Schadenfreude: Some websites for your delight

(22:31:36 CDT)

Schadenfreude: Some websites for your delight

This is appropriate for me to write now, as I have just watched the quite funny (to me, stressful to Sarah) movie Death at a Funeral. Schadenfreude, the quirky little German word that represents our delight in other's dismay, is a tricky concept. We do not necessarily like talking about how a person falling down makes us laugh but it is, quite likely, the quintessential element of all American comedy. Whether it be a friendly commiseration with a married man over the quirky habits of his family, or a mean spirited take on in-flight peanuts; schadenfreude is more often than not why we laugh. Sure, there are other forms of humor: irony and puns and stuff. Those are all British, though, so no one actually finds them funny. That's we call it "dry humor". Or "wry humor", as in "It made me want to wry"¹.

If you were to disect the Internet and sort it by purpose, you would have a few distinct layers. The first would be "Porn". The second would be "Wasting time". The third would possibly be a mix of "Complaining", "Shopping", and "Complaining about things you bought online". Then, in a three way tie, you would find "Looking up recipes you are too lazy to write down", "Ignoring SPAM", and "Schadenfreude". A lot of websites, some quite profitable, are about dissing or smashing or whining or pretending to be superior to other people (here's looking at you IMDB.com, with your facts and your actors). Like I said, it is humorous to us. It is what makes us laugh.

I've compiled a little list to share: websites that use, to some degree, schadenfreude as a central concept. I check almost all of these daily, and a couple of them I laugh out loud at least once a day. There are plenty of others if you start including things like webcomics and blogs, but I tried to avoid those. I tried focusing, instead, on those little "flashes of life" websites that include a series of photos or short little tidbits.

In all of them I give a series of rankings: Mean-Spiritedness (MS - how mean they come across, the higher the more likely the website is outright insulting), Good-Naturedness (GN - not necessarily exclusive from MS, but this implies that the webmaster is joyous and friendly with it, also implies that self-submission might be involved), Fakeness-Quotient (FQ - the likelihood that what is submitted is a little or a lot fake), and Doug's-Take (DT - a quick review score of the website). All of these are based mostly on my take as of right now, meaning that I may change my mind tomorrow. That is ok. Just enjoy, if you will. As a final warning, if you need such a thing, pretty much all of these websites have occasional to frequent descents into foul language and potty humor, some worse than others. Nothing that has ever struck me as being "too much", but very few things actually do.

Why The F*** Do You Have Kid?. Collection of photos (and some random videos) showing bad parenting, poorly thought out solutions to child related problems, and outright negligent situations. Make a note: if you actually care about children, this site might make you very angry. MS: High, but often really deserved. GN: Low, but we are talking about people passing out in a drunken stupor next to their crib or giving their kid illicit drugs and taking pictures of it. FQ: Some of them are most likely staged for cute to whatever the opposite of cute is effect. A lot just look like honest failures of judgement. DT: I'll give this one a "Fair" (my medium grade ranging from Blech, Meh, Fair, to Good and Great). It makes me a laugh a lot, but also hurts my soul.

Awkward Family Photos. Photos and anecdotes about family poses, highlighting funny to sad cliches, mismatched pairs, and all those quirky little things families think are good ideas at the time (like posing every kid with a chicken in hand or something). MS: Kind of mild, though it sometimes drifts to the mean side. GN: Usually pretty good natured. FQ: Very low, except in the sense that these are all posed, but the awkwardness is the kind of thing you can't fake. DT: I'll also give this one a "Fair". While it has tons of priceless photos, a good number are not so much awkward as kind of sappily odd.

Goths in Hot Weather. Series of photos featuring goths in full regalia actually exposed to the elements or out in public. MS: Mild. GN: Pretty high, I assume most of the photos are sort of self-submitted, and even when they are not, it just feels good humored. FQ: Don't know. I'm going to guess these are real goths actually out in hot weather, but some of them are possibly taken with hyperbole in mind. DT: Third "Fair" in a row, fun to look at, and occasionally knee slapping, but mostly just something to waste time while undergoing mild chuckles.

Fail Blog. Photos and videos of people failing, at a wide number of things, this is kind of the King website of schadenfreude. Faceplants, dance mishaps, fallings over backwards, and skateboarding trauma are only the thin surface of a rich material ranging form bad repair to unfortunate wording in signs. MS: Kind of high but not soul crushingly so, just a loud delight in the failings of others. GN: I would say medium. Though the deligh in bone-breaking photos, there is overall a deep commiseration with all the stupid stuff we do. FQ: Fair, I guess. Some things, especially the videos, feel a tad staged. DT: "Good". I used to find it "Great" but it does get a bit repetitive over the years.

