We’d all like to think the world is a kind and generous place but in reality it can be cruel and unfortunate. The Quora community shared their stories of the most morally disgusting things they have ever seen somebody do to another person.
Comments have been edited for clarity. The source can be found the end of the article.
A couple of years ago I was visiting Sheffield, England, when I noticed a bit of a hubbub. It transpired that a lady was at the end of her tether and was threatening to throw herself off the roof of a local car park.
This was a distressing enough situation by itself, but it became worse. As the police were trying to talk the woman down from the ledge someone watching in the crowd below started shouting “jump!”
After a couple of minutes about a dozen people joined in the chant “Jump! Jump! Jump!”
This was a human being who was at such a low point she planned to take her own life and this is how some people responded to her. When questioned about their behaviour a couple of people replied that they “wanted to get their cars but the police had closed the entrance,” others simply said that they “decided to join in.”
This was just a couple of years ago. This is the most advanced our species has ever been. Something has gone wrong along the way.
Matthew Thorpe
On 12 July 2007, Sergei Yatsenko, a 48 year-old man went missing after last seen riding his Dnepr motorcycle in Dnipro, Ukraine. His body was found 4 days later, signs of a savage attack evident.
The culprits were two teenage boys, Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuk, also known as Dnepropetrovsk maniacs.
They were arrested and charged for 21 murders. Out of all the murders, the one involving Sergei was the most infamous one.
Because they took a video of it.
In the video, Sergei was lying on the ground in the woods semi-conscious and groaning. One of the boys (the one not taking the video) repeatedly struck him with a hammer.
The video was circulated online and became known as the 3 Guys 1 Hammer video.
The video depicted what the worst of humanity is capable of. Those teenage serial killers picked their victims at random. There were no apparent reasons for the murders. Sergei never knew them. You could just be walking past them on the streets and one of them would swing a hammer at your head out of nowhere. That was, in fact, what happened to their very first victim. Both boys were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Shanks Wang
Yes, virginity plays an important role in India .
A caste panchayat in Maharashtra village near Nasik even allowed a young man to end his marriage with his wife because she failed the virginity test.
Village panchayat gave a 25 year old groom some plain and white cloth. (By the way it was not his fresh and first marriage, it was his second time, means he himself was not pure.) He was supposed to sleep with his bride on the same night, a girl from Ahemadnagar district who was joining the police force .
After the wedding rituals, the groom slept with his bride on plain white cloth and entire caste panchayat waited for his verdict. Well, this bed sheet was basically given for this test. The girl passes if she bleeds and the bed sheet has a red stain. The girl fails miserably if she fails to bleed.
The groom came outside and declared that his newly wedded wife was not a virgin because she didnt bleed at all. Post having an intercourse, this man rejected his wife. The irony is that this was his second marriage so, while he marries a girl for the second time, he cannot even bear a wife that doesnt bleed at all on their first night together. Well, the bigot does not even understand that his wife could be a virgin too, and the lack of blood could be due to something else.
According to reports, the girl had been preparing for physical tests for recruitment in the police force. She was involved in cycling, running, long jump and other exercises.
Sagar Hadole
On my walk to my friends place, one fine evening, I heard a sudden loud screech of brakes and a loud thud. I turned around just in time to see a young boy in his teens lying on the road in a pool of blood, as the black SUV with the tinted glasses, after having hit the poor soul, took a sharp turn and zoomed off.
The cars occupant did not even cast a second glance at the helpless boy and ran away at the first opportunity available, scared of the crime he had committed.
I rushed to the boy to check on him. He was losing blood fast. I was trying to keep him conscious and shouting for help to the cars and bikes whizzing past us. I performed the basic first aid practices I knew, but despite that it was an urgent need to admit the boy in the hospital.
In the 15 minutes I spent on that road shouting out to the 50 odd cars and bikes that must have passed by, not more than 4 stopped, and not even one agreed to take him to the nearest medical unit.
Nidhi Nasiar
I was standing with my father on a train platform in Lao Cai, a city on the Vietnamese/Chinese border. Next to us, an Australian woman was trying to negotiate down the price of a shoe-shine with a local boot-black, a boy perhaps eight years of age. The boy pointed out the obvious: his asking price of 500 ng (about 3 US at the time) was rock bottom, not by his own policy but by the fact that the Vietnamese government did not print any bill smaller than the 500.
That stymied the Australian for only a moment. Shine my shoes and his, she insisted, indicating at me — a person she had never seen before in her life, but, by virtue of my white face, apparently more worthy of her largess than this starving child.
I indicated that my shoes — which were plastic sandals of the sort Americans call flip-flops and Australians call thongs — could not be shined, so the woman moved on to the only other Westerner on the platform, and forced this poor kid to clean my fathers suede athletic shoes as well as her expensive pumps.
(My father, in a memorable act of grace, tipped the boy 15,000 ng, one US dollar.)
