Most people would likely agree that the feeling of great annoyance—often over relatively minor things—is quite universal; people don’t need to speak the same language or be from the same area to know just how aggravating a sock sliding halfway off in a shoe can be.
Similar annoying occurrences are often depicted on the ‘Mildly Infuriating’ subreddit, which currently boasts over 7.4 million members from all over the place. For many of them, the sub is a source of comfort that they’re not alone in being annoyed by the daily inconveniences in life, and if you’re curious to see what said inconveniences entail, scroll down to find some examples on the list below; but do it at your own risk, as they might leave you mildly infuriated, too.
Below you will also find Bored Panda’s interviews with Emeritus Professor of Psychology Joseph Hellige and Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at The University of Delaware, Philip Gable, who were kind enough to answer a few of our questions about why we find certain things mildly infuriating.
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That's Probably The Most Infuriating Thing About The Tape
The Aluminum Foil Is Stuck Like This
When You Tear Exactly Where It Says To, But The Bag Remains Sealed
Sometimes it doesn’t take much for us to become annoyed, or say, mildly infuriated; something as simple as uneven or unmatching items or gaps in places they shouldn’t be can make us noticeably irritated. The answer to why that happens seemingly lies in the way our brain is wired.
“In said examples, networks in the anterior cingulate cortex and connected regions activate when our expectations are violated, when we see or experience something different from what we expect,” Emeritus Professor of Psychology Joseph Hellige explained. “As simple as a gap when we didn’t expect one and as complicated as an insult when we expected praise. Registering a deviation from expectation is largely automatic.”
The Pocket Size In Female vs. Male Levi’s Jeans. I‘Ve Just Bought The "Male" Model Which Fits Me Perfectly. Why Do Jeans Manufacturers Think That Women Don’t Deserve Large Pockets?
Apparently pockets "spoil the line" of the clothing, which is more important on women because as you know we're purely ornamental.
This Makes Me Unreasonably Mad Every Time I Walk By
Dr. Philip Gable seconded the idea that said mildly infuriating things get on our nerves because we detect that something is not right or not what we expected. “It’s like when you make an error, but instead of you making the mistake, you detect the mistake in the world around you,” he explained.
“Potentially, the person could perceive that there is a disconnect between what we think is involved, and how we expect things to be. The anterior cingulate cortex is involved in error detection and could be sending the ‘something is wrong’ signal. After that, it is likely how we think about the situation that causes us to hold on to it as negative or bad.”
New Sports Bra Comes With Over 20 Tags Sewn In. It Takes Surgical Precision To Remove Them Without Damaging The Bra
Oh, Come On. Mildly Infuriating Indeed
Nothing Worse Than Rock-Hard Butter, Thin White Bread, And A Whole Lot Of Hunger
Prof. Hellige continued to explain that whether we find certain things or occurrences annoying or pleasurable depends on numerous different brain networks. “For example, the insular cortex is activated when we experience something physically unpleasant, like biting into rancid meat, or psychologically unpleasant, like overhearing someone criticize us.”
According to the expert, the seemingly minor annoyances vary from person to person based on context and life experience. “One person’s annoyance can even be another’s pleasure. The dissonance in Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring might grate on my nerves but be beautiful to a more trained mind.”
This Happens To Me Every Time
Wellll, the perforation on the side might be an indication for a better solution 😉 (Nevertheless, I can empathise!)
For The 1000th Time, I Made The Mistake Of Touching My Ice Cream Sandwich
Wore These "Waterproof" Hiking Boots For 30 Minutes In The Rain. Now I Have To Walk Home
Dr. Hellige explained that the level of how strongly a person feels about certain annoyances relates to relative levels of activation among brain areas, including those in the limbic system and prefrontal cortex.
“The level of irritation also tends to increase when a person already feels stressed or is overly tired. Parents know this well; the never-ending questions from our three-year-old are a pleasure when we’re well-rested and unhurried, but after two nights of little sleep with a work project overdue, the same behavior becomes irritating.”
All Of My Bananas Unpeeled Themselves As I Slept Last Night. I’ve Never Seen This Happen Before
Get some strawberries and you got the ingredients for a nice (but big) smoothie. Haha. Or just cut the bananas in half, put a stick in them and dip them in chocolate and then put them in your freezer -then tomorrow you have nice ice lollies. 😊
They must have been ripe when they hung them there, so no surprise. This reminds me also of the warning not to place them with apples, as it causes the bananas to ripen faster. I found out the hard way. :-(
It's to keep the bananas away from the other fruit so it doesn't ripen too quickly but this one has a fruit bowl at the bottom so the ethenes would reach the other fruit easily rendered the entire point of the banana hanger moot.
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Bananas have no problem just lying on any surface, they aren’t demanding.
Banana hanger keeps them from bruising from sitting on a surface. This is the risk, though. It doesn't usually happen, but they can hit a ripeness where they can't support their own weight anymore!
Bananas last twice as long when kept in the fridge. There was a marketing campaign in the US a long while back to get people to start leaving their bananas out on the counter "Bananas are tropical! They're happier out of the fridge!" Because they were lasting too long refrigerated, which meant less profits. Also banana hangers are space wasters.
