#schadenfreude
I gotta be honest, at this point I am practically begging the internet to derive pleasure from anything other than schadenfreude.
House of Memes (gmotd.tumblr.com)
2020-10-04
So@stardusteyes liked one of my old Cats (2019) posts, which reminded me of a funny thing that happened recently related to that.
So last week, my sister (a.k.a. the one who dragged me to see the movie) texted me out of blue asking if saw any movies together in theaters in 2020 (pre-covid, obviously). I looked up what movies were out then, only recognized two of them which I knew we did not see, and reported back “No”
Turns out, since she’s been avoiding theaters since the pandemic started, Cats was the last film she saw in theaters.
I was quick to recommend Everything Everwhere All at Once, but I’m not going to lie when I say that there was some schadenfreude on my end.
‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
Quick recap: Mercedes Lackey, who like Rowling before her used to be a very popular and very progressive author but not quite as famous, is getting canceled for accidentally describing a person of color as “colored”. She is very sad and sorry about this. The colored person in question said he’s not offended and it’s ridiculous that so many people are getting offended on his behalf. The SFWA nonetheless hyped up the situation like this:
The use of a racial slur violates the instruction to “Respect all cultures and communities. Do not make derogatory or offensive statements even as a joke.” That applies to everyone in a SFWA space, at all levels of their career.
What a mendacious misrepresentation. Her husband Dixon (who names this shit?) also reports being cancelled by association.
@cirsova on twitter brought to my attention that Lackey is on record sneering contemptuously at the notion of cancel culture(archive).In 2022.
It’s imaginary and also here’s why he deserved it, way to go, Lackey.
(The bluecheck means verified identity on Quora, similar to Twitter.)
Schadenfreude
Ah, that satisfying, superior, at once gleeful and slightly sinful feeling when the aggressive driver that overtook you gets his comeuppance and gets flashed by a speed camera. That feeling is Schadenfreude, a nifty German word made up of schaden for damage, harm or hurt and freude for joy. Taking pleasure in others’ misfortunes.
I hadn’t thought much of it beyond that before reading some excerpts from Tiffany Watt Smith’s book Schadenfreude. She makes the compelling case to examine the moments where we feel superior at another’s expense as a small window into ourselves. A little twinge of joy when a colleague doesn’t get a promotion might reveal your jealousy at their situation, or perhaps a deep down resentment of unfairness. If the person who pushed in front of you in the queue drops their ice cream straight after buying it your secret twinge of joy might be a sense of justice and equity for obeying the rules when they didn’t. Schadenfreude can be a little boost to your own self-esteem.
For a mini-intro try Tiffany Watt Smith’s TED Ideas article: Do you secretly feel good when others stumble? 5 ways to make peace with this very human emotion.
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I’m not even kidding.
This is from UAE’s official YouTube:
Yup… they went there.
Le mic has been dropped.
