15 people share times they got revenge on someone only to realize they went too far.

Revenge is a dish best served cold, and without the backfiring pang of regret.

But sadly, sometimes, revenge feels less cathartic and more like a different kind of pain when you realize that you did it too well.

In a popular Ask Reddit thread, people shared times they got revenge and realized it hurt the other person too much.

1. From StereotypicalSupport:

My friend was on the bus waiting to leave school. Younger kid was being mouthy and pissing people off so my friend said something along the lines of “God, your parents must hate you.”

Turns out the kid was an orphan.

2. From spearminttea:

This kid named Ben kept winning at sh*t. He was smart as f*ck with math. I was jealous because my parents really wanted me to be good at math and I had a very difficult time with it.

He also got to be patrol captain and even though I applied I didn’t get to be one. I was a short kid, like third shortest in the class. It was elementary school so people care about that. So we had this exercise where we practiced compliments.

I said to Ben “I like you because you make me feel tall!” He cried. It was his birthday. Sorry, Ben, I hope you don’t remember that.

3. From k8esaurustex:

So when we were kids, my little brother loved root beer. Had as many as mom would give him every day.

When I was 10 & he was 8, he did something particularly annoying, and I pulled him into a room and told him, very seriously, that he had a drinking problem. He was super confused and didn't know what I meant.

I told him, Craig, root beer is roots and BEER. And you always want more. You have a beer problem. Now, we didn't know until later, but my brother is super autistic, and he believed me very literally.

About 6 or so years after that, we went to a family dinner at my mom's favorite Mexican restaurant and were ordering our drinks. My mom asked my brother why he didn't want the root beer, he used to love it? They have a really good one on tap.

My poor, sweet brother loved at my mom so earnestly, and told her that he can't have root beers anymore because he used to have an addiction, so he can't ever have root beer again.

My mom immediately knew that I was behind it, and I still haven't lived it down.

4. From Iceicemickey:

My brother is 7 years older than me (female). He was always way too rough and wild with me. One time when I was 6 and he was 13, we were playing cops and robbers. I was the cop and thought, “Now I’M the boss!”

So I took that opportunity to put him in jail- which was in the basement- by Sparta kicking him square in the back from the top of the stairs. He had to jump to catch himself so he didn’t break his neck.

His foot hurt for several days but my mom told him to walk it off. Yeah…he broke his foot. I still feel bad about it.

5. From hercarmstrong:

My sister was being a dick to me as a kid, so when I next gave her a glass of milk, I put some kernels of corn in it, thinking it would gross her out. It didn't.

It choked her. Cut to me giving my kid sister the Heimlich, and apologizing for years after.

6. From SadSnakeNoises:

I wasn’t cool in junior high. Evan was in most of my classes and he wasn’t cool either, but apparently, he thought that I was lame enough that I would be a viable target. He would mock me at any opportunity (and there were plenty, I was a weird kid).

I remember he liked to lick his hand and smear it over my locker. Disgusting. So now for the revenge. Evan had a reputation for being a nerd, and he liked to brag about how smart he was, how he was a math wiz, etc.

For each class, all of the student grades were posted for on a tack board. Each student had a ‘unique number’ assigned to them.

To find your grade you first had to find your number, and the grade for each exam and class project was posted next to it.

I realized at some point that my unique number had my birth month and day in the middle, with random numbers before and after. A friend confirmed that their number also included their birthday.

Evan made the mistake of mentioning one day that his birthday was on St. Patrick’s day. You can probably see where this is going. One day in math class we got one of our exams back.

Evan saw my grade and started laughing at me, calling me stupid for ‘only’ getting an B+. He wanted to know, how did I do so badly on a test that was so easy? I asked him what he got on the test.

“A+”, he told me smugly.

“Yeah?” I said, “Let’s see it then.”

But he wouldn’t show me his paper. He had conveniently already sorted it away in a folder. I decided to see what his grade was for myself. I marched over to the grade board, and searched for the student number with 317 in it (St. Patrick’s day).

I found it. And next to the number— D’s, F’s, more D’s. I announced to the class that you can just use someone’s birthday to figure out their number and grade.

I locked eyes with Evan and began listing each of his grades out loud like the horrible sh*t that I am. I still remember the look on his face. Abject horror which quickly morphed into a broken, hopeless expression.

And then he started crying and left the classroom. This kid wasn’t cool, he wasn’t attractive. All he had was his intelligence— or the lie about it, anyway. Now he had nothing, and on top of that he cried openly in class.

The kid never lived it down (not as long as I knew him anyway, which truthfully was only another year or so). I only got a stern talking-to for what I had done, but Evan got ridiculed for the rest of the time he went to that school.

I don’t think I realized the full scope of what I had done until I was older. We were both losers just trying to make it through junior high without too much emotional damage, and I had to nuke this kid over some snarky comment that didn’t really mean much of anything at the end of the day.

