Why is no one questioning whether this is real?<p>Reddit is full of far-fetched stories like this that ultimately turn up to be completely fabricated (obviously for the purpose of internet points). While this one isn't ridiculously far-fetched, it's definitely borderline.<p>Also, the first thing that came to my mind when reading this was the movie Vivarium [1], where one of the main characters does almost exactly this. It sounds like the author watched that movie, modified it slightly, and posted it to /r/advice.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8368406" rel="nofollow">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8368406</a>
What's interesting about this to me is the way it sort of causes you to examine why certain things are acceptable hobbies and other things aren't. This particular hobby has three notable attributes:<p>1. It's risky.<p>2. The end product doesn't seem particularly useful if we set aside the mental/physical benefits. i.e.: it's done for it's own sake.<p>3. It's novel.<p>I would argue that 1 and 2 are attributes that a great number of hobbies share. Skiing, Mountain biking, football, kayaking, woodworking, sitting in a chair and playing video games all weekend. All these things carry some very specific and often non trivial risks to health or bodily harm over time.<p>Of course because these hobbies aren't novel, the benefits of the hobby are well understood. Our understanding of the risks and how to mitigate them are also quite a bit more understood.<p>It seems to me that the real 'problem' with this tunnel digging hobby is how novel it is. Which consequently leads to a lack of knowledge about what the risks and benefits may be.<p>Of course it's possible the poor guy is just dealing with a mental illness.
Here's the same post in /r/BestofRedditorUpdates, which includes the update that was removed by mods<p><a href="https://reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/u6a3qp/oop_asks_how_can_i_get_my_boyfriend_to_stop/" rel="nofollow">https://reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/u6a3qp/o...</a>
There's also a (probably apocryphal) story about Seymour Cray (the supercomputers guy) digging his tunnel too:<p>> John Rollwagen, a colleague for many years, tells the story of a French scientist who visited Cray's home in Chippewa Falls. Asked what were the secrets of his success, Cray said "Well, we have elves here, and they help me". Cray subsequently showed his visitor a tunnel he had built under his house, explaining that when he reached an impasse in his computer design, he would retire to the tunnel to dig. "While I'm digging in the tunnel, the elves will often come to me with solutions to my problem", he said. [1]<p>[1]: <a href="https://boingboing.net/2006/08/10/seymour-cray-liked-t.html" rel="nofollow">https://boingboing.net/2006/08/10/seymour-cray-liked-t.html</a>
It seems like it is not as uncommon as it may seem:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobby_tunneling</a>
Reminds me of dwarves from Dwarf Fortress entering a "Strange Mood" (<a href="https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strange_mood" rel="nofollow">https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2014:Strange_mood</a>)<p>Basically becoming completely obsessed like this, stoping any other task
There is a great story about an old man who lived in Hackney, East London who dug a series of tunnels under his house and surrounding houses. He was finally found out when other peoples houses started subsiding.
<a href="https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/mole-man-of-hackney-tunnels-20350163" rel="nofollow">https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/mole-man-of-hackney...</a>
If you are interested in "hobby" tunnels, Colin Furze has an ongoing series about digging a tunnel at his house. It is well worth the time to watch:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOelRv7fMxY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOelRv7fMxY</a><p>Update: tnorthcutt has a better url in a reply to this comment - it is for the entire playlist and not just the first video in the series.
I don't know if there is something with redditors or the internet itself, but early on in this I got the feeling that the text was trying to entertain me rather than asking a real question.<p>Maybe the karma points subconsciously incentives people to write profusely detailed situations before hit Send. Almost impossible to believe.
No joke, I really want to dig a tunnel myself.<p>Chances are I won't do it, but there's something very intriguing about subverting the urban landscape and creating a little (or massive?) hidden world. What's held me back is other prevailing interests and not owning any land where I could get away with it.<p>Maybe I'm not mentally fit myself, but I don't think the tunnel-digging is bad for his mental health. If anything, it could be helping him deal with something else that it's really a symptom of. But I have no idea. I'd be more likely to believe that he has an obsession, and it's debatable whether any particular obsession is pathological.<p>This guy probably has a shot at making it big on social media if he posted photos/videos. I know I would subscribe. If he brought in the bux, I'm sure her attitude would change, the inherent danger of amateur tunnel-digging notwithstanding.
All serious safety concerns. Also: Something that happens more often than we hear about is tunnelers breaking into an open space which collapses some of the floor they're standing on, causing them to fall and get seriously injured, or die. Is he tying himself to something? Does he have ground-penetrating radar?
