"The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions": 30 Times People Wanted Nothing But Good Yet It All Ended Badly, As Told In This Online Group

My parents thought that if they brought us kids to church every week (Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and **all** day Sunday), had us go to private religious schools, and made us volunteer for religious organizations, we'd stay out of trouble and be as zealous as they are. As soon as each of us could, we ran away and never looked back. One of my sisters won't attend a funeral if its in a church!

Zero tolerance in schools. Now the bullied kids are being punished.

In every War, even the most righteous ones, there were members of the “good side” that were rapists, sadists, plain old vile.

The invention of social media.

When Tom was working at Friendster, I genuinely believe he wanted to build something that allowed people to socialise and communicate in a new and modern way.

On paper, early MySpace is a brilliant concept that made a lot of people realise the potential of the internet.

This concept was that mutilated and turned into what social media is today. Quite possibly the single most socially damaging invention that ever happened. Far away from bringing people closer together, it has turned into a tool that is tearing people further apart, making them feel more disconnected with society than ever- and instead of democratising discussion, it has put even more power into the hands of the elite.

The introduction of non-native species as a means of solving an environmental problem.

The introduction of Kudzu for erosion control. It has become invasive and girdles and kills plant life above ground without establishing proper roots, therefore causing soil erosion.

I knew a guy that saw a kid trip into the street, since a car was coming the guy grabbed the kid by the arm picked him up and dropped him on the sidewalk. The car missed the kid but clipped the guy and broke a couple ribs.

The car kept going.

The mom of the kid who wasn't paying attention only saw the guy drop the kid on the sidewalk, she proceeded to accuse him of kidnapping and started hitting him. This was on a busy NYC street corner.

He didn't have medical insurance and had to use a free clinic which he couldn't get to until hours of questioning by the police. He had to walk there on his own.

He missed his classes and his teacher didn't buy his story saying it wasn't realistic enough, he was not allowed to retake an exam he missed.

He was already suffering from social anxiety and questioning if he had enough self worth to keep going.

Lobotomy

Surgery to fix the mentally unwell

It sounds so good: no more reliance on medication, you’re good from now on.

But it didn’t work.

The outcomes were awful and it was frequently done without any sort of consent

It all could have been shut down fairly quickly if people were honest about what was happening, but careers and money was at stake….so many unnecessarily suffered

Once upon a time, I found a wallet on the beach.

Having lost my own more than once, and not having it returned to me, I am aware that it is a stressful life event.

So, my first thought was how to return it quickly.

Looking through the contents, the owner was from out of state and there was no contact information other than the drivers license. Aside from that, only a few credit cards and some cash.

Not knowing how long ago the owner had left, I thought let's just sit here for a while and maybe he will return looking for it since it is the first thing I would do.

After a couple hours of fun and sun we needed to move on; my next best idea was to turn it into the local police station which we found easily enough just down the street.

What I thought would be a quick in and out turned into a full on interrogation session during which I was, at one point, accused of theft/robbery.

It was a bizarre experience, to say the least, which wasted an hour of our day.

Most moral panics?

Stranger Danger: convincing people in the 1970-90s that hundreds of thousands of American children were being yoinked into random cars by evil strangers each year, while downplaying and underfunding the resources that could actually help decrease child abduction.

Child abductions not only never came anywhere near those huge numbers, but it was and still is nearly always a custodial issue or a very close family member. Teaching people to be wary of kidnapping is great; directing all their fears toward vague spooky strangers and not helping people learn how to *actually* prevent kidnapping is kinda s**t.

Purity culture and the *I Kissed Dating Goodbye* book/movement. It was a response to hookup culture and the "free love" movement of the 60's and 70's, and all of *its* downsides and dangers. But it left people with no idea how to have healthy relationships, sexual dysfunction, and worse. (Not to mention, a net *increase* in STIs and teen pregnancy, as they never learned how to protect themselves and mitigate risks.)

Those parents who solve all their kids issues and don't make them "stress" about consequences of their own actions. Their kids just turn into inept and entitled adults who still act 15 for decades and not only have a harder life for themselves but make life miserable for everyone around them too.

Edit:

1)yes it's bad to go too far the other way, raising a child is a balancing act, I get that, but ignoring a child isn't usually from good intentions while spoiling them often is and that was the prompt :)

2) if this sounds like it happened to you, I promise you that you can get yourself out of the cycle. It sucks and it hurts and it's unpleasant, but you can do it if you want to. Get ready to fail, and then keep trying anyway. Persistence will be a new skill, and you will be bad at it. And that's okay.

You didn't do this to yourself, you don't need to feel shame. Digging yourself out however is something you'll be doing yourself, and you can take pride in every step you make it the right direction.

We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their actions.

Haiti did not have cholera. A disastrous earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, after the earthquake humanitarian forces from the UN arrived to help, and the Nepalese contingent reintroduced Cholera to Haiti. This epidemic has since infected approximately 850,000 people and killed over 10,000.

George W Bush admin created subsidies on corn to promote the production of ethanol to be used in fuel, etc. Better for the environment and so forth. Couple of downstream effects:

1) Ethanol in fuel lowers the fuel efficiency, so you have to buy gas more frequently (more of an inconvenience, but that's why fuel with no ethanol is usually slightly more expensive).

2) Corn sold for other purposes than ethanol didn't qualify for the subsidies, so there was a strong financial incentive to sell to ethanol produces instead of for food. This drove the price of food corn (and food that uses corn-derived ingredients) up, affecting poor people the most.

3) The financial incentives were so strong that farmers were buying up cheap land in areas that were very unsuitable for corn production or switching away from crops that would grow more easily if they couldn't afford more land. In western Kansas, corn needs to be heavily irrigated in order to grow. There is an enormous aquifer that stretches from South Dakota to the Texas panhandle. Increased irrigation combine with a years-long drought drained the aquifer to the point that the city of Hays has to truck their water in.

Edited to add line breaks.

Edited again to say thank you for the awardsand the likes, kind strangers!

A man named Dr. Spock wrote a handbook for childrearing. It was widely circulated and well received. Many of our parents likely got their childrearing advice from this book.

In it he recognized that babies throw up a lot and therefore recommended newborns be laid on their stomachs to sleep. Unknowingly, this would result in the accidental smothering deaths of thousands of newborns. A huge number of SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) cases can be laid at his feet.

To this day the back to sleep campaign is still fighting to update parents on what we now know: newborns should sleep on their backs until they can reliably roll over for themselves.

I recall hearing that the person behind the 'like' function of Facebook legitimately just saw it as a nice way for people to show others what they like, or a way to positively react on things - it turned out that it had/has a huge negative impact on social congnition, such as teenagers, especially girls unfortunately, developing depression.

Since the abysmal performance of American schools has been in the news recently, "No Child Left Behind" and it's replacement "Every Student Succeeds Act"

America has never had really good public education, but it used to be serviceable. NCLB came in to try and create some milestones and accountability. Instead it made the problem worse. ECSS came in and tried to address it's problems, but changed the stuff that wasn't the problem and left the bad parts unscathed.

Taken all together 57% of highschool GRADUATES can't read at a 7th grade reading level and over a quarter are functionally illiterate.

Federally backed student loans. Once money was guaranteed, colleges jacked up tuition and continue to do so, with no end in sight.

The invention of plastic!