The Worst Things People Have Ever Mistakenly Posted On Social Media

We all know that the internet is forever, and as much as we might not want to think about it, all of the information we've loaded onto it over the years is forever, too.

Every cringy middle school post, every photo of the high school ex-boyfriends, and all the embarrassing college party photos, yep, there will be some way to find them, pretty much forever.

It's already embarrassing enough to think about someone being able to look back on our average middle-school and high-school days, but some people have some incredibly inappropriate content out there, some of which they may not have even uploaded themselves, or that they uploaded by mistake.

Already cringing, Redditor WolfandFoxy asked:

"What is the worst thing you or someone you know posted by mistake on social media?"

The Affair Diaries

"Many years ago, a coworker of mine made a series of Livejournal posts that she thought were private, chronicling how she was cheating on her husband."

- Fast_Moon

Put On Blast

"I ranted about my job and my dislike of my supervisor on MySpace. I worked for a political campaign at the time."

"A blogger for the opposition party found it and put it on blast."

"I was emptying out my desk the next morning. I deserved it, and leaving that field was for the better in my personal life, but it was one of the most embarrassing and humiliating moments of my life."

"The thing has spread around the office like wildfire, and seeing everyone watch me be escorted out remains burned into my brain."

"The small upside is my boss and my boss’s boss got to see what I really think about them, and they deserved being blasted..."

- rawonionbreath

Tattoo Mishaps

"A girl I went to school with posted a picture on Facebook of her new tattoo, 'Belive.' It was up for about 15 minutes before someone posted about the spelling, and she deleted it. How she or the 'artist' didn’t notice is beyond me."

- blindcerealkiller

"Spelling is hard for some people, but if it's something that you can't delete and write again, like a tattoo, for instance, I think I'd triple-check that."

- Amesb34r

"I've done some pixel art involving letters before. When you're hyper-focused on the tiny details of each letter, it's easy to lose track of the word and miss/substitute letters. This is why you need to do something to mark the letter positions and orders before starting."

"It's not a big deal when you're a teenager on DeviantArt posting Pokemon pixel art that accidentally says 'Champon"' instead of 'Champion,' but it is a very big deal when you're a tattoo artist."

- ShiraCheshire

Quite the Family

"A girl I knew made an Instagram post on Remembrance Day (Canadian version of Memorial Day)."

"It said something like, 'Today I want to remember my amazing Grandfather and Opa. Both of them fought bravely in WW2, even though they were on different sides.'"

"The pictures were of her grandfathers in military dress, and the Opa was wearing a very... distinctive uniform."

"I still wish I had screenshotted it, but it was gone when I returned."

- Joshlov

Facebook-Stalking Gone Wrong

"Maybe not that bad, but my friend's mom joined Facebook. She wanted to snoop on an old boyfriend of hers."

"She typed his name over and over in the search box... but it wasn't the search box. It was the status update box."

"We all saw his name repeated over and over on the feed. Every time she tried to search, she was actually posting, so it was just this stream of posts of just his name."

"She then made another status update that said, 'How do I delete this s**t?'"

- emiliamarie

Back When Your Friend Poked You or Sent You a Gift

"Gather 'round, children, and let me tell you of the horrors of early Facebook."

"Back in the late '00s, Facebook had a feature where you could 'poke' and send 'gifts' to people that were really just a digital picture and spam. 90 percent of them were 'So-and-so Sent You a Bouquet of Roses,' and it'd be a little picture of some flowers, and you could click to send another 'gift' to someone else."

"Anyway, my dad didn't realize that those were public to everyone on your friends list, and as he was in the process of leaving his second wife for his third wife, I logged on one day to a wall of notifications like '[Dad] has sent a spanking to [Third Wife],' '[Dad] has sent a slave bikini Leia to [Third Wife],' and '[Dad] has sent a sensual kiss to [Third Wife].'"

"I was already mad at him over the obvious affair he had been having, so this triggered us not speaking for several years."

- standbyyourmantis

"OMG (Oh my god), back when you used to see everyone's crap on Facebook! I don't miss that. And then your dad has the nerve to air all of that out online for everyone (including your family) to see. Ew."

- Mouse-Direct

...Big Oops

"A girl I worked with made a Facebook post about a 'nice hot bath,' and EVERYTHING was reflected in the bathtub faucet."

- Active-Strawberry-37

Monkey See, Monkey Do

"I wouldn't call it accidental, but I did regret it."

"When I was 16, I was super into Green Day and Blink 182. I saw a video of a live performance where they were butt-a** naked with only their guitars covering their crotches. I thought it was hilarious, so I grabbed my own guitar, got naked, and took a pic of me doing the same thing."