Well, YouTubers are doing this in front of a huge audience (9M views on just one part of a series), so I would guess a lot of people share a similar interest in doing this too. I would be worried about accidents as well, but if popular folks on YouTube keep pushing this as something that can be done, I am sure many people who are not worried (and lack the skills) will follow until it eventually ends in a disaster: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diAxiWkwlC0" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diAxiWkwlC0</a>
It's interesting because, not too dissimilar to building tree houses, digging or tunneling is something kids are obsessed with that has a clear evolutionary advantage.<p>A nice tunnel is something you can use to store food in, stay safe from predators in, use for shelter or to stay cool in, have a shadow puppet theater.<p>I wonder if hes just got a bit of a positive feedback from some monkey brain circuits.<p>I think the GF should get him enrolled in some community college tunnel building classes or some such and demand he build it well and safely. Beyond that, it seems like a pretty benign hobby.
>there's also the fact that he doesn't really have a social life, because of this thing. I'm pretty much the only person he still talks to outside of his job, and he doesn't go out and do anything anymore. It used to be that he'd occasionally head out and do some digging on the weekends, but now he spends almost all of his free time out there<p>This is one of those situations on Reddit I find odd.<p>Of all the things we're worried about here it is the tunnel. The tunnel isn't the reason, it's just a choice reflecting something else.<p>Meanwhile everyone focuses on the tunnel... tells this person why digging the tunnel is dangerous and tunnel technical discussion. Or they go to grand conclusions about this person who they don't know... It's like most of the advice is gathered from Jr. High students (no offense to mature Jr. High students).<p>Reddit, particularly when it comes to personal advice, sometimes feels like The Peanuts where there are no adults around.
When I was in art school "hobby tunneling" was kind of a fad. Both the sculpture and performance art students got into it. Digging a huge hole or tunnel on campus was frowned upon, so it was that much cooler to pull it off. I remember one guy digging a giant well and another guy digging a huge tunnel by hand and literally living in it for days. The art school was 50/50 male and female and there were plenty of trends that both participated in, but only the men got into this particular art fad for some reason.
Well, he is in good company. Another famous tunnel digger was Seymour Cray.<p><a href="https://boingboing.net/2006/08/10/seymour-cray-liked-t.html" rel="nofollow">https://boingboing.net/2006/08/10/seymour-cray-liked-t.html</a>
Maybe she should buy a shovel and work with him. Also, there is a good chance this story is fake, that it is an advertisement beacon for a movie or something.
People have to remember that half the crap posted on these sites is fake. Without proper evidence that this happening, people are just wasting their time commenting and just feeding the troll.
Water mines in the mountains in central Portugal. Many are said to be from Moorish times. It’s a long tradition, suffice it to say, along with the elevated stone aquaducts lining the nadirs of each valley.<p>The one on my old land there was dug by an elderly friends father about 80-90 years ago with a pickaxe. It took about a year and a half of full-time work. (Who fed them during that time? Was it a village funded effort?)
It’s allegedly about 150m deep, which is terrifying to imagine, as it’s like 1.6m tall and maybe 80-90cm wide or something and the bottom is full of water.<p>I never dared wade in more than about 5m, it’s sorta crouching person height and it’s basically just scraped out of the schist, although there are pockets of a hard white quartz of some kind that I can attest to the difficulty in breaking, one dislodges large chunks of it instead.
Sorry to double comment but I love the different reactions between Reddit and HN:<p>Reddit: He's a danger to himself and others!<p>HN: That's neat! sounds better than my current project.
>This can't be good for his mental health<p>There are way worse things for your mental health than habitual physical activity. I'd bet half the people here would benefit from a good tunnel project.<p>But it's probably like any addiction. He's addicted to the progress he's making and doesn't feel the same about anything else in his life. He needs a <i>reason</i> to stop digging the tunnel.
I used to dig a tunnel in our parents backyard. Don’t know how deep it got but as a kid I could go pretty far back. Pretty sure my goal was to reach our neighbor across the street.<p>It was definitely a death trap. It was a large dirt hole dug deep into a hill.<p>I was too young to even think of reenforcing it, let alone have a budget to do so. In the end my parents finally decided my tunnel was a death trap and we had to plug it up.<p>Thinking back I’m amazed it didn’t collapse on me. Oh well… cheating death is just part of growing up.
Only vaguely related, during one of my burnouts I worked for a high-end custom wood flooring company as (45 year old) "shop boy", electrical fixer (tools) and estimator. It was a guilty pleasure, I really enjoyed it (didn't pay well, but don't say there's nothing good about Fundies, they gave me health insurance to my great surprise).<p>So, in some suburban environment (which has been engineered to not have cellular reception) there is a house. Out in the yard, if you look for it, there's this thing that looks kind of like a cupola, sitting on the ground, about 50 yards from the house. It has a basement (never found the pool). In the basement was a metal door, with a little room and a hallway around a corner. When the door shuts behind you it goes "WUMP! Wump! wump wump wump wump". Looking around the corner, there's a pulley, like a clothes line, disappearing into the murk. It's a gun lane.<p>Guy who'd bought the house wanted to use it for a wine cellar. He wanted a wood floor in it (on top of the concrete). This is insane! We found an amazing high-end engineered product (laminated) faced with cypress. Aged it in the hole for a couple of months prior to installation. Lost about 10% of the product, but we planned for that. Crazy. Paid well.
