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Does anyone else lack schadenfreude?
Schadenfreude - pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune
I guess the first time noticing this about myself is me being unable to get through "fail compilation" videos on YouTube leading me to find win compilations. Seeing other people get hurt or embarrassed rarely brings me joy.
Even when I think they "deserve" it.
Lets say a thief steals some merchandise from a store and on the way out they knock an innocent bystander over and they sprain their ankle. Imagine now 2 weeks later that thief gets caught by police while committing another theft because while they were attempting the robbery they sprained their ankle allowing the police to scoop them up. A nice little just so story about karmic revenge or whatever.
I can imagine all the comments underneath that short news story, the obvious jokes and and laughing emojis driven by the thief's comeuppance. While I am glad the thief lost in the end, it does not put a smile on my face or entice me to write a comment expressing my glee at someone's downfall.
No, no, oh god no. It's practically my only form of enjoyment.
The world is such an unfair and vicious place, terrible people win the lottery and good people get cancer all the time. When things like this actually align properly for once, it's really hard not to feel just a little mirth.
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No. In fact, I’m enjoying your apparent confusion right now.
In all seriousness, yes, I feel it sometimes. There’s this guy with whom I worked once or twice in college. We absolutely did not get along. I found myself unreasonably pleased when hearing other people admit they don’t like working with him. I feel no shame about this; it’s more like validation of my judgment. Now, I also felt smug when hearing he’d gone back to school as an early midlife crisis. That I’m not so proud of, because I can see it’s objectively…wrong. But I did feel it.
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The other day, I read a story about a catalytic converter thief that didn't realize the driver was taking a nap in the car. The driver woke, was startled, and drove away, killing the thief in the process. I chuckled out loud when I read the story. I would say my sense of schadenfreude is in good working order.
That said, I don't experience schadenfreude at all when it's someone that I merely dislike. I don't wish for people that I just find mildly irritating to have bad lives or anything.
I'm almost at your point; though I still feel sad for a thief getting himself killed, I don't feel angry at the driver or anything. If you were to upgrade the thief to "armed robber" I wouldn't be sad to say goodbye to them.
But if you were to downgrade the thief's antisocial behavior, instead? IIRC there was some point in my childhood where I noticed the classic Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonist trope starting to fail for me. In theory the protagonist is supposed to be just enough of a jackass that you can appreciate how hilarious it is when he gets his comeuppance, and I can still enjoy that for Eric Cartman (or Montgomery Burns, now that I think about it) levels of horrible, but watching the suffering of a mere Jack Tripper or Michael Scott is painful.
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I have a finely honed sense of schadenfreude, and I feel no embarrassment about it.
I am a rather reasonable person, so the majority of people are only getting what's coming to them. In fact, I've found spite and hatred to be excellent motivators when nothing else can rouse me out of my depression, such as when I worked out for a year on the nominal basis of beating up this one asshole (not that I ever did, but the fantasy was worth it).
Overall, I can't help but be happy when bad things happen to bad people, literally couldn't happen to a better person as far as I'm concerned!
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Nope, can't experience it either. I get entertained to some extent when people trip over their own misdoings/incompetence but it doesn't bring me gloating joy, it's more of.. ahh the world works in funny ways, at least it's not me.
I have a tremendously hard time with "copes" as well. Which gets branded as "ungrateful" by those who are not of the same wavelength but I'd just say I'm hyper-competitive and If I'm not winning, I'm losing. I can't just rationalize away not winning, at anything, even if I know rationally I am far outclassed have no chance in hell and the other person deserves to win, it still gets to me.
The reason I said all that is I think some of the satisfaction of personal victory can be outsourced to others losing.
I was this way with sports and games, but competitive running cured me of it. There's something about the pure linearity of just being plain out slower than the other guy that feels appropriately karmically just, even though I'd rather win.
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I'll say yes but my perspective might be skewed by being friends with people who really like to indulge in it. It usually just makes me cringe, though I do see value in painful learning experiences.
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Quite the opposite. I'm coming to worry that it's way too much of a common indulgence for me.
I also don't like watching a lot of fail stuff but I think that really has more to do with my own social anxiety - I can't bear to watch cause it triggers familiar sensations in me; it's more narcissism than empathy I think.
Tellingly, I find awkward social circumstances more unbearable than say...a thief tripping and fucking up. That is just funny.
Your connection of social anxiety with cringe/fail stuff and narcissism rings true to me. I can't stand cringe comedy like Nathan for You and have been working through my social anxiety which I think stems from narcissism, I haven't watched cringe stuff lately but I'm guessing as I develop my empathy toward others I'll have an easier time with cringe stuff (since I will internalize the other person's pain much less and instead empathize with them and forgive myself more as well)
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Not me!
But this does make you a better man than me (or perhaps, than most), in my opinion. The emotion might be natural, and might even have it's social function, but it always felt a bit unhealthy, even as I was feeling it.
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