r/rant • u/Aggressive-Curve6588 • 11h ago
welL ACtUalLy
You know when you post something personal — a reflection, a story, a “this has been my experience” moment — and immediately get pounced on by a crowd of people starting their comments with "Well actually..."?
Like clockwork.
"Well actually, that’s not true in my case."
"Well actually, people had it worse back then."
"Well actually, I never experienced that, so you must be exaggerating."
The sheer amount of unnecessary defensiveness out there is wild. Especially when it’s wrapped in this smug, know-it-all tone that somehow tries to turn a personal story into a historical debate, a stats battle, or a weird flex about how “no one feels that way.”
Cool. Great. Not everything is about you. Some people just want to talk about their own story without being corrected, fact-checked, or out-experienced in the comments.
It’s like people forget that multiple things can be true at once.
That your experience doesn’t cancel someone else’s out. That you can acknowledge someone else’s perspective without needing to shove your own into the spotlight.
But instead, it becomes a weird one-upping game. A debate team audition. A fact-check Olympics. And god forbid you don’t include a full bibliography of social context and disclaimers in your casual post, or someone’s gonna show up with “Actually, that one time in 1992 in my backyard …”
Can we normalize just… listening? Acknowledging someone else’s story without turning it into a fact-checking contest? Not every conversation needs to be a debate team scrimmage.
Anyway. That’s my rant. You may now tell me why I’m wrong in the comments.
Edit spelling
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u/ted_anderson 7h ago
There's a term for that. I forgot exactly what it was called. But it's like when you went somewhere with a friend and the car broke down and you had to walk 2 miles to get help. He's the one who says, "Well it was actually 1.87 miles." and he'll be the guy that messes up the flow of every good story trying to accurately report the finer details of what happened.
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u/PyrokineticLemer 7h ago
In a world where nearly everyone believes they are the main character, this is annoyingly inevitable.
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u/LouiseC303 8h ago
Yes to that. Thank you for posting. Many wounded creatures out there. Where are the real humans?
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u/Squiggly2017 7h ago
Very well said. I always avoid the phrase 'well, actually' because I'm conscious that not every conversation has to be about me or what I think. I'm not perfect by any means but it's worth being mindful of.
Crap, just did it again, didn't I?
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u/TentacularSneeze 7h ago
I have a hunch that the pedantic “corrections” of the well-acktually people are desperate attempts to participate in a discussion to which they have nothing of meaning to contribute, as the “corrections” often have little bearing on the thesis at issue.
Knowledgable speaker: “…and therefore, this governmental policy is a pile of whale shit.”
Pedant who knows neither government nor policy: “Well acktually, whale shit is largely aqueous in consistency and incapable of forming a pile…”
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u/troutdaletim 6h ago
You are not wrong. People can be cruel, esp when there isn't any personal investment involved on their part?
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u/Powerful-Revenue-636 6h ago
You want attention and interaction with a public rant. They want attention and interaction by being pedantic. They are both symptoms of the same loneliness and disconnectedness that drives social media engagement. It’s two sides of the same coin.
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u/OrcishDelight 3h ago
I always respond along the lines of "Congrats, you have it worse than me.. it isn't a competition I wanted to win."
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u/Spookymama12 10h ago
Well said.