'My Dad Called Me Almost 350 Times': Internet Slams Overbearing Father In Viral Thread

Many commenters questioned one father's mental stability after his 16-year-old child revealed his incessant behavior and phone calls in a viral internet post.

Posted in Reddit's r/insaneparents subreddit, Redditor u/DifferentDrama9528's post about their father's attempts to contact them has received over 8,000 views and 400 comments. Titled, "My dad called me 350 times, then decides to use a relative's recent death as leverage," the viral post includes evidence of his exhaustive attempts to contact them.

Along with an explanation that their father called them 350 times while they packed their bags to return to school following winter break, u/DifferentDrama9528 included a screenshot of text messages they received from their father following the phone call barrage.

"You have successfully ignored three hours of my attempted contact," his text message read. "You win, I surrender."

The screenshot also shows that after u/DifferentDrama9528's father "surrendered" from attempting to contact them, he added a piece of information allegedly intended to guilt the original poster into answering.

"Oh yes... your aunt died in hospital while I was trying to call you," he wrote in a final text message.

While many studies show that overbearing parental behavior can have major negative impacts on the mental health of teenage children, and the United States Department of Health and Human Services provides clear definitions for what constitutes child abuse, the Child Welfare Information Gateway reports that emotional abuse is often "difficult to prove."

In the United States, incessant phone calls and manipulation via text message could fall under the umbrella of harassment.

According to FindLaw, harassment laws vary from state to state, but contain common threads. Behavior that targets an individual and is intended to alarm, annoy, or torment that individual would generally be classified as harassment and could be subject to legal action.

Many of the viral post's commenters speculated that the over-the-top behavior was a result of a changing power dynamic between father and child, but u/DifferentDrama9528 assured that this outburst came seemingly out of nowhere.
"He's never been even remotely normal," they wrote in a response to a comment. "But this was a step in a direction that I didn't know he would even have the capacity to go."

In an additional update to their original post, u/DifferentDrama9528 said that they were not close with the aunt their father said died while he was trying to call, and added that their aunt actually died the previous weekend.

Taking the screenshot text messages and extra information u/DifferentDrama9528 provided throughout the comment section, many Redditors took this viral thread as an opportunity to compare their experiences with their parents, and to bombard OP's father with insults.

In the post's top comment, that has received 3,100 votes, Redditor u/holtpj wrote that the 350 phone calls u/DifferentDrama9528 received in three hours were more than they had received in their lifetime.

"I'm 40 years old," they wrote. "I don't think my mom has called me 350 times in my entire life."

Following u/holtpj's observation, things got heated.

"This has to be the most bat sh*t parent behavior I've ever seen," Redditor u/ascrumner commented.

"I mean, is he ok?," they questioned.

Redditor u/Quartnsession was succinct in their response—recommending that the original poster's father sees a mental health professional with just three words: "Dude needs therapy."

While a handful of commenters expressed their curiosity about their father's mental state, Redditor u/fallingintothestars was less sympathetic, and questioned his motives for calling his child more than 300 times in a row.

"I don't understand how someone can have the mental will power to continue calling someone 350 times," they wrote. "If he put that brain to good use he could create space travel."