Recently, an anonymous Reddit user asked, “What industry is entirely built on a house of cards and would collapse overnight if people realized the truth about it?”

People had A LOT of shocking (and alarming!) answers to share. Here are some of the most interesting comments:

1. “The kids travel sports industry. $3,000+ per year so a 9-year-old can play ball. Sorry, your kid isn’t going to get a D1 scholarship because he played travel ball at the 10U level.”

2. “Natural diamonds. As someone who grew up in the trade and has been in it longer than 30 years, people ask me if they should buy synthetic or natural diamonds. There is absolutely no difference in the material; it is an entirely emotional argument. The rational decision is always buy the synthetic, man-made product at a fraction of the price.”

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3. “Tax prep. These companies lobby to keep the system absurd so they can sell a fix, but every other developed country just does your taxes for you for free.”

4. “School photos. Yeah, they can pick a Jurassic Park background if they want, but it’s like $50 for a couple wallet photos and a 4×6 now. I honestly don’t know who is buying these.”

—Debaser626

5. “Life coaches, business coaches, all of the coaches. When you dig into the background of these people, it’s all a sham. The majority have not built up enough experience to coach anyone, but they expect you to pay for their advice. I know a woman who used to work in HR in my office. Unpleasant person, liked to gossip, not particularly good at her job. She is now an Executive Coach, despite never coaching anyone in her life. The celebrity coaches are the worst of all.”

6. “Greeting cards! Why are they $8 now, and why are we still sending them?!”

7. “The influencer industry. Half of it is just people pretending to enjoy things they got for free.”

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8. “Private equity (PE). The idea is great; a thriving financial business invests in smaller business so they can get their foot in the door, and the profits will flow back to the PE firm. In reality, the PE firm comes in and guts personnel, amenities, perks — anything they can find so that the business has lower operating costs. This leads to a reduction in quality of service and skilled workers. The PE firm sucks up all profits that could be used to reinvest in the company and essentially abandons the business. Now the business is worse off, the employees are miserable, the customers loathe the lower quality product, and the business slowly does worse and worse until they sell.”

—iizakore

9. “The entire ‘entry level job requiring 3–5 years of experience’ system. Companies complain about talent shortages while refusing to train anyone.”

10. “The state of Utah. If the Mormon church disappeared, there’d be little structure left in the state. The state government has a lot of overlap with the church.”

11. “You’d be surprised how fragile the oil and gas industry is.”

12. “Most software is built on a house of cards. A lot of it could collapse from some random developer.”

—AgentOrange96

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13. “Chiropractors. At best, they are okay-ish psychical trainers. At worst, they could paralyze or kill you. Anything they speak about that actually works is just taken from other well-researched fields of science.”

14. “Health insurance companies. They profit by maximizing human suffering.”

15. “Advertising. It fuels the internet because companies think it’s worth paying to force you to watch ads that cover the article you’re trying to read. I don’t know about y’all, but sitting in front of the screen waiting for my video to start makes me disinclined to buy from the company that’s making me wait.”

16. “The beauty industry would collapse the second women realize that most of the products they use are carcinogenic and full of endocrine disruptors making their skin uglier. If you disrupt your skin barrier, you are causing oxidative stress and aging faster.”

—jijijojijijijio

17. “Ticket resale middlemen. They add zero joy, absorb all the margin, then act shocked when people hate the whole system.”

18. “Buying and reselling trading card game stuff like Pokémon or Magic the Gathering. If kids cannot afford the product because of the scalpers, then you lose the next generation of buyers, and people generally lose interest in card games as they get older. Plus, the scalpers are constantly just one expansion pack away from over investing and then going broke.”

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19. “A lot of vitamin supplement companies.”

20. “Anyone who’s ever used an AI customer ‘service’ bot can tell you how terrible AI is. I’ve literally never had one give me a helpful answer.”

—foreverAmber14

21. “Luxury fashion. The value often isn’t about the actual production cost; it’s about the brand and the status. If society’s obsession with status culture disappeared, it’d be really hard to justify such high markups.”

22. “Cryptocurrency. The whole thing is based on what the next guy might pay for it. In reality, there’s nothing of substance behind it.”

23. And finally, “What industry isn’t a house of cards? We live in a clown world. The moment you start deconstructing it, the whole thing falls apart.”

What industries do you think would collapse overnight if people realized the truth about them? Share your examples in the comments or the anonymous form below!

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