The Mildly Interesting subreddit has been around for quite some time and celebrated its 10th birthday just a few months ago. This online group continues to be one of the strongest and biggest communities on the platform and amazes millions of people by sharing "photos that are, you know, mildly interesting". The page is full of gently exciting and novel stuff members found while going about their day that made them do a double-take.

It won’t come as a surprise that we’re used to living our lives a certain way — we have our daily routines, our schools, jobs, cafes, and other places to hang out with our family and friends. Even when we go online and check our social media feeds, few things can genuinely surprise us. So when something appears not quite like we were used to, we feel this breath of fresh air entering our bored minds.

As you’re scrolling through this list, you’ll notice that most photos members share spark at least a bit of interest. They remind us to be mindful of our surroundings, to stop and think about what we know, and to open up ourselves to exciting new possibilities. After all, humans often get labeled as a curious species.

We’re often told curiosity is our motivator for learning, creativity, and further healthy development. However, Dr. Eric Maisel, a psychotherapist, teacher, creativity coach, and author of Redesign Your Mind, believes it should not be considered as the driving force behind everything we know.

"Most people are incurious — they aren’t really curious at all. In all the college classes I’ve ever taken, almost nobody asked any questions (except, 'Will that be on the test?')," he told Bored Panda. "Some people are highly curious and become our scientists, artists, inventors, etc. Most people — let’s make up a statistic — 98% of people aren't particularly curious at all."

Although we like to think of ourselves as clever beings, we often get distracted by constant interruptions and miss a lot of what’s going on around us. Moreover, we might have no idea how much we’re missing. And even when we’re able to concentrate on one particular thing, there's a big possibility important details would slip through our eyes.

"We’re most curious when something actually matters to us," Dr. Maisel explained. "We are incurious as to where the exit signs are on our airplane, but when the plane hits the water, we are very curious as to where they are. Suddenly, we really want to know."

"High curiosity is connected to our life purposes and our meaning needs. If, say, one of our life purposes is to start a successful business, then we throw ourselves into learning what works and doing what works," he added.

While most people believe curiosity drives our creativity, Dr. Maisel told us it’s probably the other way around. It’s more likely for creative people to be more curious than for uncreative people to become more curious, he said. "Uncreative people are most likely to stay uncreative. I don’t think there’s a 'curiosity vaccine' for that. As to how we 'use' curiosity, we use it the same way we 'use' love. We love by loving. We are curious by being curious."

One piece of advice the creativity coach would like to share with you is to simply learn by doing. "If you’re curious about how to write a novel, write a novel. Don’t take a million how-to-write-a-novel classes. That isn’t curiosity, that’s avoidance. Learn by doing. If you’re genuinely curious, that’s the way," Dr. Maisel suggested.

Redditor RedSquaree, who has been moderating submissions for Mildly Interesting for many years now, told us earlier that it’s hard to define a secret formula for a mildly interesting photo. "Everyone probably has a slightly different interpretation or idea of what is mildly interesting." But they believe that the concept of relatability is most important—it has to be "nothing spectacular but something novel". But apparently, this comes with its own issues. The moderator revealed this ambiguity sometimes makes it difficult to moderate the content: "Sometimes we see users post to r/MildlyInteresting first (because if they didn't, it would break rule 3 of our page). Then, they go on to crosspost to r/DamnThatsInteresting. And we're thinking to ourselves, 'r/HolUp, it can't be both'."

RedSquaree also told Bored Panda people should expose themselves "to more novelty and ambiguity" in their day-to-day lives if they want to keep a sense of curiosity as they grow older. "Much of our content is novel and/or ambiguous. Go about your day tomorrow and think, 'If I were to submit a photograph to r/MildlyInteresting, what would it be?' Be on the lookout for things that are just novel and ambiguous enough to arouse only mild interest. Snap."