Mistakes are just lessons waiting to be learned! Unfortunately, some of those mistakes can be very, very expensive. They hit your wallet with the force of a charging rhino, leaving you clutching your head in agony and letting out incomprehensible bleats about how much money just went down the drain.

That’s where the ‘That Looked Expensive’ subreddit comes in. It’s an internet community that’s dedicated to documenting all the hilarious (not to mention painful) times that people made expensive mistakes. Like wrecking their cars. Or planes. (Or presidential campaigns. Sorry, Mike Bloomberg.)

Bored Panda spoke about the best way for people to deal with mistakes and how important a role emotions play in learning from them with researcher and Assistant Professor of Marketing Noelle Nelson from the University of Oregon. She told us that people vary in how much they tend to justify their mistakes. “Some learn early that it’s important to accept when you’ve done something wrong while others get in a habit of justifying/deflecting/making excuses. Everyone, though, has done this to some degree.” Scroll down for our in-depth interview with Noelle and for our chat with the founder of the ‘That Looked Expensive’ subreddit, Approx-, dear Pandas. Remember to upvote your fave expensive blunders and to let us know in the comments what the most expensive thing that you wrecked was and how you did it.

#1 If Insurance Companies Had Nightmares…

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#2 Parking On The Beach

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#3 $5000 Canadian After Someone Using The Microwave To Disinfect It

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Noelle told Bored Panda that there are a lot of reasons why we justify our mistakes and she told us a couple of the main ones. “We don’t like feeling negative emotion and the goal is very often to ‘get back’ to a positive state. If we can justify something we did wrong, we don’t have to feel bad about it anymore.”

She continued with the second reasons: “We want to protect our positive self image. Justifying a mistake means that I didn’t do anything wrong or whatever went wrong wasn’t my fault. That means I can still feel like I’m ‘good.'”

Noelle said that her research suggests that taking the time to stop and feel the negative emotions associated with the mistake helps a person learn from that mistake. “We find that it’s not enough to just think about the mistake and why it happened. Our brains are designed to be guided by emotion, so actually feeling that negative emotion is important,” she said.

#4 Florida House Split Via Crane Mishap

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#5 Don’t Tailgate A School Bus When Your Car Is Shaped Like A Door Stop

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#6 When You Forget You Parked On Top Of The Self-Hiding Garage

The car at the bottom was flooded. Car at the top was crushed

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“In our experiments, people who were asked to feel those negative emotions corrected their behavior on a similar task later on. This happened even though they didn’t know the tasks were connected! That suggests that the emotional learning doesn’t have to be consciously done by a person; simply making sure to allow oneself to feel those negative emotions leads to learning.”

Noelle revealed to us that lately she’s been working on research that addresses why people have a hard time changing their minds about important topics and how we might be able to communicate in a way that would help them absorb new information that they don’t necessarily agree with. “Generally, how people process emotions and thoughts is important in how they learn, function and interact with their environment.”

#7 When The Fire Suppression Foam Is Accidentally Released

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#8 Your Internet Access Will Be Restored Between January And December 2020

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#9 A $5,000,000 Oops

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Reddit user Approx- told Bored Panda that they started the subreddit back in March 2018, as a result of a comment made by another user, Deathtastic.

According to Approx-, the subreddit grew steadily and naturally gained users since it was first created. “We haven’t really done anything in particular to make it grow, other than ensuring content is well moderated,” they said.

“I think the appeal of expensive mistakes is twofold. First, it’s just straight-up entertainment to see expensive things destroyed. But I think it also gives folks a bit of a sense of relief that maybe their screw-ups aren’t all that bad after seeing a multi-million dollar mistake,” Aprrox- said.

#10 Technician ‘Accidentally’ Fires Vulcan Cannon & Obliterates F-16 Sitting On The Runway

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#11 If You’re Having A Bad Day, Just Know That At Least You Didn’t Shatter A 16,000$ Bottle Of Victory In Europe, 1945 Château Mouton Rothschild

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#12 No Matter How Much You Screw Up, You’ll Never Ever Have To Tell Your Boss: Sir, I Toppled That 290 Million Dollar Noaa-N Prime Satellite Right Onto The Shop Floor.

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The ‘That Looked Expensive’ subreddit has more than 416k members and the community has been going strong since it was first founded.

It’s one thing to mess up as an individual but it’s a whole other ball game when companies or countries mess up. For example, back in 2000, Netflix approached Blockbuster with an idea to take care of the digital part of their company. Blockbuster said ‘no’ and, well, we don’t have to tell you how things worked out over the next two decades for both companies, do we? A ‘yes’ instead of a ‘no’ and we could still have a healthy version of Blockbuster!

#13 It Will Hurt The Wallet

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#14 Should’ve Thought That Through…

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#15 New Boeing 737 Fuselages Wrecked In Train Derailment In Montana (July 2014)

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Another costly blunder happened when the so-called ‘Walkie-Talkie’ skyscraper was built in London. It took millions of pounds to fix a huge issue: the southern wall of the skyscraper was covered with reflective glass that was causing fires and melting cars. Yeah, you read the right—actually melting cars like a heat beam that some comic book villain would use.

