My great aunt’s husband. I had a bad feeling about him the moment I met him when I was a kid. Turns out he was a paedophile that got two of his granddaughters pregnant and was sent to prison. He died a few years ago and the family held a wake for him and I had to explain why I wanted nothing to do with him. WTF.

Yes. Customer. Was clearly smooth talking con man others aspire to be. No one else believed me. Or questioned how he was going to set up the kind of construction operation he claimed to run. Literally weeks after moving to the area.

Boss took the bait. Even introduced the guy to other friends and customers. Guy promised them all a bunch of work but needed down payments for materials. Vanished about a month after the checks cleared.

There was this guy I met at the dog park who talked nicely to everybody, especially to the ladies. He would be the kind to always greet you, offered to share his snacks. He seemed to always be at the center of the conversation.

He tended to orbit around my now gf and for a long time he forcefully sticked with us, all good there at the beginning. But as soon as I started going out with her his behavior changed. Instead of being a direct ass to me he tried to monopolize my girlfriend’s attention, being overly attentive, stomping over me when I was talking, always trying to dominate the conversation.

Now, his true color started to show when I confronted him when he was trying to impose his lifestyle on others.

He attempted to get a mutual friend to drink with him, which is by no means bad, the problem was than this mutual friend was a recorying alcoholic.

He tried to coherse her by using social pressure, saying that you should enjoy (which is true, but he doesn’t get a say in how anyone else “enjoy” THEIR LIVES), but I standed against it. The few times we drank together I was able to keep her from overdrinking, sooooo he started to invite her without acquaitances.

Long story short:

1. He got our mutual friund hooked again to the point of losing her job.
2. I untintentionally got the best of him, such as “women are less value than the historical sites they destroy in feminist rallies” and regarding his own girlfriend who doesn’t want to have kids “she is to young to know that”. He once asked this out of nowhere “how old do you think they are?”, whes referring to two teenagers who were clearly 15 at best.
3. It turns out that majority of the dog owners dislike this guy. But, no one ever said anything because we all thought he was well liked in the cammunity.

Of course. I’ll just speak generally instead of specific stories.

Judging people based on their charisma alone is a terrible approach. Many likable people are great, but others just say what they know other people want to hear. People pleasers that will always choose the popular option, not the “right” one… And some people can be very talented at using manipulative tactics to gain support even though they spread a lot of pain. The classic popular bully.

The reverse can also be true. Some extremely uncharismatic/unpopular people are amazing at heart. And can be trusted to do what’s right even if it’s unpopular.

That’s why it’s best to not make knee-jerk or immediate judgements. Listen to your gut, pay attention to details, and try not to let the opinion of others influence your opinions or decisions too much.

I knew the guy vaguely. He was a relative by marriage to a friend of mine so I had seen him. He applied for work where I was and his story didn’t really add up. If you read between the lines it sounded like he was fired for stealing. He was very extroverted and could crack a joke so people liked him. I didn’t.

I recommended not hiring the guy but we did. Stole stuff, picked fights, was lazy, did this “game” where he would take something of his coworkers and hide it. Eventually mouthed off to our main supplier, right in front of all the underlyings. So yeah no raw materials and the plant shutdown for a week.

About 10 years ago we lived near this family that were friends with our family. The couple was a little older than my wife and I but not by much. The wife and my wife liked to hang out, but whenever I went over to their house, it seemed like the husband was very flirtatious with my wife. No huge red flags or anything, just joking a lot and laughing a lot and seeming interested. I didn’t really say anything to my wife, but I always had a bad feeling about the dude. I think she thought he was just being friendly. We moved away from there for many years but ended up moving back about 3 years ago. We didn’t really live in exactly the same area, so my wife and the other wife chatted from time to time, but didn’t really hang out. She did call my wife though when her husband started cheating on her with someone from work. He apparently was very open about flirting with other women and when she found out he wouldn’t stop seeing/sleeping with the girl from work. She told my wife that he told her he always regretted that they had as many kids as they did (4) and that it was her fault. So, turns out all my bad feelings about this dude ended up being true. The really crazy part is that the dudes wife still won’t leave him, even though he is basically openly cheating at this point. It’s sad. He’s such a loser.

