“‘Bite’ Them, Run Away”: 30 Weird Things People Could Only Admit To Doing Anonymously

We managed to get in touch with Key_Nectarine_1969 and she was kind enough to tell us more about her now-viral post.

"To be honest with you, [I came up with the idea for it when] I was sitting in bed and watching ‘I Am Not Okay With This’ on Netflix," the Redditor told Bored Panda.

"[Then,] a scene popped up of the main character and the potential love interest showing each other their weird secrets. Because of that, the question just suddenly popped into my head!"

The author of the post noticed some recurring themes among the answers. "Most of them involved a sexual plot, or something along those lines, which is very interesting to me," she said.

This is indicative of a broader pattern, too. When Michael Slepian, Ph.D., who is the Sanford C. Bernstein and Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics and author of The Secret Life of Secrets: How Our Inner Worlds Shape Well-Being, Relationships, and Who We Are, surveyed 50,000 research participants, he discovered that the most common secrets we keep include a lie we've told (69 percent), romantic desire (61 percent), sex (58 percent), and finances (58 percent).

"I believe that it's often difficult to navigate between the impulse to share a secret and facing potential consequences due to societal standards," Key_Nectarine_1969 said.

"To vaguely quote somebody's confession, 'I still pick my nose and eat it.' Societally speaking, people would judge you. They'd most likely assume that you're immature and, well, gross. Even though the percentage of the population who do this is pretty high! It's difficult because society is hypocritical and judgmental."

"I do believe that online platforms help with this," she added. "They create a sort of anonymity that's basically the equivalent of a safety blanket."

The hard part of having a secret is having to live with it, alone in your thoughts. As Dr. Slepian wrote, when the only venue to work through it is your own mind, you are not likely to find the most productive way of thinking about it.

Like a carousel that just never stops, each time you think back on it, you may go through the same motions, have the same negative thoughts, reiterate the same regrets, and find yourself getting nowhere.

It often takes a conversation with another person to escape the loop.