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30 Times People Misunderstood Each Other And Hilarity Ensued
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.
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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.
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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."
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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Emily Geels 6 years ago
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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postboredom 6 years ago
tofurky.. like a tofu turkey? i would rather say the entire thing than call that tofurky
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Esca Sav 6 years ago
My dad burned hot dogs in boiling water. I left him so I could handle laundry. I come back to find black hot dogs in boiling water. I repeat... BLACK. SCORCHED. HOT. DOGS. IN. BOILING. WATER... To this day I do not know what happened. To this day I do not know how he defied chemistry. I asked my chemistry professor if this was possible, she said no. I don't trust him with cooking since that day. If anyone has an explanation, please enlighten me. I can't sleep some days thinking about it.
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#33
Guy MacGregor 6 years ago
Hum... Water with cheese ? No, you cook pasta, them you add cheese, no ? Or I still don't understand what north americans mean by "Mac&cheese" ?
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What do you think ?
Misterscooter 6 years ago
I was cooking hot dogs by boiling them on the stove. The water boiled away and they started to burn so I turned off the heat and ran to the other room where my mom was on the (corded) phone. Upset, I told her that they burned and she said to put ice on it. She thought I had burnt myself and came out to see me rubbing ice cubes on the hot dogs.
Rissie 6 years ago
Don't boil them to begin with, just put them in (max) simmering water. The water in the sausage will start to boil and break the skin in the process. Leaving you with a burst dog.
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YupItsMe1234 6 years ago
This "James Breakwell" is always on these twitter things, sometimes multiple times. Anybody else get the idea that he is making these up?
Chrissie M. 6 years ago
He is quite a successful twitterer (...er), I thionk he is even living off his twitter account, as an author. So yes, he is making things up, although they seem to be inspired by his family.
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Blue Cicada 6 years ago
My perplexed ex-husband once asked, "what's the difference between putting the dog to sleep and putting the baby to sleep?!" He studied English for two years before arriving in the US, and was often baffled by idioms and other language patterns.
Carole Reid 6 years ago
Those idioms will get you every time. I hope you don't have a dog.
Load More Replies... Misterscooter 6 years ago
I was cooking hot dogs by boiling them on the stove. The water boiled away and they started to burn so I turned off the heat and ran to the other room where my mom was on the (corded) phone. Upset, I told her that they burned and she said to put ice on it. She thought I had burnt myself and came out to see me rubbing ice cubes on the hot dogs.
Rissie 6 years ago
Don't boil them to begin with, just put them in (max) simmering water. The water in the sausage will start to boil and break the skin in the process. Leaving you with a burst dog.
Load More Replies... YupItsMe1234 6 years ago
This "James Breakwell" is always on these twitter things, sometimes multiple times. Anybody else get the idea that he is making these up?
Chrissie M. 6 years ago
He is quite a successful twitterer (...er), I thionk he is even living off his twitter account, as an author. So yes, he is making things up, although they seem to be inspired by his family.
Load More Replies... Blue Cicada 6 years ago
My perplexed ex-husband once asked, "what's the difference between putting the dog to sleep and putting the baby to sleep?!" He studied English for two years before arriving in the US, and was often baffled by idioms and other language patterns.
Carole Reid 6 years ago
Those idioms will get you every time. I hope you don't have a dog.
Load More Replies...
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