I almost guarantee this is a shelter / disaster prep, the "inherited property" thing is what is the giveaway.<p>All of a sudden he has a "playground", maybe some cheap property that doesn't have a great use or value otherwise. Those become nice to have for dude toys and dude projects.<p>Girlfriend of course has multiple agendas that she didn't discuss with him and doesn't like any activity outside of those, which is garden variety manipulative partner stuff.
She made an update 3 days ago that was deleted for some reason - here's the google cache of it:<p><a href="https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ATx76EIhgwwMJ%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Frelationship_advice%2Fcomments%2Fu5rbjo%2Fupdate_how_can_i27f_get_my_boyfriend31m_of_two%2F+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca" rel="nofollow">https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3ATx76...</a>
Some of these ... artisanal tunnels ... come to a horrible conclusion:<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/a-millionaire-day-trader-the-secret-bunker-under-his-home-and-a-murder-conviction/2019/07/01/653a3560-5d37-11e9-9625-01d48d50ef75_story.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/a-million...</a> [soft paywall]<p>From one of many other related articles, "The equipment was fed by what Wink called a dangerous, “haphazard daisy chain” of power cords. And on the day of the fire, hours before it broke out, Beckwitt was aware of the smell of smoke in the basement, according to Wink, but reacted only by adjusting the circuit breakers."<p>That one article can't capture this situation well enough, there was an entire series of them (and it's still ongoing), but one of the issues had to do with the authorities dealing with the situation and simply not knowing what to do to secure the tunnel after the fact. Tunneling was haphazardly done and had gone beyond his property line and undermined neighbors' homes, and it got very complicated.
Reminded me of a great Darknet Diaries episode that involved a lot of tunneling!<p>EP 39: 3 ALARM LAMP SCOOTER
<a href="https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/39/" rel="nofollow">https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/39/</a>
This reminds me of the Temples of Humankind, where a new-age community in Italy (possibly an abusive cult looking at their Wikipedia page) dug in a mountain for a couple decades without planning permission but by the time they were discovered they were impressive enough that they were allowed to keep them.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temples_of_Humankind" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temples_of_Humankind</a><p>Looking for them again I also found Sassi di Matera:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassi_di_Matera" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sassi_di_Matera</a>
This must be at an elevated space or in a dry area. Otherwise the water table would stop him. She should ask him to take a video of the tunnel for her so she can see what it looks like down there (without having to go in herself).
I'm betting on fake story for karma. Makes you think how many stories we hear on the internet are fake yet shape our perception of the world for many people who take things at face value.
If he can avoid the safety concerns as far as cave ins and oxygen problems it seems like an incredibly benign hobby compared to a what a lot of people are into. It must be great exercise, and he could end up with some really cool underground space if he does it properly. I wonder how many women out there who's boyfriends spend their time at the bar or at the track or doing some sort of drugs would love it if they were just digging a tunnel at home instead.
> He's always really happy when he comes back from digging<p>I'm not sure I see the problem entirely.<p>Digging the tunnel is his after-work / weekend video game.<p>He's obviously neglecting his partner a bit, but if he could balance that out, and assuming he knows how to dig without collapsing the world onto his head, it seems like there's nothing too harmful here.
'Mole Man' of Hackney lived in tunnels he dug so deep under his house they made pavements collapse:<p><a href="https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/mole-man-of-hackney-tunnels-20350163" rel="nofollow">https://www.mylondon.news/news/nostalgia/mole-man-of-hackney...</a><p>Digging for Balrogs no doubt
I will note that "drill operator" is the #2 most satisfying job according to data here: <a href="https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/most-and-least-meaningful-jobs/full-list" rel="nofollow">https://www.payscale.com/data-packages/most-and-least-meanin...</a>
I remember there being an interesting set of posts a long time ago where someone did this under their house as a passion project with only a small concrete mixer and they hand shoveled/hand troweled everything. If anyone remembers where I might have seen that I'd appreciate a link!
Readable link on mobile: <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/u3qipy/how_can_i_get_my_boyfriend_to_stop_digging_his/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/Advice/comments/u3qipy/how_can_i_ge...</a>
It's important to remember half of the nonsense on reddit is a kinder (much kinder) form of what was on 4chan back in the day, it's mostly fiction written by people to get karma. I generally don't take stuff like this (or aita or relationships) subreddit posts seriously.
