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35 Funny, Ridiculous, And Seriously Stupid Things People Witnessed Their Friends Doing, As Shared In This Viral Thread
We usually think of our friends as pretty great human beings. Whether we’re facing troubles, need encouragement to pursue our dreams, or simply want to celebrate the good times, they’re always by our side. Yet, even they are not immune to doing something dumb.
But instead of letting them spend hours obsessing over their blunders, we’re here to laugh with them. And Pallavi Gunalan, a stand-up comedian, writer, and actor, provided a perfect example of that. A few days ago, she made a tweet about her friend who tried to microwave a frozen burrito. Here comes the silly part — when it didn’t work, "she threw the burrito away and tried heating up a different one".
Pallavi’s story inspired hundreds of people to share the funny, ridiculous, and straight-up stupid things their friends ever said or did. So get ready to dive into some of the best answers Bored Panda has selected from the thread. Upvote the ones that made you laugh and share your own stories in the comment section below.
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Pallavi Gunalan’s tweet prompted a deluge of reactions. Many users chimed in with countless encounters where they witnessed their friends doing something ludicrous or downright dumb. Later on, Pallavi also posted a follow-up tweet about her friend’s situation: "I gave her an extra microwave I had. Really hoping she didn’t throw it away."
Well, let’s face it — we all have friends whose approach to life seems a little outlandish. While moments like these make us wonder whether people around us are not the smartest ones, we also start to remember the little mishaps we have done in our past. Basically, everyone has had their fair share of foolish moments.
While we easily brand many situations in life as "stupid", the word still sounds a bit subjective. Just think about a situation where you miss your bus stop, believe you’ll ace a test without studying, or trip over because you were captivated by your social media feed. According to scientists, we instantly call these things stupid because we are very quick to label it.
I think the mother just wanted a break from awful kid recorder practice
A study by researchers from Eotvos Lornand University in Hungary and Baylor University in Texas argue that studying why and when people call certain actions stupid can offer psychological insight. Not only because finding and declaring something as "stupid" is a simple everyday activity but also because it reflects how "people adjust their own behavior and expect others to."
The researchers wanted to find out "why we call certain actions stupid irrespective of [a person's] cognitive abilities," and to do that, they needed to understand what people mean by it. The main author of this study, Dr. Balázs Aczél, told Medical Daily that he and his colleagues were surprised to find very few studies have been done on this topic before.
While it may seem odd to learn how people decide that a thought or an action is straight-up dumb, scientists went on a mission to tackle this challenge. "Given how frequently we find situations in everyday life in which we do, or would, call someone's action 'stupid,' one would think we should understand when and why people experience this feeling," Dr. Aczél said.
Researchers collected and analyzed real-life examples of what people constitute as foolish. They gathered a sample of 180 news stories and other online content from news sites like The New York Times, BBC, and TMZ, and also blogs, forums, and other publicly available publications where people characterized actions described there as stupid.
They presented the stories to more than 150 Hungarian undergrad students, who had to fill out a questionnaire. People had to rate "the intensity of the stupidity on display," as well as explain why they thought any given action was stupid by choosing one of many categories (such as overconfidence and fatigue).
He thought that somehow his breath could change...his voice???
The researchers divided participants’ answers into three distinct categories. The first one was called confident ignorance, when someone takes risks without having adequate skills and knowledge — and overestimating oneself is the highest level of stupidity. As an example, they provided a story about a burglar who meant to steal cellphones but lifted GPS devices instead, which led the police straight to him.
The second kind of stupidity was called absentmindedness, and it refers to people who failed to do the right thing because of a distraction or, again, inadequate skills. The last category, a lack of control, results from obsessive or addictive behavior, "such as someone who cancels on a friend because they can’t pull themselves away from something."
Cuz it was the burrito's fault for not heating up inside the broken oven. What a shtupid burrito!
