Schadenfreude Is Worsening in Malaysia

Are Malaysian getting used seeking fun from others misfortune?

See the image above, look at the number of views and also the video suggestions and what do you find. 

When you see people in misfortune how would you feel? If instead of feeling sorry for them, you feel delighted or it pleasures you in someways, well that is - schadenfreude.

In some cases of funny videos, the novelty of the situation is obviously the key on what makes is so funny, but the reality is most of it are just people getting badly hurt.

The word originates from a German word and the way to pronounce it correctly is - scha·den·freu·de. 

As a citizen of Malaysia,  the norm of our people is that we do not applause when others were in the state of misery. Remember when our parents gave us stern, shaming looks if we laughed when others were having trouble? Well guess what, the lesson is not learnt entirely because Schadenfreude is actually a natural feeling for everybody, even our parents felt it. 

Because schadenfreude is a natural tendency, the problem lies when we see others in pain or in a difficult situation and we like it. Thus, we should always keep it in check. 

Maybe it is a funny thing to see people stumble to the floor but it is certainly not funny if a person trips from a ten floor building!

For example, we would feel delighted when we see our opponent lose. Manchester United fans surely love it when seeing Manchester City fans cry in sadness after losing a football match, well this seems not so bad as it is in the spirit of sport, but what about that good feeling we had when we enjoy the scenery of a car crash or even where a particular celebrity we dislike being shamed in the media? 

I remember having a roommate who had a fetish for watching videos of motorcycle accidents. He would laugh sometimes hysterically when watching it, in fact he downloaded a large sum of motorcycle accidents and saved it on his laptop. 

The Internet obviously can satisfied our schadenfreude needs in so many ways, whether in pictures or videos. Billions of YouTube users quench their schadenfreude thirst everyday, just look at the number of views on videos like the 'fails compilation' or other videos with the ilk of those. 

This is a reflection of the stance of our society, nowadays we are so accustom with violence we actually make a fun out of it.  

Before this, the conventional media have prepared us with their report on accidents, murder cases, and other misery issues but with some limits such as the use of censoring or blurring some gruesome images.

If the newspaper did publish gruesome images, parents would deter their children from seeing it, or if television shows some violence, they would change the channel. But today, a five year old can have the access to see images other children who has been killed, bombarded, or even tortured that has happened in another part of the world without it being censored.

This is a process of desensitization. We are teaching ourselves and the later generation to have the perception that, violence is norm.