Well what have you said to him to make him prefer dark underground isolation to your relationship?<p>But seriously, there is no mention of its purpose or where it leads? If it's nearly finished then bf/gf can find a compromise. If it has no end then there are bigger problems.
Apropos:<p><i>I am a dwarf, and I'm digging a hole</i><p><i>Diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole</i><p><i>I am a dwarf, and I'm digging a hole</i><p><i>Diggy diggy hole, digging a hole</i><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34CZjsEI1yU</a>
Not a tunnel in the ground, but when I was younger we were at a friend's lakeside cottage. Their grandparents had built the house with crawl spaces/ladder? spaces running through everywhere for the kids to play.
This reminded me a novel by Chuck Palahniuk called 'Choke' which one of the characters is addicted to collecting rocks. He is already in the news and perhaps from now on some sort of 'cult' starts.
Reminds me of this excellent movie starring Michael Shannon: <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675192/" rel="nofollow">https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1675192/</a>
This post sounds to me like the opening of some sort of horror short story, with the boyfriend finally unearthing some sort of ancient intelligence that is trapped down there and controlling him.
The game is easier, and cleaner: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqGV76RcL50" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqGV76RcL50</a>
I worked with a hole digger in HI. The deepest he got in his yard was about 10 feet. Says his record was 20 when he was a teen at his parents' house in LA.<p>Really cool dude
The tunnel doesn’t seem like the main issue. The dude is neglecting his partner and may be unaware that she would appreciate a little more of his time.
He needs to start a youtube channel:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/diAxiWkwlC0" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/diAxiWkwlC0</a>
Weird. I don't see the harm in actually digging the tunnel. The issue is he is probably not ventilating properly. He is going to get sick and pass out/die if he digs deep enough with no proper machinery to move fresh air into the space.<p>The alternative is he is cheating on his GF and hired an excavation crew as a cover. Elaborate but..with the crap I've seen you really never know. lol.
I noticed something different in that Reddit URL. "What's that? A new redesign? Looks cool!" Turns out, it's the old reddit experience.
Possibly rephrased as "How can I get my boyfriend to spend his energies on things that benefit me, rather than simply things which benefit him?"
A couple topics no one has mentioned:<p>"inherited property" = He started this with Grandpa, then he left for college and/or grandpa died, now its a memory of the good old days. Now if he could only find someone to experience this together in the current year, like someone who calls him "boyfriend"... (edited to be more explicit, this was never about digging a tunnel it was about hanging out with grandpa, kinda like I never fished to live and wasn't even a huge fan of eating fish but I liked fishing with grandpa as a kid)<p>All the single people on Reddit AND HN not understanding the difference between doing something with someone and doing something around someone, so using strict binary thinking if the poster is not a fellow digging addict the poster must ostracize the digger and force them to be alone. My wife does fine precision woodworking "with" me not "along" with me, for example. She's right there scrapbooking while I'm hand cutting (loose and rattle-y LOL) dovetail joints, etc. The poster is making a huge mistake by not hanging out with BF using the excuse of not wanting to lift a shovel. Read a book, watch videos, do some craft, no need to pick up a shovel.<p>There's never been a better time in history to take up tunneling. Youtube is full of abandoned and active mine exploration videos, uncountable hours. There's something strangely chill and technologically impressive about seeing mining works on screen. I picked up this youtube interest during the covid lockdown as a way to get out there while also satisfying some techno-curiosity. "Exploring Abandoned Mines and Unusual Locations" is good, Frank is pretty chill dude. Beware that looking at mining videos leads you down a path where next thing you know you're watching The Proper People do urban exploration and then you find the Dead Malls of Discord server and you're watching cruise director Kristin wander an empty dead mall at 2:00am when you have to work the next day...<p>My experience with cranky old men, being related to several and probably turning into one myself, is if they're not overly talkative you'll get the standard complaint regardless what's going on. So my elderly uncle goes to his rented farm patch "to weed the tomato raised beds" almost every sunny day but that's like five minutes work and the rest of the time he does all kinds of crazy stuff ranging from tractor maintenance to fertilizer application to whatever else his hobby interests lead him to. So this dude is probably restoring the house to move in, or planting a huge crop of "something" or maybe he's just fishing all day, but yeah he's not the talkative type and he "went out to dig today". Or sometimes that's just how guys plan hobby time. Today I WILL mow the lawn so I say I am mowing the lawn but really I spent most of the time doing misc yardwork tasks, trimming bushes, etc, still I'd simplify it as "I mowed the lawn".
Pics or it didn't happen. I think we underestimate the harmful effects of mild disinformation. And underestimate the motivation to lie on Reddit.
We are constantly subtly recalibrating our worldview so why increase the likelihood that our picture of the world is inaccurate?