"I posted it on MySpace. The next day in school, my whole class was kinda freaking out about it."

- ipunchhotdogs

A Tough Crowd

"Not sure if it technically counts as 'social media,' but we got a new spindle sander at work (carpentry shop) last year. If you don’t know what that is, picture a dowel about an inch around and six inches tall with sandpaper around it rotating very quickly while also moving up and down."

"I took a video of it running with the caption, 'Best seat in the house!' and sent it to what I thought was a WhatsApp group chat with my friends."

"Shortly after posting, I realized it was, in fact, the group chat with the board members of my region’s chapter of an international college honors society."

"I have never been so thankful that WhatsApp gives you the ability to delete a message. I still don’t know to this day if anyone saw it."

- hirthquake

"Gotta love that 'DELETE FOR EVERYONE' panic, lol (laughing out loud) and not knowing who has seen it. Yeah, been there."

- gaijin5

Getting Out of Work... Permanently

"A coworker of mine came to work with a neck brace. She said she wasn't going to be able to work for a while."

"A few days later, she posted a video of herself dancing at a party. Someone who didn't like her told the company, and she was fired."

- mike1883

Accidentally Revealing

"I’m 67 and was sitting in the hot tub naked, wearing a rain hat, and drinking a beer. Thinking it was funny, my wife came to the door and snapped a pic and posted it on Facebook."

"She is partially blind. I didn’t have the jets on. Within five minutes, my 40-year-old son texted, 'Hey, you can see Dad's junk in that picture you just posted.' His wife had seen it, lol (laughing out loud)."

- miseeker

Heartbreakingly Insecure

"Maybe tamer than most on here, but I have a friend who only posts pictures of herself that are heavily photoshopped and/or have Snapchat filters that make her look 'better.' I say 'better,' because it clears up her skin and straightens her teeth, but it makes her look so fake, she looks like she's a CGI puppet."

"It's so (second-hand) embarrassing. There are all these photos of her family on vacation and everyone looks fine, except it looks like her husband has his arm around his CGI doll."

"But every now and then, every once in a while, she accidentally uploads a genuine photo, and it's shocking to see her look like a real person. These photos typically get taken down soon after and replaced with a CGI version."

- UltimaGabe

Oversharing 101

"Some of the worst things I’ve seen were not mistakes. Just people sharing waaay too much information with the world about their family and relationships and it’s so embarrassing."

- CommercialKale7

"Tell me about it. A woman I know posted a long spiel on Facebook about how her husband cheated on her with her brother’s girlfriend. They’re still together, and she’s since deleted the post, but everyone knows…"

- whatsername25

Getting the Truth Out There

"On Facebook, I belong to a close-knit group of women I've known for 20 years...we have a private group."

"In a drunken rage at about midnight, I went to the group and posted a very long, detailed, post about how I was tired of my husband never wanting to have sex and it had been YEARS and I was over it and over his drama and I'm sorry that his junk didn't work and I mean just LAID IT OUT THERE."

"It was not kind, but I was hurting and had been drinking and needed to vent, but because of the hour, I didn't have anyone to call, and these women knew of the issues to a lesser extent."

"About three minutes after I posted, a dear friend of mine, a few hours earlier in her evening due to time zones messaged and said, 'Not sure if you intended that post to be public... but it is.'"

" I took it down immediately and thanked her, and she played therapist for a while because clearly I needed it."

"But for about five minutes, intimate details of my non-sex life and my husband's ED were out there for the world to see... or at least all of our friends and family. As far as I know, no one saw it because no one ever brought it up... or if they did, they were kind enough to spare me embarrassment of it."

"I'm sure no one mentioned it to him because he'd have, rightfully, lost his s**t. He's an ex now, and I've also quit drinking. Neither directly related to this incident though he is an ex due, in part, to the sex situation."

- RobinEggBlue84

Oddly Wholesome

"A few years ago now, I thought I had a new mole on my skin, and being the huge health worrier that I am, I immediately panicked and went to do an e-consult online."

"I could only do it on my laptop, so I uploaded the pictures I took of my skin on Facebook so I could save them on my computer, and silly me forgot to change the privacy settings to ‘Only me’ who could view it."

"A few moments after uploading, my best mate popped up, asking me, 'Why have you posted your fat on Facebook?' Had he not done that, who knows how long I would’ve left it there for!"

- Imaginary-Coat-2638

This was an incredibly cringeworthy conversation, not just because of the content that was accidentally posted but because there's no telling how many people actually saw these posts and elected not to say anything and just scroll on by.