Michael Lorton
I had recently visited a temple, located in the outskirts of Bangalore, where I saw a beggar. He had applied silver paint all over his body in order to look like a statue and was mimicking Mahatma Gandhi.
I had finished my Darshan and while I was waiting for my relatives, I saw a bunch of people taking selfies with him. With smiley faces. And leaving without giving him a penny.
It was disgusting to see young people take selfies with him, most of them didn’t even care to help him after they had finished their business.
He isn’t a celebrated monument! He isn’t a statue! He is a hungry old man, trying to put in extra effort in order to earn few more pennies although he could simply sit and beg like the others. I wonder what he’d be going through every day.
The display of apathy towards another human being. That’s the worst I’ve seen.
Vivek Iyer
This happened in India. There is this family who goes out together, and they have a little girl maybe 4 or 5 years old. I dont remember where they go, maybe a temple, but midway, the girl has gone missing. You can only imagine how distressed the family must have been. They look all over to no avail. Think of what they must have felt, maybe even guilt for not taking care of the child properly. Thats devastating.
They report it to the police, of course, and the police do what they can, but they dont find the girl.
One day, many years later, the bell rings in the familys house with 2 people begging for money. One is a mother, and one is a blind girl. They immediately feel guilty and give them the money; the girl is blind, how could they not feel sad?
But then the person who opened the door, recognized the blind girl as his sister who went missing years ago! When the fake mother realized what happened, she ran to escape, and she did, unfortunately.
How did she become blind? The girl later told us that they poured some sort of acid in her eyes to make her helpless, and made her beg. The sad thing is that this happens all the time. We see these kids begging with all these disabilities and we cant help but give them money to just help them. But the truth is that someone else is making them do this for their own gain, whatever it may be.
Hanin H
Sell or trade their childs prescription ADHD medication for other pills that the parent wanted to take.
The child was one of my students. When she was on her meds, she was fine. A pleasure to teach.
But when she was off of her meds, she was a completely different person. Impossible to teach. I often ended up kicking her out of class because she was so disruptive to everyone else.
If she was properly medicated all the time, she would have been a straight-A student. But she wasnt, and she was failing all of her classes as a result.
We realized that she was usually fine for the first two weeks of the month, but then her meds usually ran out for the last two weeks of the month. She couldnt figure out why the doctor wouldnt give her a months supply.
It turns out the doctor was giving her a months supply, but her mother, an addict, was taking half of her meds and using them to get other things that she wanted.
Matthew Bates
Honestly, for me, it was the case of the bike lock fugitive of Berkeley. You remember those riots in Berkeley last April, right? They were pretty rowdy, to put it lightly. But this one incident stuck out to me, not only because it was a man attacking an innocent bystander, but because of how brutal it was.
A man was protecting his friends phone (his name was Sean) from being knocked out of his hand by blocking the swipes of ANTIFA members with this outstretched arms. He was not hitting anyone and he was trying to de-escalate the possible violence.
Then out of nowhere, a member of ANTIFA comes out and hits Sean in the head with a bike lock.
So hard he had to get stitches.
So hard he got a bad concussion.
All because he was not letting the riot escalate.
The bikelock fugitive was covered head to toe in black and he disappeared into the crowd immediately. The police could not gather enough evidence to find out who he was.
Luckily, the magical website known as 4chan was on the hunt for the bikelock fugitive. By dissecting every frame of the riot, they found the man in different places, using his signature bikelock to try and hurt more people. The clincher was that at one point, the bikelock fugitives mask slipped, revealing his face. They took his face and used super-imposing to get a match with the other sighting of him. They used the face they saw and looked at social media users in the same area who looked similar. The users complied evidence and sent it to the police
And do you know who was The bikelock fugitive of Berkeley?
It was a Professor’s Assistant who taught ETHICS and MORAL PHILOSOPHY
Dasha Sakandari
The absolute worst behaviour I saw was when I was growing up in a small town in a rural part of the UK. In these places, like all similar communities worldwide, everyone knows everyone else’s business.
A poor woman had lost her son who had passed away in his late thirties. It was (is still) a small community and a lot of the townsfolk were at the funeral. Taking advantage of this, a particularly nasty individual decides to burgle the grieving mothers house during the funeral service.
Fortunately he was caught and spent time in jail but that doesn’t atone for taking advantage of someone at their weakest point.
Alex Ayers
I was in Paris this June for about a week. Walking home from dinner one night, around 11:00pm, I saw a medium sized crowd forming on one of the bridges, looking down at the Seine. The scene below took place in an area along the banks.
So I rushed over and fought my way to the crowd to see what was happening. A group of 20 year olds were gathered where the top of the stairs in that picture would be. The only thing askew was the girl, floating in the Seine. They were all screaming, call 911!! help! shes drowning! etc etc. Obviously a group of very flustered and panicked individuals.
