Mildly Infuriating

About

Mildly Infuriating refers to the sensation one has in a somewhat annoying or inconvenient situation or when looking at an image that is slightly off, such as a tile floor where one tile is out of place or an unevenly cut cake. A large subreddit, /r/mildlyinfuriating is devoted to images of this ilk and several compilation articles devoted to the images have been written.

Origin

On June 17th, 2012, Redditor arup02^[1] created /r/MildlyInfurating, a subreddit devoted to images and situations that cause people frustration. On that day, user cb43596^[2] posted an image of his floor with a bump in it, gaining 308 points (shown below).

Spread

The subreddit gained followers steadily over the next five years. On July 16th, 2013, the subreddit was covered by Business Insider.^[3] On October 19th, 2014, PleatedJeans^[4] posted a compilation of /r/mildlyinfuriating posts. As of June 13th, 2017, the subreddit has over 447,000 followers. Some of the most popular posts on the subreddit include a post by Maxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx^[5] that details frustrations with job applications that gained over 38,000 points (shown below, left) and a GIF posted by amalgam_reynolds^[6] of annoying situations that gained over 35,900 points (still from GIF shown below, right).

A reactionary community of people "fixing" mildly infuriating appeared in response to the spread of mildly infuriating images. On August 10th, 2015, College Humor posted the work of Imgur user trjnz^[7] who had "fixed" mildly infuriating photos. On February 8th, 2017, Imgur user ChemistryAndPhysicsAreFun^[8] uploaded a GIF in which he "fixed" some of the most popular images in /r/mildlyinfuriating.

Related Memes

Purposefully Bad Volume Sliders

On June 2nd, 2017, Redditor PM_ME_YOUR_WATERMELO posted a GIF of a simple, unintuitive volume slider with the title "Who can make the best volume slider?" The post gained over 10,400 points on the subreddit.

This was the first of dozens of Purposefully Bad Volume Sliders in the /r/ProgrammerHumor subreddit in which people posted various unintuitive volume sliders, many of which gained tens of thousands of points. The most popular, posted by MrTarantula, made the feature similar to a manual window roller, and gained over 39,100 points (shown below).

Other popular posts include one by BMJ that showed the volume being launched like a catapult that gained over 35,000 points (shown below, left) and another post by MrTarantula that showed the volume being increased via bicycle pump that gained over 26,000 points (shown below, right). The posts began drawing media attention a week after the trend started. News outlets to cover Purposefully Bad Volume Sliders include SelectAll, Motherboard, and DesignerNews.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References