What is it about another person’s misery that some people find so damn interesting?
It is a question I have asked myself more times than I can count.
You see it everywhere. Someone is struggling and suddenly there is an audience. Someone makes a mistake and people who had absolutely nothing to say about that person’s accomplishments suddenly have plenty to contribute. A marriage ends. A business struggles. Someone loses a job. Somebody gets embarrassed. A private disagreement escapes into public view.
And here they come.
Not necessarily to help. Not particularly interested in understanding what happened. Some arrive simply because there is trouble, and trouble apparently deserves a front-row seat.
Then social media arrived and gave everyone a ticket.
Facebook turned the neighborhood rumor mill into a 24-hour operation. Celebrity gossip became an industry. Complete strangers began arguing about relationships they were never part of, careers they know nothing about and personal decisions made by people they have never met.
Some people do not merely follow drama. They seem to require a steady diet of it.
I have always wondered why.
Why does someone else’s terrible day make yours more interesting? Why does watching another person struggle provide satisfaction? Why do some people devote extraordinary amounts of time to tracking the failures, mistakes and misfortunes of people around them?
It turns out the Germans gave us a remarkably precise word for at least part of the answer.
Schadenfreude.
And no, it is not some trendy word invented for social media.
Schadenfreude literally describes pleasure derived from another person’s misfortune. The word has existed for generations because the behavior has existed considerably longer than Facebook, smartphones or celebrity gossip.
Technology did not invent this peculiar corner of human nature.
It simply gave it Wi-Fi.
Psychologists do not consider schadenfreude a mental illness. Most human beings are capable of experiencing it to some degree. Someone who has treated everyone terribly finally gets his comeuppance and we may quietly think he had it coming. A boastful rival loses. The person who spent six months telling everyone how brilliant he is makes an embarrassing mistake.
There can be a moment of satisfaction.
That is human.
But some people seem to take up permanent residence there.
They are not occasionally entertained by another person’s predicament. They become invested in it. They follow the argument. They investigate the rumor. They search the comments. They collect screenshots. They call someone else to make certain the information travels another five miles before lunch.
Some even become disappointed when the drama ends.
That is where human behavior becomes fascinating.
Social comparison provides part of the explanation. People naturally measure themselves against other people. Money. Appearance. relationships. Careers. Homes. Popularity. Success. Influence. Happiness.
Watching someone succeed can make an insecure person feel smaller.
Watching that same person stumble can make the insecure person temporarily feel taller.
Nothing actually changed, of course.
If your neighbor loses $50,000, you are not $50,000 richer. If someone’s business closes, yours did not become more successful. If another person’s relationship collapses, yours did not become healthier. If someone gets publicly embarrassed, your own accomplishments did not suddenly become more impressive.
You gained absolutely nothing.
But schadenfreude can make it feel like you did.
That is what makes the psychology behind it so interesting.
Envy can contribute to it. Competition can contribute to it. Resentment can contribute to it. Insecurity can contribute to it. Researchers have also found that perceptions of deservingness matter: people can experience greater satisfaction when they believe the person suffering a setback somehow had it coming.
Then there is gossip, one of humanity’s oldest recreational activities.
People have talked about one another since people figured out how to talk.
But gossip once had geographical limitations. You needed a fence, a barber shop, a workplace, a telephone or somebody willing to walk across town.
Now we carry the entire rumor mill in our pockets.
A person can wake up, reach for a phone and immediately discover who is fighting, divorcing, complaining, failing, feuding, apologizing, getting arrested or publicly embarrassing themselves before getting out of bed.
For someone attracted to turmoil, we have constructed paradise.
There is another psychological concept worth knowing: Need for Drama.
Researchers have used the term to describe a measurable personality tendency involving patterns such as interpersonal manipulation, impulsive outspokenness and persistent perceptions of being victimized. It is not a psychiatric diagnosis, and it certainly does not mean everyone who enjoys gossip has a psychological disorder.
But it does help explain something many of us have observed.
Some people do not simply encounter drama.
Drama somehow has their forwarding address.
There is always another feud. Another enemy. Another betrayal. Another person who supposedly wronged them. Another argument requiring an audience. Another crisis that absolutely must be discussed.
After the tenth fire, eventually you start wondering why the same person keeps showing up carrying matches.
And then there are the spectators who occasionally decide watching is not enough.
They add a little oxygen.
A rumor gets repeated with one additional detail. A screenshot gets forwarded. Somebody makes sure the right person hears what the wrong person supposedly said. A disagreement that was almost finished receives another push.
Not because anything productive will come from it.
Because the drama might continue.
That is considerably different from ordinary curiosity.
There is also something profoundly inefficient about spending your life this way.
Think about the effort required to monitor everybody else.
You have to remember who is mad at whom. Who unfriended whom. Who said what. Who lost what. Who embarrassed themselves. Who is dating whom. Who got fired. Who is supposedly broke. Who posted something at midnight and deleted it before breakfast.
That is practically a part-time job.
And the paycheck is terrible.
Meanwhile, your own life is sitting there waiting for your attention.
That may be the greatest irony behind schadenfreude.
Another person’s failure cannot build anything for you.
Their bankruptcy cannot create your wealth. Their humiliation cannot create your dignity. Their divorce cannot create your happiness. Their defeat cannot create your success.
You still have to do all of that yourself.
Maybe that is why I find this particular human behavior so fascinating. We are given a finite amount of time on this planet, yet some people voluntarily surrender enormous portions of theirs monitoring whether somebody else is having a worse experience.
What an exhausting way to live.
So, the next time you notice someone almost glowing while delivering another person’s bad news, remember there may be more happening than simple gossip.
There may be envy. There may be insecurity. There may be competition. There may be boredom. There may simply be that ancient human temptation to feel a little better about ourselves because somebody else is temporarily doing worse.
And there is a word for that.
Schadenfreude.
A complicated word for a remarkably simple behavior:
Finding happiness where there was never any happiness to begin with.