Online Group Shares 50 “Terminally Stupid” People Showing How Dumb They Really Are

The subreddit is fairly fresh. r/TerminallyStupid was founded in late February of 2019 and will be celebrating its third birthday in less than two months.

If you’re planning on becoming a member of the community, then you should keep the rules the moderators set out in mind. First things first, the content that you post has to match the spirit and direction of the subreddit itself. “Any post that does not have some terminally stupid person in them will be removed. This does not include posts about the subreddit itself,” the moderators explain that things have to be relevant.

Meanwhile, even though at the core of the subreddit lies the desire to poke fun at people who do really dumb stuff, the moderators still care about those people’s privacy. On that note, all names have to be blurred or scratched out so that they’re not readable. The same thing applies to license plates.

The only exceptions are public figures and famous people who we, obviously, know and can comment on their behavior openly as much as we like. However, this doesn’t mean that the focus should be on politics. “Please, No politics. This subreddit is not going to devolve into a fight between the left and right. Users found to be in violation of this rule will be banned,” r/TerminallyStupid’s mods warn.

Previously, I interviewed Vanessa Bohns, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University. We spoke about embarrassment, knowledge blind spots, and how we should react when we make big blunders.

"We spend a lot of time and effort presenting an ideal version of ourselves to other people. When something happens that contrasts with the image we’ve been projecting—when we say or do something that shows we actually aren’t as graceful or as smart as we’d like people to believe—we feel embarrassed," Vanessa explained to Bored Panda what happens when our perception of how great we think we are doesn’t match reality.

"Discovering you were wrong about something most everyone else around you has long known to be true is one of those moments. In that moment we learn, 'Wait a minute, maybe I haven’t been presenting the image of being smart or worldly that I thought I was presenting all this time,' which is embarrassing,” the expert said.

It’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to embarrassment. In fact, it can be a very positive force. That is if we react accordingly.

“One thing that’s interesting about embarrassment is that, for as much as we might experience it as painful in the moment, it’s actually very socially adaptive. Being embarrassed signals to other people that you care about what they think. And that actually draws people in to you,” Vanessa said.

“So blushing, burying your head in your hands, laughing, acknowledging how embarrassing something was, are all totally healthy ways to react,” Vanessa said that we shouldn’t feel embarrassed about feeling embarrassed. In fact, trying to hide our embarrassment can actually backfire on us.

“The unhealthy way to react is to pretend you’re not embarrassed, that you didn’t make a mistake, or to get angry. Those things undo the positive effect of embarrassment typically has on other people by conveying insincerity and pushing people away rather than drawing them in,” she said. In short, owning up to having done something downright dumb and incredibly stupid by embracing our embarrassment is the mature, emotionally healthy way to react. Trying to hide the fact that we messed up, however, won’t win us any friends.