Fake friends can really be the worst. They're the kind of people who will use someone to gain something for themselves. Sometimes it's money, sometimes it's for social gain.
But in the moment, it can be hard to spot those fake friends until they've been cut off from your life entirely. Whether they stopped responding to texts, hung out without you, or only included you to gain what they wanted, it can hurt just as bad.
One Redditor wanted to know what the tipping point for those fake friends was.
Redditor VexAndStuff asked:
"When did you realize your 'friends' were actually fake friends?"
Get ready for some sad but true realizations.
The group chat.
"Finding out they have an inner-circle group chat but I'm the only one not in it."
"Same. I found out that they had two groups- one with me and one without. They never used the one with me though."
"This is the worst feeling. When I was in my mid-twenties, I worked a job where four of us had the same position. The four of us did everything together. Then I made a mistake, and I apologized for it. But one of them just could not seem to forgive me, and aggressively isolated me from the group. I remember how sad it was to discover that they had a whole group chat that I wasn't included in, and had done all these social things without me."
"I've always been lucky to have a lot of friends, and I figured out after a while that these people weren't going to be it for me. So I stepped away from those friendships and invested in my actual friendships. It still makes me mad looking back, though."
- Redditor
Maybe it wasn't for the reason @lovinyourscene thought.
"There always ends up being a reason to exclude certain people in a friend group at certain times. I have a text chat with certain people because some of us like valorant, some of us started critical role, some of us play Minecraft, etc. It can be a courtesy to exclude people."
- Altult
"For any given social group there will be roughly as many text groups as members of the group, each excluding one person."
"Yeah, for every group chat there is a mini group chat without all the annoying people. If you don't believe it, then I've got some bad news for you."
"This thread is making me less annoyed at how many tiny Venn Diagram group chats I'm in."
"And it makes me feel better about my friends because we don't use the smaller ones to talk shit about our other friends."
- oogmar
Lost numbers.
"When my phone got stolen and I lost their phone numbers. Mine stayed the same, but we just never talked again."
"When my Apple account got compromised and I lost my backup when I changed phones I lost all of my numbers. I haven't gotten a text or call from any of my friends since. That was 5 years ago."
"I quit going on FB months ago. Only 1 person reached out to me and asked if everything was OK and how I was doing. THAT one person is a true friend."
"Oh no. I think I might have fake relatives."
But what is a 'friend' anyways?
"How do you even begin to consider people like that your friends? like how is your perception so skewed to even think that these people are your friends? I'm sorry if I sound mean I'm just trying to understand if there was really a 'moment' or if there were signs before that."
"A lot of people consider friendly acquaintances their 'friends.' I'm the opposite and have a tough time calling anyone a friend who isn't a close/intimate friend."
"Friend is a very stretchy word."
"I think people see other people as friends while that other person sees them as merely an acquaintance or a 'good acquaintance.'"
"Years ago, a man became well known and famous rather quickly. Once he became well known and famous everybody around him began professing their friendship to him. To find out who his friends really were, one night he drove out into the middle of nowhere where he knew a payphone was and started calling everyone who said they were his friend. He told them his car had broken down. The people who got up out of a warm bed in the middle of the night to go out into the middle of nowhere and help him with his broken down car, those were the people whom he counted as friends. everyone else was just a good acquaintance."
"This happened in the early 70's so no cell phones. My point is is that there are ways to tell if someone thinks of you as a friend or an acquaintance. Have a good day."
Invited to the party but not the ceremony.
"I was invited to the bachelorette party for one of the friends in this group. While at the party, I figured out that I was the only person not invited to the wedding. I had been invited to the party because they needed another person to chip in for expenses."
"It's amazing what people will do to get what they want because they 'deserve' a perfect wedding experience."
"My ex did that sh*t; would boggle my mind every time."
"She'd plan an event for 12 people and then invite everyone she wanted there. If anyone wasn't available or would bail, she'd start inviting people she wouldn't want to hang out with. She'd rather invite people she didnt like than scaling back the event."
"Something similar happened to me--there was a minimum group rate for 16 and they needed a 16th person."
"And then the night before I was told the event was canceled --- what actually happened is one of their friends who previously could not make it suddenly could go so they invited him and dumped me."
- dorvann
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"Apparently I didn't realize I was on a different tier of friendship with my so called friend. My friend was getting married and I didn't get an invite, which was fine since her wedding was a destination wedding in a different country.
I attended a sleepover party, which she hosted. There was about 9 girls there in total. They kept talking about the kick ass bachelorette party and then started showing photos of the crazy party. I realized I was the only one not invited. Made me feel kind of crummy."
"I am a firm believer that you don't talk about a party in front of someone unless they have been invited (or unless you are willing to remedy the situation by extending an invite then and there). I would maintain that the same rules should apply here, even though the party in question already happened."
"If you're inviting them then and there, you need to make it sound like you *really mean it.* Be enthusiastic about it. Because the only thing more humiliating than not being invited to the party is when people pull the 'Oh, um, yeah, you can come too... if you want,' type of invite."
"I had a group of friends in my mid-20s that I had considered close. These were people who were going to be a part of my wedding when it eventually happened and were gonna be aunts and uncles to my future kids and our kids were gonna grow up together. Then I realized in the summer of 2014 that they didn't feel the same way about me."
"There were a bunch of little things leading up to it and a bunch of little things that happened after, but two big things were a local wedding that I wasn't invited to and an apparently kickass weekend at a cabin in the mountains that I also wasn't invited to. I was feeling depressed because of the wedding and all of the aforementioned little things and some other personal stuff going on in my life, so I had begged the organizer of the cabin if I could join."