I’ve got one like that… If her brains were TNT she couldn’t concuss an ant
Dr. Aczél revealed they found 90 percent of students agreed on whether they would call an action stupid or not. "It shows that we use this label very similarly. Based on this, we would think that we must know what 'stupid' means," he explained. "People often think that it is strongly linked to low IQ. Our findings show that people attribute stupid to three independent situations."
The findings of this study "bring us closer to understanding people’s conception of unintelligent behavior while emphasizing the broader psychological perspectives of studying the attribute of stupid in everyday life."
"We would like to explore whether discovering incongruities in our environment has an adaptive function," Dr. Aczél mentioned. "Maybe if we observe stupid actions of others, then it may make us less likely to make mistakes ourselves. So, if we are right, then finding something stupid may make us upset, but also a bit smarter in our actions."
1. Lack of self-care skills, 2. Lack of self-reliance, 3. Lots of dough, 4. Lack of realizing how things are made, 5. Lack of respect for farmed goods. and the list goes on.
Load More Replies...Her parents pr'y learned to buy paper after the first time. :-)
Load More Replies...Lazy, self entitled, uppity little Madam. Did she have a Groom of the Stool as well?
I had a friend who if she got a scratch on her phone screen protector she would throw her phone on the ground so it would crack a lot and her parents would get her a new screen protector without scratches
Any bets her new dishes didn't get washed before they went in the cupboard?
That was my first thought... my second thought was how gross it would be to use new dishes straight out of the box!
Load More Replies...That's what Count Dracula did with the dishes he fed Jonathan Harker with. It's in the original novel - a stack of shattered, dirty dishes down the side of a cliff.
Reminds me of my sister-in-law, who told me her parents "didn't want to bother" with college loans, grants, or scholarships, so they just paid $30,000/year in CASH. I guess I get not wanting to take out loans (though with such low-interest, they'd make more money over time with a loan), but turning down grants & scholarships — potentially tens of thousands of dollars over 4yrs — just to "avoid the paperwork" is insane regardless of how rich you are!
I've a actually known a few people who did this.... It's not so much "stupid" as wealthy, lazy, and wasteful
I had a client that refused to wash clothes. She would literally just buy new ones.
This happens in an episode of HAVE GUN, WILL TRAVEL. The guy says he can afford it -- so why not?
You are supposed to wash the new one before using them though. Does not solve the problem ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Tell me you're a spoiled rich kid without telling me you're a spoiled rich kid:
There is a large nail-like kitchen item that you use for exactly that purpose. It's called, wait for it, a potato nail.
On a side note I love lint rollers but god damn it I for the life of me can't peel them properly half the time
It's one of them magical Bluetooth speakers that converts air particles into mana... The air crystal must've been broken
Ocean Bread, take me by the hand, lead me to the land that you understand
Many of these seem to be the fault of the parents for noth teaching their children about life. Sheltered children don't do so well in the real world..
Sure... But there are levels of stupidity and I (and no one I've ever met) have never been this level of stupid. But I don't live in America. It does seem to be common place with people of this intellectual stature in the US 🤔
Load More Replies...Worked as a AF machinist for a while. A marine machinist who was permitted to use our machines came in with a blood blister under his thumb. He put a tiny drill bit in a chuck on a drill press, turned it on and commence to drill a hole to drain the blood blister under his thumb. You can imagine what happened.
My ex-brother-in-law was a construction worker (carpenter) & he always had at least one fingernail or thumbnail that was purple from bruising & had a hole in it. That's how a lot of construction workers relieve the pressure when they've mashed a finger or thumb, but most of them use a hand drill, not a drill press!
Load More Replies...My mother both loves and hates this story because she knows it's a moment she's never going to live down. We'd been at an amusement park for a few hours when my sister needed a bathroom. My mom got the map from her pocket to find one close by, looks for a moment, and says she can't find the You Are Here dot. I calmly mentioned "Well...that's because that's a walking around map, not a stationary one". About twenty years later now, and still funny to me
I had a friend who was pretty dumb (he knew this about himself) and would often ask stupid questions in total seriousness. But I was still thrown the day he wondered outloud how socks get holes in them. FYI, he was also confused about why his favorite Italian restaurant had a bust of the Pope since, and I quote, "The Pope's Mexican."
