After spending many hours on Youtube loops, I came to a rather interesting conclusion. This is a rather intriguing human trait I’ve seen which seems to be present in all of us: the enjoyment we seem to find in other people’s misfortune (Schadenfreude, I believe is the technical term). I’m largely referring to videos where the ‘stars’ proceed to hurt themselves, inflict pain on another or completely embarrassed themselves. As a rule of thumb these generally seem to be popular, very popular infact. To be more specific, the names of videos I mean could be ones such as, ‘kid cycles into tree’, ‘Worst face plant ever.’ What does that say about us as people? Are we a bad race; because which other species acts like so?    

What makes this righteous? One justification, in brief, could be us blaming karma, i.e. what goes around comes around. Or people with the attitude, ‘well they would laugh at me if it were the other way.’ Or simply the fact we don’t know who this person is, therefore that makes it alright. Be it worth noting, the older generations will think it’s just the younger generation’s humour that seems to have developed this way, just the sadistic nonchalant attitude we have. Cue the, ‘back in my day’.

It could however been seen as a much more serious point, a deeper underlying problem we have. We would rather look and laugh at others problems and misfortune, than confront our own. Subconsciously using them as a barrier for our own issues, a temporary scapegoat for our own inhibitions. When someone has low self esteem and find themselves on the end of stick, it could only help to laugh at someone else when given the opportunity, surely?  

Or perhaps, we just wanted a laugh.