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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   5876 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 21, 2023

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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.

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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