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If you've ever played Chinese Whispers (also known as the telephone) you know that communication fails, sometimes with funny results too.

And what better way to spend your Internet data than to enjoy people running into hilarious everyday situations? From a husband failing to buy the groceries his wife asked for to a diner unable to respond to the waiter, here are some of the best misunderstandings people have shared online.

However, we must be careful as these kinds of misunderstandings can lead to conflicts as well. I mean, just think how many times couples have started fighting after one person misinterpreted what the other said or done.

Heidi Grant Halvorson, a social psychologist at Columbia Business School who has researched how people perceive one another, said people don't realize they are not coming across the way they think they are.

"If I ask you about how you see yourself—what traits you would say describe you—and I ask someone who knows you well to list your traits, the correlation between what you say and what your friend says will be somewhere between 0.2 and 0.5. There's a big gap between how other people see us and how we see ourselves," Halvorson told The Atlantic.

According to her, this gap often arises from what psychologists call 'the transparency illusion'—people's belief that what they feel, desire, and intend is crystal clear to others, even though they have done very little to communicate clearly what is going on inside their minds.

"Chances are, how you look when you are slightly frustrated isn't all that different from how you look when you are a little concerned, confused, disappointed, or nervous. Your 'I'm kind of hurt by what you just said' face probably looks an awful lot like your 'I'm not at all hurt by what you just said' face. And the majority of times that you've said to yourself, 'I made my intentions clear,' or 'He knows what I meant,' you didn't and he doesn't."

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The answer to these problems lies within us. "If you want to solve the problem of perception," Halverson added, "it’s much more practical for you to decide to be a good sender of signals than to hope that the perceiver is going to go into phase two of perception. It's not realistic to expect people to go to that effort. Can you imagine how exhausting it would be to weigh every possible motivation of another person? Plus, you can't control what's going on inside of another person's mind, but you can control how you come across."

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#11

Funny-Misunderstanding-Tweets

TomSchneeberg Report

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Monday
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Well it's their fault for asking a 5 year old to watch a baby....

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#13

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Strauchanside Report

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manon M
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

It must have been a mixture of stress and the urge to kill, at this point...

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#18

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MarronMarvel Report

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Mike Crow
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Tip: for those days you want pasta and don’t have much time, pre boil the water before hand and then put it in the freezer. That way it is ready to go when you need it :p

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joelriddell Report

#24

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JohnMacLean2 Report

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Emily Geels
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At first I thought he meant the kids got incinerated and I was like I thought this was supposed to be funny?

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Misterscooter
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

If you haven't heard the phrase before, it could be confusing.

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Cori
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I read incinerated as 'incarcerated' and was extremely confused. I'm currently taking an algebra class after a 20 year algebraic hiatus, so I blame it on the mush that currently passes as my brain.

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elfin
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Where I worked once we used to strip and crimp wires for assembly into electronic devises. A newby was told to crimp a thousand wires. The forget to tell her to strip them first. She did a nice job crimping.

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Pauline Bennett
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

May be if incinerated a few meals I won't have to cook for awhile.

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Parmeisan
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3 years ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I have no idea what this is trying to say. Who was told to watch the sausages? The kids that ran away? Were there 3 kids or 3 sausages? Why weren't you allowed to cook if it was the kids that ran away? I am so confused. (Am also an engineer.....)

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Isa Car
Community Member
3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The person writing was told to watch the sausages by children who then ran away to play. Leaving the future engineer to count and observe the sausages instead of removing them from the heat source when properly browned.

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Emily Geels
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

At first I thought he meant the kids got incinerated and I was like wtf, so I looked at it again and realized that I'm stupid.

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Isa Car
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3 years ago

This comment has been deleted.

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Fernando
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Fortunately you are not Spaniard because there is said "échale un ojo" (punt an eye into).

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#28

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lkbm Report

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postboredom
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3 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

tofurky.. like a tofu turkey? i would rather say the entire thing than call that tofurky

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