The Sweet, Sweet Misfortunes of Others

Yeah, it’s small, it’s petty, and won’t make your soul grow, but the simple, sad fact is that, pretty much to a person, we all enjoy it — sometimes more than others, but we enjoy it.

The word is “schadenfreude,” and you have to respect the German culture that came up with a single word that encompasses such as specific feeling. Its definition is “a mischievous delight in the misfortunes of others.” Sure, it’s the basis of moral-driven stories (we all felt it when Darth Vader threw the Emperor down the ventilation shaft; no one I know of stood up and said “BOO! Emperor Palpatine was the duly elected ruler! This is an illegal coup!”), but we see it in our everyday lives, as well. One might say it surrounds us, it penetrates us, it binds the galaxy together. Or one might not. Your choice.

Case in point: I was driving my best friend and his family to the airport, and we traveled up I-265 towards the Kennedy Bridge. This is one of the biggest areas in Indiana for writing speeding tickets, and they were out in force that morning. We counted five pull-overs in about a two-mile stretch. They even had cops on motorcycles, so you know they meant business (IHiPs?).

Driving back, I knew to look for it, and was traveling about 60 MPH. The PT Cruiser that blasted by me at 80 MPH, however, did not. He wasn’t 500 yards ahead before he got the signal to pull over and get his day ruined. I chortled all the way back home; it isn’t often that there’s such as perfect setup, and it’s even less often that you know exactly where to look for it. Was it small of me to get pleasure out of the pain of another? Probably. Was it funny? Definitely.

The concept was brilliantly covered in the musical “Avenue Q” with the appropriately titled song “Schadenfreude” (warning: salty language):

GARY: D’ja ever clap when a waitress falls and drops a tray of glasses?

NICKY: Yeah…

GARY: And ain’t it fun to watch figure skaters falling on their asses?

NICKY: Sure!

You get the idea.

Some kind souls are nice enough to post some of their misfortunes online simply to allow others to feel better. One of the best places to find such things is on fmylife.com. F— My Life (fill in the blanks for yourself) offers user submitted examples of why their lives are f—-ed. For example:

“Today, I finally decided to tell my mother, a former Miss North Carolina winner, that I was several weeks pregnant. She immediately burst into tears and hugged me. She kept saying, ‘Thank god, thank god.’ At first I was relieved. Then she said, ‘I thought you were just getting fat.’ FML”

or

“Today, my 250 lb ex-Marine dad announced he was going to start randomly punching me in the crotch, without warning, to ‘improve my reflexes.’ FML”

or

“Today, I missed my flight. Why? My niece thought it would be funny to empty out my suitcase and hide inside. FML”

To select the manner in which you can feel superior, categories include love, money, kids, work, health, intimacy, funny people and miscellaneous. For an extra “kick ‘em when their down” moment, you can vote “I agree, your life sucks” or “You totally deserved it.” Because sometimes their life does indeed suck, and sometimes they do indeed totally deserve it.

Some other sites to brighten your day at the expense of others:

• We all have them, but submitters to awkwardfamilyphotos.com are actually posting their family keepsakes. Let’s just say the 1980’s weren’t very good to some people, and some poses seemed like a much better idea than they turned out to be (I’m looking at you, Awkward Drill Team)

• One of the fun things about our society is that pretty much everyone has a camera in their cell phone, so for the first time in our history, no stupid thing has to go unrecorded. Such photos often wind up on FAIL Blog. It’s choc-full of failures that people have photographed, such as a guy on a bicycle using a wastebasket instead of a helmet, or the sign that reads “Open 8 Days a Week. Closed Sunday.”

• As a graphic designer, I try really, really hard not to end up on Photoshop Disasters, where the site owners state “Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter.” Photoshop is like fire: In the right hands it can be one of our best tools; in the wrong hands, you can remove thumbs, screw up lighting, make various body parts whither inappropriately, and do a host of other damage. Some of these mistakes are harder to find than others, but once you see them, you can’t not see them. From mom ‘n pop ads to the cover of Entertainment Weekly, no one is immune to bad digital manipulation. You might think you are, but you’re not.

So, the next time something bad or embarrassing happens to you, remember that it’s not real unless it happens on the Internet. So, by all means, go ahead and post it — sometimes the purpose of our lives is to be a warning to others.