Ugliest Tattoos, a Gallery of Regrets. Photos of bad to worse tattoos with snarky commentary and general discussion of patterns. Most of the tattoos picked are honestly horrible images and misspellings. Some, though, are not so much "ugly" as just a little over big or sort of a weird thing to get tattooed. MS: High, though often justified. There is some participation in the "only idiots get tattoos" style language used to try and wring humor out of otherwise fine tats. GN: Not really much, though there is sometimes an admittance that an earlier tattoo wasn't all that bad in comparison to a new one. FQ: I doubt any are fake, though I know some tattoo folk do get things just for the reaction that they are getting on this site. DT: "Fair". Sometimes really funny and insightful, sometimes not.

Look at this fucking hipster. Photos, and occasional but rare, videos of hipsters and alts doing their thing. MS: Medium. Some of the shots seem mean-spirited, but overall it seems to be more jovial fun poking than anything. GN: I would say highish, many of the photos feel self-submitted and a lot of the cracks are acerbic but I would guess the people under fire would laugh. FQ: Kind of high, most of these feel posed and a lot of shots look like they are especially dolled up to be extra-hipster while the photo is being taken. DT: "Good", something about it just makes me laugh and laugh.

Engrish.com. Probably the oldest site in the list, and arguably the model upon which most of them are based; pictures of signs and pamphlets and toys and shirts and whathaveyou where something is lost in the translation, often greatly so. The English ranges from stilted to woefully incorrect. In a few cases, you have no idea what was even being implied. MS: Possibly high. Kind of depends on your take of the whole thing. GN: Again, depends on if you are taking it as mocking Asian people or a good humored look at translations whoopsies. FQ: Practically non-existent. DT: "Good". I have long been a fan of this site.

There, I Fixed It. Photos, and videos, of self-repair jobs gone awry, or maybe working but only by the grace of God. Occasionally there is an awesome homebrew fix or two. MS: Low. Even though you are to laugh at these fixes, they are only as funny as they deserve. GN: I would say highish, a lot of the ones chosen are kind of impressive in their sheer inventive qualities. FQ: Not sure, some of the things look like someone was going out of their way to do it wrong, but most seem pretty legit. DT: A high "Good", but short of "Great". One of my favorite websites right now.

Not Always Right. As in, "the customer is..." A pro-retail and customer-service rep website all about how customers fly off the handle, make stupid demands, get things wrong, or otherwise show the worst of humanity. Generally formatted as a dialogue between the worker and the customer. MS: Can be kind of high, but commentary is usually left out for only the quotes being said. You are supposed to laugh at their stupidity, yes, but it is their stupidity. GN: A lot of the stories leave you feeling sympathy for someone. FQ: I would say medium. Almost all the stories have the air of being edited for maximizing the humor, and some have the flavor of pretty heavy exaggeration and editing. DT: "Great". One of my favorite websites right now and a lot of the stories are just topnotch.

F-My-Life. A series of stories around the punchline of "Fuck My Life" (rendered more SFW as FML), these are micro-anecdotes about being called fat by your son, or about leaving your keys in your car while on the way to a seminar about increasing your memory, or about finding out your boyfriend has planned to propose to you on the day you were going to dump him. Little tributes to the irony of life and the joys of being a loser. MS: Mild, overall, though some of the comments can be kind of rough. GN: Entirely self-submitted, but whether it is a fishing for pity or an attempt at self-deprecation is kind of up in the air. FQ: Lately, pretty high. Few stories don't involve a sense of being slightly edited to fully made up. Overall, if you go back more than a few weeks, most of them seemed pretty real. DT: Right now, a "Meh". It can be funny, and was for a while, but lately the stories seem more apt to be pointless whining.

Texts from Last Night. Short snippets of text messages accompanied by a area code. These things range from drunken questions to sobering revelations. Bizarre at times, nonsensical at others, and almost always hilarious; these are the things we say when we are in a hurry, in a fit, or in a tizzy. Micro-epics for the shorter attention span. MS: Kind of depends on the message itself, but very little extra mean spirit is added by the website so pretty low. GN: I personally find it a good humored celebration to how stupid we all are, and how stupid we sound at times. FQ: I would say a definite possibility, but most at least feal authentic. DT: "Great", really the best one on the list. More often than not, sitting down to read this website will end up with me laughing until I cry.

Si Vales, Valeo

1: Calm down, I'm joking. I quite like puns and irony and quirkiness. Just keep in mind that many uses of them are also based on someone misunderstanding or getting left out in the cold, as it were, bringing it back around to the "delight in dismay" concept.

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