We all know that failure’s a part of life and we can’t avoid it forever. So it’s important to learn how to handle it in the right way. Common sense tells us to let things go but that might not be what’s best for us.

#16 Big Oof

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#17 Renewable Energy Needs Renewing

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#18 Landslide On Highway

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#19 Some One Forgot To Lower The Dump On The Truck

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#20 Don’t Leave Your Malinois With Your Porsche

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#21 Tug Hit An A300

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#22 What Happens When A Bandsaw Hits A Nail

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#23 Cement Truck Mishap

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#24 The Slide Opened Inside The Aircraft

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#25 This Guy Sunk His Raptor And Jeep Trying To Save His $300,000 Boat That Was Sinking

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#26 Remember Kids: Unused Airliners Can Still Make An Airline Some Money If Someone Crashes Into Them Because Insurance

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#27 70m Yacht Capsized In Greece

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#28 Porsche Panamera Hybrid vs. Tesla Model S

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#29 A Rock’n Boat

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#30 See The Problem There Is That The Back Fell Off

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#31 Flipped The Apc And Crashed A Truck That’s Gotta Be Expensive

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#32 Two Carnival Cruise Ships Colliding

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#33 Expensive Tip…

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#34 Well, Not One But Two

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#35 300,000$ Porsche Crashed During Test Drive

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#36 Rag Left In Engine After Repairs Turned To Shreds

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#37 Jim Bean Wearhouse Fire That Was Left To Burn Through 45 Thousand Barrels Of Whiskey To Avoid Runoff Into Nearby Water Sources

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#38 Stray Bullet Landed On A Solar Panel I Just Installed.

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#39 Aston Martin That Was Worth £1.5m.

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#40 The Alcoholic In Me Is In Tears!

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#41 That’s Not Where The Stairs Go…

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#42 Insane Storms In Australia Are Flooding What’s Left Of The Country After Millions Of Hectares Have Been Burnt

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#43 When You Want Your Insurance Adjuster To Pay More Attention To Your Claim

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#44 Bmw Driver Tries To Drift

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#45 Underground Parking – Inside Cam

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#46 A Regional Passenger Train After Hitting A Liquid Gas Train. You Can See The Buckled Roof. The Tanker Car Hit Was Essentially Undamaged. No One Died.

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#47 Residential Homes Built In South Dakota Over Undisclosed Abandoned Gypsum Mine… Sinkhole Renders Entire Neighborhood’s Property Values Now Worthless.

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#48 Tank Flipped From A Landslide Into The Woods.

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#49 Flooded Bitcoin Mining Farm

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#50 Trailer Full Of New 2020 Shelby Gt500s Tipped Over In Detroit Today.

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#51 This Was A Fun Conversation To Have With My Boss

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#52 All Around View Of Your Car In A Single Image

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#53 Told My Manager My Crane Wouldnt Pick Up A 70,000 Lb Was Told I Could, Minutes Later This Happened

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#54 Lightning Hitting A Boat

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#55 Hope Insurance Covers This

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#56 Suv Crashes Into Mclaren Dealer

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#57 Plane Lands So Heavily The Landing Gear Comes Through The Floor

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#58 Let’s Hope The Damage Is Just Cosmetic

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#59 Shopper Knocks Over 4 TV’s Worth $7,000

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#60 A Rocky Day On The Water

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#61 Had A Leak Develop In Our Laboratory This Morning. Nobody Was On Campus To Catch It So There Was 4 Inches Of Standing Water And Countless Ruined Pieces Of Equipment.

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#62 The Tree Fell On My House Today…

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#63 That Can’t Be Cheap

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#64 The Complete Overhaul On Sonic Must’ve Been Pretty Expensive, Definitely Welcomed Though

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#65 F

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#66 Of All The Cars The Deer Had To Pick…

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#67 There Are Load Charts For A Reason!

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#68 Tank Barrel Miss Fire

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#69 Each One Of Those Blades Is About $2000.

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#70 Customer Ignored The Pressure Rating Of His Cylinder And Shot Oil Out At Such A High Pressure It Cut 1 Inch Thick Steel

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#71 Lhc Magnet Quench Back In 2009, Damaging A Total Of 53 Superconducting Magnets And Their Mountings, And Contaminating The Vacuum Pipe, Which Also Lost Vacuum Conditions.

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#72 That’s One Way To Finish Your Camping Trip Early

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#73 Ferrari F40 Burns In Monte Carlo Today

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#74 They’re Gonna Need A Lot Of Hot Glue To Stick It Back On

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#75 This Man’s Camera Rig

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#76 Text While Driving And You Might Smack Into Some Dude’s $1,450,000 Mclaren Senna.

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#77 12th Century Norte Dame Cathedral Currently On Fire.

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#78 Rip To The Insurrance Of This Guy.

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Source: boredpanda.com