In a perfect world, every kind or thoughtful gesture we make would result in nothing but good vibes coming back our way. And yet what a boring world that would be, as it would mean we’d never get to laugh at other people’s misfortune when these downtrodden Good Samaritans recount their excruciatingly embarrassing experiences on social media.
TikTok user @jessejosephgeneau had such a galling time of it when he tried to offer a child some handy advice that he just had to share his pain with the rest of us. Jesse explains in his video that he was at a playground with his three daughters when he noticed a little boy running around looking like he had his arms tucked into his shirt. Being a considerate guy, Jesse encouraged the kid to take his hands out of his shirt so that he could catch himself if he tripped up. Good deed done for the day, right? Oh, if only the story ended there.
Three minutes, later, Jesse continues, the boy’s dad came up to him and dropped a bombshell that he may well remember for the rest of his life. “Hey, I appreciate you telling my kid to take his arms out of his shirt,” Jesse recalls the dad telling him, “but here’s the thing… He doesn’t have arms.”
That soul-crushing exchange really puts our own petty problems into perspective, huh? As Jesse says when closing out his video, “I hope your day is better now.”
The comments are full of those who are vicariously dead on the inside now on Jesse’s behalf. “NOTHING could have prepared me for that response,” said one commenter, aghast. Another admitted they would’ve expired there and then. “I would’ve simply passed away,” they wrote, to which Jesse responded: “I’ve been sitting here looking at a wall for 45 minutes.” Others are sympathizing with the boy’s dad in all this: “You know the dad was having to hype himself up to break this to you on the walk over.”
Some, meanwhile, believe it or not, have been where Jesse is before. “My nephew was born with no right hand and he was doing some drawing the other day with his left hand and I said to his mum looks like his gunna be a lefty…. failed aunty moment,” revealed one, as another commenter came clean: “I once asked a customer at work if he needed a hand and he turned to me and was missing an arm… I still haven’t recovered.”
So why does social embarrassment cause us so much pain? As per American Scientist, we still don’t actually know exactly which part of the brain is the center of embarrassment, but the frontal lobes (specifically, the orbifrontal region) appear to be the area that regulates appropriate social behavior. That’s why certain cases of frontal lobe damage can cause people to feel limited embarrassment. On the other hand, there is at least one case of a patient who had a tumor on his right frontal lobe and experienced “embarrassment seizures,” in which he was suddenly overcome with a feeling of intense embarrassment, as if he had just said something dumb.
Jesse probably knows exactly how that patient felt, and it’s probably something he’s never going to forget. As one comment no doubt accurately put it, “This is the kind of memory that will jolt you awake right when you’re falling asleep as if the shame just happened right then.”