Jeremy Speer

Schadenfreude.

Ever heard of it?

I hadn’t until fairly recently. But I was amazed by the concept, and now that I know about this German word, I can’t unsee it in our world at large.

It’s definition, via Oxford Languages: “Pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune.” In German, schaden means “harm or pain” and freude means “joy.”

According to Wikipedia, it has been detected in children as young as 24 months old. Children that age are capable of empathy, and apparently they are capable of this opposite concept.

There are many deep psychological rabbit holes to go down regarding schadenfreude, but a line in a psyche.com article laid out the simplest application of it: “It is easier to justify schadenfreude when ill fortune befalls someone, who, one is convinced, deserved it.”

I immediately thought of this concept when I woke up Saturday and saw social media abuzz over a character dubbed “Phillies Karen.”

For those who aren’t on the internet, here’s what happened from my eyes. A home run ball was hit during a Phillies-Marlins game. The ball landed in the stands, near a man and a woman who both tried to retrieve the ball. The man ended up getting the ball, then walked over to his 10-year-old son, and gave it to him. The woman, feeling that she was closest to where the ball landed, walked up to the man and argued that she deserved the ball. Exasperated, the father gave in to the angry-looking fan, took the ball out of his son’s glove and gave it to her, as she marched away.

As is customary in today’s world, many in the section filmed this interaction and posted with empathy for the boy. In the end, the boy received a gift bag from a team employee and met the hitter of the home run, which was a smile-inducing twist of the story. But many also shifted toward wagging their finger at the behavior of the woman, dubbed “Phillies Karen.”

People on social media shamed this woman, and sought to find personal information of hers, so that her misdeed could be reported to her workplace, her friends, her family, anyone who could make her pay for a heated moment of misjudgment.

Instantly, she became a flashpoint for poor fan behavior, and was social media’s Public Enemy No. 1, just as the “Coldplay affair’s” Andy Byron and Kristin Cabot earned the scorn of the world when their on-camera infidelity was exposed in front of millions, about a month ago.

The public loves to give five minutes of fame to those who deserve it, right? Cheaters or those who cheat kids out of a baseball? They deserve all the negative attention they get, correct? Let’s watch their world burn down around them.

Schadenfreude.

To me, this behavior exposes something about us. The theme of our modern society, I believe, is discontentment. We are discontent with the direction of our country. How much everything costs. Our neighbor’s views. How long it takes to drive home.

So when we see someone who has more (money, power, etc.) than us — say, the Coldplay cheaters– we revel in their downfall. Or when we see someone acting in an aggressive and cold way — Phillies Karen — we take delight when she gets thrown out with yesterday’s trash.

To me, both reek of schadenfreude.

And if I get deep inside my own mind, I’m concerned about myself.

Outwardly, and in the front of my mind, I think that schadenfreude is bad. I try not to view the world with cynicism and focus on the positive. I try and bring empathy with everything I do and when I put myself in the shoes of Byron, Cabot or Phillies Karen, I am sad for what they are going through, even if it is self-inflicted. I think about how difficult their life currently is. I’m a softie and I know it.

On the other hand, I consumed the social media and laughed at the memes. I’ve talked about both the Coldplay cheaters and Phillies Karen with multiple people.

As social media goes, consumers are contributors, and therefore I am doing my small part in growing the stories’ viral nature.

That, makes me a purveyor of schadenfreude.

To that end, there’s got to be someone out there reveling in the inner turmoil of your local publisher/columnist.

Schadenfreude.

Jeremy Speer is an Alpena High graduate and former paper boy and writer for The Alpena News. He currently is the group publisher of a handful of newspapers in Northwest Ohio, and can be reached at jeremyspeer@thecourier.com.