So this one is actually me: The first time my husband & I went to Rome, we were choosing among cheeses from a display. He looked very confused when I asked, "With all these amazing cheeses, why do they import from New York?" So I pointed to the buffalo mozzarella & he cracked up laughing while explaining buffalo was the animal, not the city.
Someone I work with thought that stars in the sky are little twinkly things that accompany the moon. She didn't realise our sun is a star. That took some explaining!
Not my friend but a random old lady at Walmart- she asked one of the employees, "Can I have a can opener to, you know, open some cans?" and she even made a motion with her hands.
My son was going through TSA and the agent told him 'face down' when he handed her his ticket so he put his face on the scanner. To be fair he was stoned at the time
In high school in the 80s, a mutual friend told my cousin that stop signs with white rings around them were yield signs if there were no other cars approaching the intersection. She believed her. One day while riding in the car with our dads, my cousin was blowing through stop signs. Her dad yelled at her to pull the f**k over. He was like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" She said, "Dad, everyone knows that stop signs with white rings around them are optional." He looked back at me. I said, "Don't look at me, I would certainly never tell her something that stupid." We had to get a driver's ed manual to show her she was wrong. We joke about it to this day.
Entertaining -- of the face-palming kind -- but very difficult to believe some of these could be true.
people who make a quick decision based on initial info may not be stupid (Mr Chicken). but when theres a thought process involved - with multiple steps that leads to stupid... then theres little hope of recovery .
After years at boarding school, I came home and put the teapot on the hob to boil water, totally forgot about the kettle 😅
I told my SIL (24) that the small dent on her head was a button to let air escape and help brain function. I was seriously joking but she started pushing it with one hand while holding the other hand to her ear to see if she could feel the air coming out. My brother loves this woman so we make the best of it.
Before leaving for school on cold mornings, I would make sure my blankets were pulled up all the way to the top of the bed--to hold in the heat--and never understood why the bed was cold that night. I did not have a strong grasp of thermodynamics at age 9.
I was an adult before I realized I could wear whatever I wanted to bed. I would fall asleep in front of the TV, then chill and wake myself when I changed into night clothes. When it got really cold, I wore ski pants, ski coat, gloves, hat, boots, over layers. My childhood bedroom was 58F, so a flannel nightgown and single blanket were really insufficient.
Load More Replies...When we were about 10 y.o. 2 friends and me found 130$ lying on the floor in a parking lot. We were there to go swimming. I said "let's take it", but my friends said "No, wE bRiNg It To ThE LoSt AnD FoUnD BuReAu ._." And we did. After 1 year and 23 persons who were visiting the bureau with no success it was their 130$ we were OK to get it back. Same friend said "LeT's GiVe ThE MoNeY tO ThE cLaSs FuNd FoR oUr NeXt ClAsS jOuRnEy". We did, never used it on a class journey or something like that and it was given to the school as extra budget. Imagine what you would do as a 10 y.o. with 1/3 of 130 $ and now imagine what a public school does with the 130$. Oh the school had so much joy with the extra 0.0001% money.... not >_>
I get that you would have had fun with it, but you guys did the right thing. Having moral fibre regardless of whether anyone knows or sees is important (imo anyway)
Load More Replies...Many of these seem to be the fault of the parents for noth teaching their children about life. Sheltered children don't do so well in the real world..
Sure... But there are levels of stupidity and I (and no one I've ever met) have never been this level of stupid. But I don't live in America. It does seem to be common place with people of this intellectual stature in the US 🤔
Load More Replies...Worked as a AF machinist for a while. A marine machinist who was permitted to use our machines came in with a blood blister under his thumb. He put a tiny drill bit in a chuck on a drill press, turned it on and commence to drill a hole to drain the blood blister under his thumb. You can imagine what happened.
