Up and running for roughly 4 years now, the ‘If Ya Squint, It’s Mint’ Facebook group has already amassed close to 900k members. “The group was started by me in May of 2020 and grew to about 115,000 members in about 9 months,” its founder, Jacob, told Bored Panda in a recent interview.
Discussing how it all started, Jacob shared that he came up with the concept of the name because of his old F-150 truck. “I’ve had it for years; my dad is the original owner and grew up with it since the age of 5. It was very rusty and had a bunch of scratches and bed liner covering up bad attempts at bondoing rust spots. My dad was joking around with me one night saying the truck only looks good past 20 feet and I quipped back the line—If ya squint it’s mint—and the idea took off.
“Over the years, that truck saved my life from an active shooter to being my place to sleep when I was homeless living across the country,” the founder of the group shared, adding that even with numerous “sketchy upgrades and modifications” that he did, the vehicle still looks mint past 20 feet.
“I feel like the phrase ‘If ya squint it’s mint’ has been used in so many different places on the internet since I started this group,” Jacob shared. “Like, the other day I heard it referenced in an automotive YouTube channel and thought to myself ‘That’s my group; I wonder if they’re here’. At work, I overheard two people I’ve never interacted with before talking about a post they saw on ‘squint’. I jumped in and asked them a bunch of questions on their opinions of the group. I asked them to pull out their phones and look at the group again and see who owns it. The look on their faces was priceless.”
Jacob admitted that the group is definitely a challenge to manage at times. “In the early days (pre 2020 election), it was at its worst,” he said, adding that he tries to keep politics out of the way because of the hatred people have in regards to certain political matters.
“I have a policy to block and remove anyone speaking about politics on either side of the aisle. It’s getting difficult to moderate it all the time because of the sheer size of the membership. Off the top of my head, I can say between bot accounts, inappropriate comments, and politics, I’ve banned over 40,000 accounts. Approving posts is done by me, my wife—the other admin—and a few friends of mine who moderate when they feel inclined to help. I enjoy seeing all the weird things people take pictures of on roads.”
“The group is basically a place for people to post all the weird and funny stuff they encounter either in real life or a shared post somewhere else. It’s kinda morphed into a meme or ‘what’s wrong with this picture’ type of group,” he added.
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Discussing why people might be interested in pictures of situations they know nothing about or have no context for, Dr. James Danckert pointed out that sometimes, viewing random internet content is a way to occupy their mind. “When we’re bored, that kind of passive occupation of our thoughts is easy; kind of like playing a game on our phones endlessly, a la Candy Crush. But it rarely, if ever, solves boredom. What we need when we’re bored is to be more agentic – to intentionally choose something meaningful to engage with.”
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“Not sure that amusement online would achieve anything different than amusement in real life – it’s good to laugh!” the expert continued, while on the topic of amusing internet content, many of which is based on the so-called fails.
When asked what is likely to be the reason why we find fails funny, Dr. Danckert said: “I can only think of schadenfreude.
“Maybe it also pulls us out of a low arousal slump – again, if we’re bored, watching ‘fails’ might seem exciting,” he added.
If you’re wondering, what in the world is schadenfreude, to put it simply, it’s the joy that misfortune experienced by others brings.
While it sounds cruel presented like that, it doesn’t mean that everyone who has experienced it is some sort of a sociopath. Schadenfreude can also be experienced when a friend you love and care for dearly trips on a sidewalk and you—after making sure they still have all their teeth—can’t help but laugh at their clumsiness. If you ask me, schadenfreude can be perceived as an ability to see the beauty in fails, be it your own or those of others.
Whether it’s related to maintaining our social status or watching our clumsy friends, schadenfreude is likely to be the reason we find certain fails funny. Take America’s Funniest Home Videos, for instance; counting its 35th season, the show is largely based on people getting themselves into all sorts of unfavorable situations, most of which look somewhat entertaining to others.
So, the fact that people love browsing fails online, too, comes as no surprise. If you’re a fan of such instances yourself, chances are you’ve already giggled at some of the failures shared on this list. But if you want more, continue to browse the funniest Halloween fails, the biggest tattoo fails, or wife fails that had the internet in stitches next.