The skins turn black when refrigerated. They look gross.
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You can slice them & put the slices on parchment paper, store in a freezer bag & use later. For right then, you could use butter & granulated sugar with a hearty sprinkle of sugar & fry the banana slices (sliced lengthwise) for Banana Foster! Woo! Woo!
Mash them thoroughly, then place in the freezer. Voilà, a non-dairy dessert.
LOL My husband bought one of these b/c mine worked so well before we got married and moved in together. He lost a few bananas like this which I had never seen before, so I told him maybe it was the bananas. He then bought a second bunch and it happened again! He threw the hanger out after that. We use a bowl now.
With 5 grandkids in the house ours don't last long enough to self peel, so we use the hanger.
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"So... are u gonna eat us? Or are we joining the brown slimy bananas?"
My Wife Is Grocery Shopping For Thanksgiving, And There's Only One Cashier Open
It Finally Happened. I Was Prompted To Tip At The Airport Self-Checkout Station
According to Dr. Gable, another factor that is likely to influence the extent to which a person finds something to be (mildly) infuriating is how much a certain situation violates their expectation that something is wrong. “It could be how significant the person sees the problem that enhances the irritation; oftentimes, not having control over the situation can cause it to be more irritating,” he pointed out.
My Alarm Clock Likes To Randomly Change Its Brightness To Match The Surface Of The Sun. This Thing Is Unreasonably Bright (Not Edited, This Thing Lights Up The Entire Room)
Mine doesn't do that, but I still cover it with a flannel as I can't sleep with any light in the room. (I must be a vampire, lol)
It’s Getting Out Of Hand. Asked To Tip For An Online Purchase, When I Put $0, It Redirected Me To This
This Typo Caused Me To Fail The Entire Assignment
Since no one is immune to annoyances and infuriating things, arguably the only thing we can do is try to manage our emotions. “Perspective talking about the situation would help; for example, ‘it's not that big of a deal’, or ‘it's really not something I should worry about’,” Dr. Gable suggested.
“Try to look at it more objectively: ‘in the long run, correcting that problem wouldn't really matter and might make things worse’. The annoyance may come from the person making a subjective judgment - if they can reduce their judgements, it will likely affect them less.”
ATM At Grand Central Ate My Debit Card
Printer Pulled This Nonsense Right Before Alerting Me It Was Low On Ink
Why Does This Always Happen?
Dr. Hellige added that first and foremost, it’s important to try and be well-rested and maintain low levels of stress. “Easy to say, hard to do,” he admitted.
“Try to keep things in perspective,” the professor of psychology continued. “Very few things are actually matters of life and death, but we have inherited some brain regions that aren’t so good at telling the difference. Fortunately, other regions, like our prefrontal cortex, work to slow us down, be reflective, and moderate the effects of some of those other regions. Take a deep breath, and let your prefrontal cortex do its work.”
There’s No Way Anyone Believes This Is An Efficient Way To Display Drinks. Had To Open 5 Doors Until I Found What I Wanted
Use camera qr code to see content ? They do know there are clear windows available right??
They're The Same Number
Explaining Silent "K" To A 2-Year-Old Is Needlessly Annoying
The reason it’s important to try and manage our reaction to infuriating things—no matter how big or small—is because they often entail stress, which can accumulate and result in detrimental effects to our well-being.
“Every day is full of small annoyances. If we can't control our negative reactions to those small annoyances, then it will completely lower our well-being. Letting go of the things we cannot change would be helpful at maintaining one's well-being,” Dr. Gable suggested.
I've Been Stuck Here Waiting For The Train To Move For The Last 40 Minutes
Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding....... aaaaarrrrggggg
This Is Why I Hate Paper Straws
“Beyond an optimal level of alertness, adding stress takes a toll on our judgment as well as things like blood pressure and heart health more generally,” Dr. Hellige pointed out. “There is no way to avoid all annoyances; nor would we survive long if we weren’t responsive to genuine threats. But, there are well-documented negative consequences of chronic stress. And, whether we realize it or not, constant annoyances over insignificant things add up.”
Luckily, the pictures of mildly infuriating things are arguably not as stressful or annoying as having to deal with such things in real life. So if you feel like they don’t affect you or you know that you can manage your emotions, continue to our previous collections of mildly infuriating things here and here and see what other things might make fellow netizens somewhat infuriated.
Taste The Feeling (Frustration)
I’m 28
The Way These Canvases Were Hung Up In The Bathroom Of My Local Sushi Restaurant
Took me a while to figure out that the left one needs to go right. Their sushi must be great then, I guess?
The Giant Hole(S) In My Loaf Of Bread. We Pay $8 For This Specialty Allergy-Free Bread, And Half Of It Is Unusable For Sandwiches. I Had To Laugh
The Way The Plastic Film Doesn’t Come Off Of The Fridge Handles. Been Like This For 3 Years
All The Icing On My Donut Stuck To The Bag
I Got A Free Printer From Somebody Moving, Turns Out The Ink In It Can't Be Used Without A Subscription
I refer to my earlier comment about the future sucking, and also I hope HP goes bankrupt.