My sister’s ex. Though a lot of her friends had the feeling, he sure as hell charmed her and my parents. Dude was a manipulative cokehead who stole thousands from her. She’s fine now but fuck that guy.

Deployed to Iraq cross leveled to a different unit. One of the staff sargents at this unit, who I didn’t know at all, just had a super creepy touch children type look and vibe about him. I knew some shit was going to go down with this guy.

There were two privates, both super young like 18-19, married to each other in this unit. Turns out he slept with the wife and it came out right as we were getting into country.

The Army pretty much straight disappeared that Staff Sgt. I didn’t see him again for like 8 months. Not even around the billeting. I wish I had said something before all that went down. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Quite the contrary. I had a good feeling about the principal of my sons new school, and he was part of the reason why we went for the school.

He didn’t last another year there. First he was not seen for months, and now we know that he was convicted for possession of child porn.

Until then I generally had a feeling that I could assess people quite well. Now, that feeling is shattered.

no my gut feelings are always wrong, some free advice for you scammers out there

My mother in laws friend was a roided out prison guard who had zero empathy. He was very kind to people but just could not understand when anyone had a hard time with anything. I fixed his computer and he refused to pay me because it looked easy so he figured I wasn’t really working.

When his wife asked for a divorce he strangled her so hard it broke her neck. He then held her under water in the bath tub for almost an hour just to be sure. Then he tried to end himself by jumping off the second story of their house but survived with a back injury.

MIL actually showed up to court as a character witness. He spends most if his time these days in “protective custody” because a lot of the other inmates know him from when he was a guard. We still get letters from him and he is still a dickhead.

Two actually…

Jian Ghomeshi - Something about him told me he’s trying way too hard to project the feel of cool, smooth, groovy and suave. Just had a creepy feeling about the guy the whole time, was waiting for the news basically. Then it came out that he was violently assaulting and raping women.

Kevin Spacey - Having grown up with sociopaths, I could see right through the guy. Trying and not doing a great job of acting human, in the way somebody who’s not really human thinks humans act.

Yupp and it still messes with my head. A friend’s friend was hanging out with our group for the first time and he was super chill but the way he spoke just seemed really off and I couldn’t explain it. As we ended the night his friend was gonna take off by himself as my buddy wanted to chill for the night. The next morning the guys sister calls my buddy and tells him that her brother hung himself. I know logically i couldn’t have known but my gut told me he shouldn’t have been leaving without my buddy. No drugs or alcohol were involved that night we were all 100% sober…

Bill Cosby comes to mind. Creepy and not at all funny. Never understood the appeal.

My ex. I had weird feeling from the start, because they wanted to spent time with me 24/7. my ex was so superkind, helpful and always giving me compliments and i quess i got hooked on that cause they felt different being overly nice. I will not share whole the story, but when i was with them, i started to notice patterns. So shortly my ex sexually abused/raped when i was sleeping, this happened atleast 3 times. And their excuse was sorry, thought you were sleeping. They were pressing to do other stuff too, i quess you can probably quess, but if i declined i got silent treatments and they were moody and annoyed. When my ex was pressuring to do videos on Pornhub(i declined ofc) i started realise that this is so fuckin sick, i started to have insomnia, depression, getting angry and started to have social anxety. Relationship ended when i discovered that they were cheating +6months with their friend without protection ofc, and all their excuses were blaming me for being moody, angry and suicidal, yeah after all that i think not many women will be sane. They werent sorry or take accountability. I wasted 10 years because i was too stupid to realise that that wasnt love. I still feel like a idiot. Therapy has been huge help for me and i know that it will take years to recover. I shouldve listened that gut feeling because i ended be in relationship with a sosiopath or something similar.