7. From meduhsin:

In high school- one of my best friends (L) felt insecure/threatened by me, she thought I was trying to get at the guy(R) I set her up with (had zero interest, we were friends), so she spread a lie that resulted in my bf and friend group abandoning me.

After being a loner for a year, I made a new best friend (K) and we would go on walks in the woods to smoke weed.

One day we are walking and we run into R, who is still dating L a year later, who hangs out with us for a bit.

I definitely invited him to smoke and was being friendlier than I would have normally been, because I know L would be LIVID if she knew we were hanging out, and it felt like a little sweet revenge.

Well, I had to leave and left K and R together. Found out hours later from K that she and R had hooked up in the woods. And proceeded to do so a few more times in the future.

And he stayed dating L for another 8 months, took forever until she found out. It made my year, honestly, knowing that if she hadn’t f*cked with me, it either wouldn’t have happened, or I would have told her immediately.

8. From MacManus47:

A band once wrote a diss track about me. As a lark, I made a video for it and claimed their band name as a domain to host it. I shared it to Petty Revenge and then Reddit doxxed the band. Felt awful.

9. From mydreamturnip:

I was in Grade 8, we had this new kid named Caleb move to our town. He came from a rough home in a different city and had been sent to live with is aunt and uncle in our small little town.

Anyways, he managed to fit in pretty well and became friends with most of the boys in fairly short order. So, one day at recess, all the boys are playing basketball outside on a cement pad with hoops at either end.

Caleb, hoping to show off how tough he is, decides to start not playing by the rules. He's committing hard fouls, literally punching other kids in the arm when they went up for shots, he missed one time and punched a kid in the face.

And he says 'what, we're playing by street rules?'. A couple days later, he's still doing this and still using the same excuses. We've all told him to stop and play normal, but he won't. So I decide it's time to teach him a lesson.

I get the ball right under the hoop, fake like I'm going up for the shot to get him off his feet. Then I bend at the hips and get really low. His knees basically come in contact with my side and he does a full flip and lands flat on his a*s.

I stand back up, make my shot, and say 'street rules, right?'. It's at this point I notice he's actually in quite a lot of pain. Turns out he broke his tailbone. But when he recovered, you better damn well believe he played basketball by the rules.

10. From salviaaplaath:

One time my brother poked my sides while I was washing dishes. I retaliated by donkey kicking his groin with all my force. I’d never done that to anybody before...and I learned to only do that to my worst enemies. (Sorry bro).

11. From Dependent-Fox9529:

Girl at school kept telling her friends my sister was a whore. I 'accidentally' spilled chili on her new shirt.

Turns out her gram had just died and they had went shopping for that shirt together like the week before, making it the last thing she ever gave her.

She was out of school for about a month for personal stuff.

And...TBH my sister was/is a complete whore.

12. From Cotheron:

We had one person in our group in University who was not pulling his weight. He would submit things translated from different languages that were not in English, he would submit them without any references and he would never attend meetings.

Looking back he was probably just out of his means but it didn't feel like he was even trying.

My group decided, on a day he didn't come to class to (we assume) purposefully avoid a meeting we had planned for right after, to tell him we had had a very large test that day he had missed.

We just sent some messages in the group chat saying 'that was a hard test' and 'does anyone know how much that was weighted? I know I failed.'

One look at the course outline and you could see we had not had a test. He dropped the class the next day.

13. From Cryptrix:

When I was in my late teens, I was newly involved with a girl who cheated on me, so I went out of my way to get involved with her childhood best friend. I ended up hurting both of them, and permanently ending their relationship (as far as I know).

I've always seriously regretted the whole thing, because it was so unnecessary and immature of me to act like that when I should have just let it go and moved on.

14. From Nurseokaybody:

I got tired of a classmate who would cheat by looking at my test. He was sort of a bully but I wasn’t a good target because I would fight back.

I noticed that his math grades improved while sitting next to me and realized why…so next test, I just wrote all kinds of wrong answers, like off the way, he should have known they weren’t right…he jumps up and turns in his test.

I smiled at him and erased all of my answer and wrote the correct ones. He got ZERO, and the teacher knew then something was up. He was subsequently made to do his tests alone in the corner of the room.

Parents were called, the whole nine yards. I think he had to even repeat the class. I sort of felt bad that he got busted but fifth grade me was mean enough not to let it bother me for long, lol.

15. From swainslanders:

Only child of a single parent here. We moved a lot. Went to grammar school for a year with a kid who made my life miserable. We moved away. Eventually moved back to the area for 8th grade.

My math teacher paired me with a kid who wasn’t doing well. It was my former nemesis. He didn’t remember me. I intentionally taught him incorrectly. He ended up failing 8th grade math and didn’t advance to high school with everyone else.

Edit: Folks asking how he made my life miserable. He was a big kid. I was not. We lived in the same apartment complex at first. I was just the focus of his dimwitted primate dominance game - nothing new or particularly interesting.

I out-a**holed an a**hole - not much of a win.