When Converse Shoes Do This. I Hate When The Tongue Doesn't Stay Centered
You Are Given 0 Time To Interpret This Sign And All Of Its Arrows
Waited Two Months For A Doctor's Appointment, Left An Hour Early
I called and said I'd be 30 minutes late. They said, "Sucks to be you, if you want to reschedule the next availability is February".
This is just how going anywhere in Bangalore feels. You have to make plans weeks in advance because of the traffic. We spend minimum 2 hours in commuting everyday
When You Take A Pregnancy Test And Get No Result
My husband and I are dying to find out. So, I took a test, and I did not get "pregnant" or "not pregnant". I literally got NO results. A defective test - it's really frustrating. Trying a different brand test tomorrow morning.
Wrong End Of The Fork Fell Into The Bowl. Not The End Of The World, But Certainly Mildly Infuriating
Oh, gods, I don't know why I hate it SO MUCH when the holdy-part of my spoon or fork falls into the food, but I HATE IT! I know I can just wipe it off, but for some reason it is just so oooough XD
The Sizes For My Uniform At Work
This Roll Of Toilet Paper That Gets Thinner And Thinner As You Unwind It
I started to rapidly unspool it to see how far it went on like that because I figured it couldn’t be far. Still searching for the end of it.
Brand New Shoes With Their Own Shoelaces
First Time Wearing These Weatherproof Steel-Toe Boots. Two Hours Into My Shift, The Leather Has Already Completely Cracked
The Security Tag In This Book Didn’t Come Off Cleanly
Spent 3 Hours On This Puzzle For This. I Swear I've Triple-Checked, All The Other Pieces Are In The Right Spot
It looks to me that the piece to the right of the second missing piece actually goes in the other missing piece's spot. Then the piece above the missing piece will fit into that spot and the other piece goes next to it.
Our Food Processor Is Battery-Powered, But The Battery Only Lasts For 2 Minutes, And I Can't Use It While It's Charging
The "Medium" Sized T-Shirt I Got My Husband For Christmas With An Actual Medium Shirt On Top. There Are Slight Size Differences, And Then There Is This
I've had the same thing happen when buying shirts from Big W here in Oz. Same brand and style of t-shirt, just different colours and bought at the same time. I had to buy one medium, one large and one small to get all of the to be "medium". So both the small and the large were sized wrong. Quality control is non-existent on cheap products.
Wanted To Use My Nintendo eShop Card, But Peeled Off The Code With The Sticker
Ohhhhh my fiancé almost did this to one of my kids’ cards. He said “it looks like a sticker, maybe it peels” I said “ABSOLUTELY DO NOT”. Guess what. It was a scratch off lol I learned from a similar thread not to peel the silver scratch off looking stickers thankfully.
After Finishing My DIY LED Cloud Lights, Part Of The Strip Just Happens To Change To A Different Color
The only way to fix this is by taking all of the polyester fiber down and restringing a new set of lights that aren’t faulty.
That Was Only Wine Opener As Well
When Our Plates Chip, It’s Always In The Same Way And Size
Methinks you're storing them in a way that causes the chipping, or storing something near them causing the chipping XD
Note: this post originally had 60 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.
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Mildly infuriating things...like BP changing the title of a thread multiple times AFTER posting it, reducing the number of posts on a thread and hiding comments, using a completely wrong stock photo (all the time), censoring the most random words for no apparent reason, Amazon shopping threads, and lame celebrity threads.
I really HATE it when they change the title so half the comments look stupid, and even more so when they remove half the posts so you can't find the one you were looking at when you come back to the article
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With all the talk about mental health on this site; don't sweat the small sh!t. The secret to that is; it's all small sh!t.
Don’t sweat the petty things. And don’t pet the sweaty things.
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Half of these infuriating me, because the people should have returned the product out of principle and to help take the bad thing off the market, but they act like they're just of luck. IF YOU DON'T RETURN BAD PROJECTS, THEY WILL KEEP SELLING BAD PRODUCTS! It's very simple, people.
Probiotics The decision to include the Probiotic Supplement with lactobacillus in my routine was the solution to my problem.
Mildly infuriating things...like BP changing the title of a thread multiple times AFTER posting it, reducing the number of posts on a thread and hiding comments, using a completely wrong stock photo (all the time), censoring the most random words for no apparent reason, Amazon shopping threads, and lame celebrity threads.
I really HATE it when they change the title so half the comments look stupid, and even more so when they remove half the posts so you can't find the one you were looking at when you come back to the article
Load More Replies... With all the talk about mental health on this site; don't sweat the small sh!t. The secret to that is; it's all small sh!t.
Don’t sweat the petty things. And don’t pet the sweaty things.
Load More Replies... Half of these infuriating me, because the people should have returned the product out of principle and to help take the bad thing off the market, but they act like they're just of luck. IF YOU DON'T RETURN BAD PROJECTS, THEY WILL KEEP SELLING BAD PRODUCTS! It's very simple, people.
Probiotics The decision to include the Probiotic Supplement with lactobacillus in my routine was the solution to my problem.
