30 Awkward Situations That Are Embarrassing For No Real Reason

Bored Panda reached out to Lily to learn more about her viral video. She told me she "definitely didn't expect" to get so much attention online. Going viral was a pleasant surprise for her. "One of my friends actually inspired me to make the video. My friend and I were talking about things that we think are embarrassing and I decided to make a TikTok video about it," she revealed the inspiration behind the incredibly successful video.

I wanted to get Lily's take on why the video resonated with so many people and why they find these situations very embarrassing. According to her, it's all about unwanted attention. "I think that people find these kinds of things embarrassing because you feel like everyone is watching you. The best advice I could give is to try and ignore everyone else and just focus on yourself," she told Bored Panda.

Lily added that she fully believes that showing signs of embarrassment strengthens social connections.

Lily’s viral video got over 7.5 million views since being posted on July 22. What’s more, the video was liked a whopping 1.4 million times, reshared 35.5k times, and received 24k comments. Obviously, a whole bunch of people could relate to the TikToker’s brain finding random situations embarrassing.

It got me thinking that life can truly be incredibly difficult if we don’t have the mental fortitude to accept things as they come. Fortunately for us, embarrassment is, well, nothing to be embarrassed about! Earlier, I had a chat about this with Vanessa Bohns, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University and the author of the forthcoming book 'You Have More Influence Than You Think.’

Vanessa explained to Bored Panda that when we openly and honestly demonstrate that we’re embarrassed, instead of hiding it, this helps us connect to others better.

“Displaying signs of mild embarrassment can actually be socially constructive and make people feel more sympathetic towards you in the face of your faux pas,” Vanessa told Bored Panda earlier.

“I don’t necessarily think you need to take pains to hide it,” she said that we should embrace how we’re feeling at the moment. The goal, however, is to prevent your embarrassment from turning into shame.

“What you want to be careful not to do is to let embarrassment morph into the more destructive self-conscious emotion of shame, where you feel so badly about a minor mistake that you start to think there is something wrong with you and feel the need to completely disappear and hide away yourself,” Vanessa said.