One of the guys from the group, god bless him, jumped into the water, grabbed the girl, and swam, against the current, to the lower part of the walk way. He struggled, obviously, as the girl was limp and the current was strong. After their friends managed to pull them out of the water, more confusion ensued. Shouting at each other about whether or not to put the girl on her side, apply CPR, or just call an ambulance.
Meanwhile, the guy that rescued her was going into shock from the coldness of the water. It was pretty cold that night on dry land, so I cant imagine what the water must have felt like. Luckily, he had some friends who knew to take off his shirt and wrap him in dry clothes.
Back to the girl. She was totally exposed at this point – her dress had been ripped off by them pulling her out of the water, and she was left in hardly her underwear. It didnt look like she was breathing.
The scariest part of this entire situation was the people watching from above. Every single person was on their phones – not calling the police, no, but taking pictures. Everyone pushing and shoving each other to get the best angle for their video, and not realizing that this was actually happening, real time. You would really rather have filmed a death than have saved a life? It was shocking to me, and I pulled myself away as more and more people showed up.
Maura Bustamante
A female friend who was in a relationship invited me over to meet one of her girlfriends whom she though I might like. Cool; all hail the mighty friend zone.
Said girlfriend shows up with a guy, but thats cool. Whats it to me? Were all just friends watching a movie, after all. So fine.
It turns out the girlfriends been with date boy for a few weeks. Thats cool too: some kind of mix up. She was a nice looking girl, anyway.
After the movie and some food, the girlfriend and date boy go home.
The next day, my female friend calls to apologize and says it turns out the girlfriends been with date boy since her husband deployed to Iraq. She likes me but didnt want to say anything in front of date boy, and wants me to have her number.
No thanks, I say, not really my type.
I was in school, I had just moved, hadnt had any in quite a while, and Id be the first to admit that under those circumstances, the mating criteria for your typical hetero male was not much higher than being willing, but while I was never in the service myself, Im an Air Force brat. I was raised on honor, duty, and country—I dont cheat, not on tests, not on people, and not on marriages.
C Stuart Hardwick
A parent is killing her child, very slowly. And there isn’t anything we can do about it.
Both my parents work in education. The other day my mom came home really distressed. In the preschool she worked at, there was a child who showed up every day and was very fat. At four.
Sometimes kids are unhealthy for a little bit, that’s just the way they are, but this wasn’t the same. He opened his lunchbox. He had a 16oz. Dr. Pepper and a sandwich that was made by putting a chocolate bar in between two pieces of bread and grilling it.
And that’s it.
Every single day.
My mom, along with a preschool teacher confronted the poor kid’s mother at the end of the day.
What did the mom do?
She yelled and verbally abused both of the women and claimed that she could feed her kid whatever she wants. It’s her business, and he likes his lunch.
They couldn’t change her mind.
That kid will probably be unhealthy for the rest of his life, which won’t be very long if she doesn’t change his meal plan.
The most morally disgusting thing I’ve ever seen is complete and utter child abuse due to pure ignorance. It’s absolutely sickening that we can’t do anything about it either.
Griffin Young
This happened a few years ago. I was 14, I think, and still very socially awkward. Anywho, I was visiting South Korea from the US in the summer like I always did. I was coming home from soccer camp on the subway when I witnessed this act.
The subway was packed at 6pm, like it always is in Seoul. I walked on, and having no place to sit, stood near the exit, right below the blaring AC unit. A young woman with a miniskirt on was right next to me. I didnt think much of her until I saw a man who was sitting right in front of me doing something fishy. This sixty-something year-old man was secretly taking pictures on his phone.
I wondered what he was taking pictures of, but this question was short-lived, however, as I realized he was taking pictures under the womans skirt without her knowing! He would discreetly make his camera face-up, look like he was doing something else, quickly snap a picture, look at the result, and do it again. I was appalled at this scene. I was glad the woman got off at the next stop.
I thought about saying something to this scum of a person but I didnt. Right now, I am ashamed and regret not doing so. I couldn’t muster up the courage to go against culture and challenge an elder, even when I knew he was wrong. If I ever see something like that again, I will not pass the opportunity up to protect the one being victimized by at least speaking up.
JW Lee
I had made some new friends (a girl and two guys) while in college and we decided to go run to DQ for some quick food before our next classes. There was a homeless man outside asking for money, but I only had a few dollars for lunch, so I told him that I couldn’t help. The girl and I had ordered our food and went to go find a table while the guys were ordering their food. One of the guys came back with two bags while the other one went outside with a cup and fries.
I distinctly remember smiling when I saw him walking toward the homeless man while thinking how sweet this guy was for getting the man something to eat and drink. The homeless man looked so grateful and appeared to be thanking the guy. As the man reached out to accept the food, the guy threw the milkshake and the fries right on him. The man looked mortified.
I was appalled. The girl and guy at the table were laughing. I just stood up, said some choice words (not so pretty words), walked towards the other guy, pushed him out of my path while calling him some not so pretty names, and walked out the door. I didn’t see which way the homeless man went and I never saw him again.
Cricket Clarke