a kid.

That's what comes to my mind for now, I hope this wall of text won't offend anybody. Don't forget everybody has a different experience of the world around them, mine was maybe lucky when it comes to the problems I didn't notice before being older and I still feel sorry that those problems still exist while I'm far older now.

Nobody has brought up Hans Rosling in this thread? He's a researcher on how most of us have wrong ideas about the world, why that is and how to deal with it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-UYgdg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

I used to believe in selfless human beings, but there is no such thing as a truly selfless act.
But I'm not shocked anymore. 💔🤷

I assumed and accepted that I was going to be alone for the rest of my life.

I grew up thinking there were only 2 genders. boy, do I feel like an idiot

I assumed that I will find a GF.

Turns out sitting in front of the computer for 20+ years won't get you one.

I was shocked.

And I was born too early to get a realistic looking robot GF.

That the world is a nice place and the injustice gets solved eventually and goodness and friendship triumphs and the best is brought out of us.

What we have is one fucked up world with wars, pedophiles, sex traffickers, killers, sociopaths, complete morons and idiots at every corner and unfathomably arrogant people. I still at times have some little hope somewhere within myself that at least some balance would come into this world but from what I see we are fucking up our society and the world up by minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjy9JPvWrEI this.

Uh, not really about the world, but I sure grew up mispronouncing heaps of things on a regular basis that I'm only now realising I've gotten wrong. 'Among' pronounced with an 'o', 'bury' with an 'ah' sound, 'congenial' with a short 'e'... a long 'e' for 'dudgeon'...

I know it's not as groundbreaking or depressing ;-; as some of these answers, but I dunno, man. I'm learning that I'm shit at the only language I can speak XD

This is what I get for trusting my parents and their language ability, hahah.

I was planing lot of thing to try to have a futur. So I discover that all you can do is useless cause only luck is working and not work.
The worse is all you do can be destroy by errors of politicians, your enterprise or of humanity.
I said humanity cause we are going not on a wall but clearly we have quit the road and can't stop or mistakes.
I discover lot of things that in the begining I didn't want to think that it was truse. I read lot of things and science report and now I can assume that it there a goid chance that we wil have big trouble in the next 20 years. Not only some countries, but all countries. Some less from others but still trouble.
Why? :
-The most knowned is climat. I don't want to polemicate on it and what we have with that (Miami per exemple know what they will happens for them)

• Energy : We have pass the peak oil. What? And? What it will change for us we have still lot of oil? The change is that we never will have more oil in a year but we can have less and less for decades. This also say that we will have less oil per people each year cause we are more and more. This is the trouble cause economy is dependant on it for food, travel to go work, extract primary materials... and there not really something for substituate from this. Wind and sun? Yes but not really cause you still need extact and oil to build and transport them.
• Economy : since 2008 m, it's a big joke with lot of negative % and lot of money creation from central banks. And nothing can push economy again. Why? See peak oil. Some day it will have again a crisis and the real intersting part for me is to see if fracturation oil going down and close on this crisis. If yes, nothing to help us from oil goig down. Yes, this extraction is horrible and this is nearly the only thing to hide us reality.
  -As I speak of primary materials. Go see what is going be more difficult to have and how much energy you have to put on them to have it.

We won't necessary have sudden troubles and not necessary now. But is there still a probability that it happens.
I hope not. I prefer being a fool as it.

Oh yes, last thing. Technology is unable to help us unless you can create energy from the empty. Technology can only help us to use less energy but we use immediatly all that gain. So I don't trust on it.

So yes I was thinking everything was nearly alright. And I take the red pill to see the world by my own eyes...
Please don't juge me. I hope seing good news to change that.

Also people should totally buy "A World of Curiosities: Surprising, Interesting, and Downright Unbelievable Facts from Every Nation on the Planet" and put it in their toilets (best place for it so you read one country or one page at a time, not everybody likes to read and encyclopedia the same way as a novel). You'll be surprised by a lot of things that you thought were true and aren't at all.