ADVERTISEMENT

Is your life going too smoothly lately? Are you craving some good ol' cringe to offset the normality and wholesome mundanity? We've got you, dear Pandas! Although I personally can't relate, even on social media, it seems that everyone is constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown, right?

But if you're looking to feel uncomfortably entertained for a few minutes, we've got just the content for you. We're featuring the Images That Make You Feel Pain page today. The pictures might confuse you, and you may even utter an 'ew' or two. But they are entertaining, even if you are not a fan of cringing.

The Images That Make You Feel Pain page has been making its fans feel uncomfortable since 2020 and has 1.5 million followers. It's another page in the vast array of meme content on the Internet where the name of the game is nonsense and cringe. Somehow, netizens came to love and adore cringe, as it's one of the most prevalent forms of comedy online today.

Some people attribute it to schadenfreude; that we like to take pleasure from someone else's misfortune. That's why we love trashy reality TV and chuckle at an image of someone burning their pizza to a black crisp. But cringe is not just about laughing at someone else. It's not 'punching down' comedy.

#4

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

Add photo comments
POST
Anxiousguest
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Is this a reality show? For real? Who will put kids through such an ordeal. How is this legal, and where?

View More Replies...
View more commentsArrow down menu
ADVERTISEMENT
#6

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

Add photo comments
POST
WindySwede
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Much better than an giftcard for one store, that expires in two years!

View More Replies...
View more commentsArrow down menu

We've never been as connected as we are in this digital social media age. 20 years ago, we only had our family members and friends to give us second-hand embarrassment. And there weren't many opportunities to showcase our own cringy behavior like there are now.

Kaitlyn Tiffany writes for The Atlantic about how in the old days of the Internet, cringe was about empathy. For example, we felt embarrassed watching the Star Wars kid, proclaiming, "It's hard to watch." We thanked our lucky stars it was not us in that video and felt dread for the person who was in it.

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Sören Krach, a professor of Psychiatry at Lübeck University in Germany, told The Ringer how cringe is rooted in empathy. "You're really suffering with the other person. You're empathically sharing this awkward state, and it's not really pleasant." If the person who observes the cringe wouldn't be able to put themselves into another's shoes and feel their pain, the whole concept wouldn't work.

#11

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

#12

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

Add photo comments
POST
WindySwede
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Why food so expensive, it will just go in the toilet? 🤷‍♂️

View More Replies...
View more commentsArrow down menu

Sometimes, people conflate cringe with shock. In their eyes, cringe is supposed to be shocking, to make one so uncomfortable they might want to crawl out of their skin. But that's not true. At least according to the person who started the r/cringe subreddit, Michael Dombkowski. "In the early days, we would get a lot of people posting stuff that just didn't really match what I was looking for, or people who would post videos of people breaking bones or, like, gross-out stuff," he told The Atlantic.

ADVERTISEMENT

"I hated that," Dombkowski went on. "It really bothered me. I always saw these videos as an empathetic exercise. It was always like, 'Oh, I could totally see myself doing this,' or it just felt like one of those nightmares where you're at school with no pants or something. It just fills you with dread for that person."

#16

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

Add photo comments
POST
TotallyNOTAFox
Community Member
4 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wait, f**k the Devil or "f**k" the Devil? Context is very important

View More Replies...
View more commentsArrow down menu
ADVERTISEMENT

In a previous interview for Bored Panda, comedy scholar Dr. Steven S. Kapica also emphasized that cringe comedy is not about punching down. "Shock is not cringe. If comedy generally relies on incongruity and types of comedy are defined by their particular brand of incongruity, then cringe is the outlier, the absurd exception. Cringe does not emerge from a reversal or distortion of a premise, nor does it emerge from oppositional stances," he explained. "Cringe does not point out incongruity. It breaks incongruity."

#19

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

Add photo comments
POST
james stevenson
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"On the outside always looking in" Yes, that's me, why does the song make it sound like such a bad thing?

View More Replies...
View more commentsArrow down menu

Kapica used Borat (2006) as one of the most famous examples of cringe comedy. "While we certainly can (and probably should) take offense at Cohen's appropriation of Kazakh culture, the comedic ire and cringe of Borat is directed at Americans (not Kazakhi). Borat's premise is inherently funny (from a subject position of superiority); however, the cringe ultimately reveals the lunacy of American exceptionalism."

ADVERTISEMENT
#24

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

As with all forms of comedy, it's all about intent with cringe. "It's the context that counts. It's the user. It's the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent… It's the context that makes them good or bad," George Carlin said in his 1990 HBO Special, Doin' it Again. "The same is true with cringe," Kapica told us. "Intent and context matter."

ADVERTISEMENT
See Also on Bored Panda

Kapica also warned us that social media might be the culprit in people misconstruing cringe and our sense of humor in general. "Social media and digital culture by-pass important culture work—editing, contemplation, temperance, review, practice, reception."

"The speed of the digital is such that we get everything now now now! So, when we combine speed of access and distribution with blatant disregard for editing and filtering—and then pour in a big scoop of cringe? Goodbye, intent. Goodbye, context. Hello, outrage."

"I would argue that the vast majority of social media-based comedy consumers lack the critical acumen to determine if a bit of cringe is punching up or punching down," Kapica also told us back then. If people are Googling things like "Is Borat really from Kazakhstan?" or "Is Borat based on a real person?", that's a clear sign they're misunderstanding it."

ADVERTISEMENT

"A consumer culture that asks these questions about incisive, daring, shocking, boundary-pushing, cringe comedy is not a culture served by wildly unfiltered digital content," the comedy expert cautioned.

#33

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

Add photo comments
POST
Stu𝓹𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪ous!
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Ok side note why would you make the heart the D and not the V?? A heart doesn’t look like a D!!

View More Replies...
View more commentsArrow down menu
See Also on Bored Panda
ADVERTISEMENT
See Also on Bored Panda
#38

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

Add photo comments
POST
Doug O
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

The first 2 children look like they are already 30 and should be smoking a cigarette.

View More Replies...
View more commentsArrow down menu
#44

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

Add photo comments
POST
Stu𝓹𝓪𝓷𝓭𝓪ous!
Community Member
4 months ago (edited) DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I love how BP just stole all of these from this one Twitter account Edit: I got a looooot of replies to this and yes I understand that they are content aggregators! I just find it kinda funny that they went so far as to include the actual post in each image instead of just the pic itself. I kinda wish more BP stuff was original and not just pulled from Reddit/Twitter ya know? Also please stop telling me I’ve “killed” the page or saying it must be my first day on BP or that I “hate laughter” or whatever.

View More Replies...
View more commentsArrow down menu
ADVERTISEMENT
See Also on Bored Panda
#50

Make-You-Feel-Pain-Images

ManMilk2 Report

Add photo comments
POST
BoredPossum
Community Member
4 months ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

What's wrong with her? If she's happy, let her look like whatever she wants.

View More Replies...
View more commentsArrow down menu

Note: this post originally had 87 images. It’s been shortened to the top 50 images based on user votes.