30 Times Premature Celebrators Ended Up Embarrassing Themselves In Public (New Pics)

Bored Panda got in touch with the team of redditors that runs r/Prematurecelebration with a few follow-up questions for them. One of the moderators was happy to answer them.

We were curious as to what has changed since our last article about the online community.

"We have been working towards being more receptive and open-minded about the definition of premature celebration, as to be less bogged down by obvious examples of the genre," they told us.

"We spend a few hours every week debating these posts and working on the definition of the words, shaping the future of the sub," they shared a bit about the work that they and their other moderator colleagues do.

Bored Panda was interested to get the r/Prematurecelebration team's opinion as to why so many people find it hard to admit that they've made a mistake. According to the, the widespread use of the internet and especially social media has a lot to do with it.

"This era of online presence allows people to pull in and out," they explained.

"A lot of people manipulate this to walk away from their mistakes," the mod pointed out that on the internet, it's quite easy to avoid taking responsibility for one's actions.

Finally, we wanted to get their take on the right balance to have between confidence and humility. However, they quipped that "being too humble makes for bad premature celebration!"

In short, if everyone was well-balanced and mature, the subreddit wouldn't need to exist.

The r/Prematurecelebration subreddit is a fantastic corner of the internet that shames anyone who’s arrogant enough to fly too close to the sun, only to have their wax wings melt.

The online community was created to document all those intensely embarrassing moments when people celebrate something (“usually in sports”) before actually accomplishing it. The result? They end up failing in the process. The irony is immeasurable but incredibly entertaining.

Created all the way back in mid-June of 2013, the ‘Premature Celebration’ sub has since grown to house nearly 710k members. The last time that Bored Panda wrote about the subreddit, it had 525k members.

Clearly, the subreddit’s mix of schadenfreude and forced humility appeals to a lot of people. (And, really, we’d be lying if we said that it isn’t satisfying to see someone be wrong on a massive, massive scale.)

Members of the sub have to abide by a few rules. One of the main ones is to keep the content focused on premature celebrations. That is the point of the entire community after all. So you’ve got to show some sort of evidence that the person in question has been celebrating before it was appropriate to do so.

What’s more, redditors ought to avoid reposting the “top 50 of all time or the current hot 25.” In other words, try to keep the content fresh! Do a bit of research on what’s already been posted, don’t just share random screenshots and photos randomly. And, of course, be a kind and decent person: “No namecalling, direct personal attacks, or bigotry.”

Previously, a colleague of mine got in touch with the team running the entire r/Prematurecelebration subreddit. Moderator u/N8theGr8 had explained to Bored Panda that the community had no moderators at one point, so there was a transfer of power to the current redditors.

According to the mod, the sub is focused on “kind of a niche topic”, so that might impact how busy it is. “But we have half a million subscribers and it stays relatively active,” they said back in February 2021.

Redditor u/N8theGr8 noted that the entire point of the sub revolved the idea of people “ celebrating some kind of win or victory before you really should.”

They gave a couple of examples: “Like a guy who runs a race and then slows down right at the end to do a victory jump and throw his arms in the air, only to be passed by the 2nd-place guy who then wins the race. Or the 'Dewey Defeats Truman' newspaper held up by President Truman.”

Judging others feels good. You really can’t deny it. And it’s actually a part of what makes us human. During a previous interview, Bored Panda had reached out to psychologist and wellbeing consultant Lee Chambers.

"Judging others is something that we as humans do, both consciously and automatically, and there are a number of reasons why we do it. Comically, we are often told as children not to judge others and have stories shared about how judging others can mean we upset them or lose opportunities to see what really lies behind our perception," he told us earlier.

"Sometimes, we judge others to feel superior ourselves, finding faults in others, highlighting them, and feeling better about ourselves in the process. Sometimes, we use it to work out where we fit in, recognizing how we want to be, where our aspirations lie, and how we don't want to become," the psychologist explained to Bored Panda before.

"Sometimes, it's in response to our own flaws, and we attack others for what we don't like or don't see into ourselves. And on other occasions, it's to fit into a wider group who judge something or someone, and we conform and perform with the same judgment,” the psychologist said.

Used mindfully, however, being judgmental actually does have some benefits.

“It can help us to set goals, find alignment with our values, it can help us to build the self-awareness of others and it can boost our self-esteem," Lee told us earlier. "Add to that it can also help us to make positive social choices, and it's understanding how and why we judge that gives us the ability to use it for our benefits instead of escaping our flaws or pulling others down."

Do you have any tales about premature celebration, dear Pandas? Have you ever been knocked down a peg the moment you thought you were victorious? Which of these posts made you laugh the most? Do you enjoy judging others when they’re acting way too arrogant? Share your thoughts in the comments.