"It was pathetic. I said that I can sleep on the floor; I can come for just one night; just anything as long as I can come over. I was told very firmly, 'No. There's no more room.' Oh yeah, my birthday was also that weekend, and literally, all of my friends that I would have asked to spend my birthday with me were already out of town or at that cabin."
"No exaggeration, for a year after these events, whenever I spent time with these 'friends', the conversation would somehow gravitate to how awesome these events were. Like during a board game night, someone would bring a board game and go, 'This is the game that we played that one night at the cabin, remember? Bob got really lucky with those dice rolls, didn't he?' and that would trigger a full-blown conversation about how awesome that weekend was. Or we'd be at a dinner and someone would go, 'Where's Frank and Lindsey?' and someone else would go, 'They're finally on their honeymoon. Man, remember the awesome wedding they had?'"
"Made me feel like sh*t."
Used for studying.
"One friend stopped replying to my texts right after we graduated from college. Like the same week we graduated. So... I was pretty much just a study buddy that they kept close to keep me helping them."
- ts1985
"Same thing happened to me. Was friends with so many people during college and the last 3 weeks was an unpaid work placement which we had to go back to the school to hand in our paperwork, not one of them spoke to me or would even answer me if I said something to them. Became clear that I was only valuable to them when I was helping them. Class awards had me down as 'most willing to help classmates.'"
"'most willing to help classmates'"
"This is literally a label which gets a lot of friends because it always attracts people. It can be a problem because you are always questioning every person you befriend. It is almost like you have to be extra careful because you are kind and helpful. Such is the world we are in now."
"The only positive of this is that you can quickly identify fake friends because they drift away without giving a f*ck while the real ones stay."
- Sumit316
"This is basically all of the friends I made at various points in college. As soon as we don't see each other 3x a week, they fade away. I get they're busy but I didn't realize making lasting friendships as an adult would be so difficult."
"It is SO hard to make friends as an adult. I moved to a new city about a year and a half ago and still have zero friends. This one girl was/is trying to be friends with me but only because she wants someone to emotionally dump on. Other than that, I've had a couple 'friend dates' to meet people and they usually just stop texting back. I feel like most adults already have their friend group, and it is almost impossible to get into those."
"Periphery friend."
"I wouldn't say I have fake friends but I am definitely the periphery friend. The majority of the time if there isn't enough tickets or space in the car for everyone to go do something, I'm the one who gets cut out. It doesn't bother me much but I wish they would be more mindful when talking to me about 'things we have done.' 'Remember when we went to see XXX? Wasn't that fun?' Well, no because I wasn't invited. In those situations it usually gets awkward or they say 'Hey, we would have invited you if we had the tickets, space, etc.'"
- Moebar90
"I was recently excluded from a party where my friends got on a bus to go out of town. The 'Friend' who had the party said that they didn't invite me because 'There was not enough space on the bus.'"
"I'd rather he told me the truth as to why I wasn't invited in the first place; there were about 70 people on the bus."
"I mean at that point, if you're not making the top 70, I think you can say they're not your friends (fake or otherwise)."
"I also experienced this with the friend group I grew up with. There was no single awful event. Just got tired of being on the periphery and being an afterthought even though when we were actually together you'd swear we were all family."
"Finally decided to just cut it all out and move on after my absolute closest friend who I've known since I was 8 handed me a wedding invitation for a wedding that was planned for a year and now it was like 2 weeks away. He tells me, "Hotel is almost fully booked so call soon if you plan on staying overnight.' That was the most I've ever felt like a complete and total afterthought. Went to the wedding for the ceremony in one last show of effort for the friendship but at this point I felt so uncomfortable and alienated I knew they just weren't my people anymore and I had to get on without them."
"My best friend since 5th grade invited me to his wedding as a guest. I expected to be a groomsman, since we basically stayed the night at each other's houses every weekend all through high school and I set him up with his wife. We were still 'close' for long distance friends too after moving to college. I'd come visit and spend the weekend with him and some mutual friends a few times a year, we did fantasy football and texted pretty frequently."
"At the wedding, the bride and groom each had about 8 people in their parties. The groom had his brother and seven friends. I didn't make the top seven. I knew pretty much everyone on the bride's side but only knew half of the guys up there with the groom. That opened my eyes a bit."
"I took a step back and analyzed our friendship after that. Realized I always texted first or made plans, always visited him but he never visited me, etc. He basically put in no effort. So I stopped texting for a while, as a test, and I haven't heard from him since. It's been about 11 years."
"How do you find 'better people' as an adult? I'm 22 and kinda spent all of my childhood and adolescence on the periphery, for a few reasons. Do you have any advice?"
"Hobby groups. Whether you want to do something geeky like magic the gathering or Dungeons and Dragons, or book clubs, or local sports leagues, or bird watching, there's literally hundreds of hobbies to get involved in."
"Just requires leaving your comfort zone once or twice a week, and after a few months you'll have a bunch of friends."
"As long as you choose hobbies you're interested in, you're gonna meet people with the same interests as you."
"I was super lonely after graduating college eight years ago. After a few months went to a game shop and started getting involved in mtg. Eight years later, I've got about eight very close friends and another ten-twelve or so who I'm happy to take road trips with, BBQ with, go out to dinner with."
"Board games are another great hobby. Not talking awful things like monopoly, there are hundreds of excellent modern board games."
These stories really hit hard. So many people cut out of their lives for not being good friends. Hopefully, by reading some of these unfortunate stories, we can take a look at the relationships in our own lives a little closer.
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@BrentTerhune/X and @VivekGRamaswamy/X