My ex-brother-in-law was a construction worker (carpenter) & he always had at least one fingernail or thumbnail that was purple from bruising & had a hole in it. That's how a lot of construction workers relieve the pressure when they've mashed a finger or thumb, but most of them use a hand drill, not a drill press!
Load More Replies...My mother both loves and hates this story because she knows it's a moment she's never going to live down. We'd been at an amusement park for a few hours when my sister needed a bathroom. My mom got the map from her pocket to find one close by, looks for a moment, and says she can't find the You Are Here dot. I calmly mentioned "Well...that's because that's a walking around map, not a stationary one". About twenty years later now, and still funny to me
I had a friend who was pretty dumb (he knew this about himself) and would often ask stupid questions in total seriousness. But I was still thrown the day he wondered outloud how socks get holes in them. FYI, he was also confused about why his favorite Italian restaurant had a bust of the Pope since, and I quote, "The Pope's Mexican."
So this one is actually me: The first time my husband & I went to Rome, we were choosing among cheeses from a display. He looked very confused when I asked, "With all these amazing cheeses, why do they import from New York?" So I pointed to the buffalo mozzarella & he cracked up laughing while explaining buffalo was the animal, not the city.
Someone I work with thought that stars in the sky are little twinkly things that accompany the moon. She didn't realise our sun is a star. That took some explaining!
Not my friend but a random old lady at Walmart- she asked one of the employees, "Can I have a can opener to, you know, open some cans?" and she even made a motion with her hands.
My son was going through TSA and the agent told him 'face down' when he handed her his ticket so he put his face on the scanner. To be fair he was stoned at the time
In high school in the 80s, a mutual friend told my cousin that stop signs with white rings around them were yield signs if there were no other cars approaching the intersection. She believed her. One day while riding in the car with our dads, my cousin was blowing through stop signs. Her dad yelled at her to pull the f**k over. He was like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" She said, "Dad, everyone knows that stop signs with white rings around them are optional." He looked back at me. I said, "Don't look at me, I would certainly never tell her something that stupid." We had to get a driver's ed manual to show her she was wrong. We joke about it to this day.
Entertaining -- of the face-palming kind -- but very difficult to believe some of these could be true.
people who make a quick decision based on initial info may not be stupid (Mr Chicken). but when theres a thought process involved - with multiple steps that leads to stupid... then theres little hope of recovery .
After years at boarding school, I came home and put the teapot on the hob to boil water, totally forgot about the kettle 😅
I told my SIL (24) that the small dent on her head was a button to let air escape and help brain function. I was seriously joking but she started pushing it with one hand while holding the other hand to her ear to see if she could feel the air coming out. My brother loves this woman so we make the best of it.
Before leaving for school on cold mornings, I would make sure my blankets were pulled up all the way to the top of the bed--to hold in the heat--and never understood why the bed was cold that night. I did not have a strong grasp of thermodynamics at age 9.
I was an adult before I realized I could wear whatever I wanted to bed. I would fall asleep in front of the TV, then chill and wake myself when I changed into night clothes. When it got really cold, I wore ski pants, ski coat, gloves, hat, boots, over layers. My childhood bedroom was 58F, so a flannel nightgown and single blanket were really insufficient.
Load More Replies...When we were about 10 y.o. 2 friends and me found 130$ lying on the floor in a parking lot. We were there to go swimming. I said "let's take it", but my friends said "No, wE bRiNg It To ThE LoSt AnD FoUnD BuReAu ._." And we did. After 1 year and 23 persons who were visiting the bureau with no success it was their 130$ we were OK to get it back. Same friend said "LeT's GiVe ThE MoNeY tO ThE cLaSs FuNd FoR oUr NeXt ClAsS jOuRnEy". We did, never used it on a class journey or something like that and it was given to the school as extra budget. Imagine what you would do as a 10 y.o. with 1/3 of 130 $ and now imagine what a public school does with the 130$. Oh the school had so much joy with the extra 0.0001% money.... not >_>
I get that you would have had fun with it, but you guys did the right thing. Having moral fibre regardless of whether anyone knows or sees is important (imo anyway)
Load More Replies...