Schadenfreude

Rob Bell:

I have been known to laugh at quite a few of our mutual friends' misfortunes.

 

Jono Hey:

You might say you're renowned for it.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

I think slightly unfairly, but yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

Because my wife has a similar reaction to you when I hurt myself.

And it was just funny because, you know, she's very mild-mannered generally.

 

Tom Pellereau:

So the apprentice was pretty ruthless, but if someone else had been fired, you had survived.

And I'm trying to remember how I felt, mainly relieved.

 

Rob Bell:

This week, we're talking about schadenfreude, a German word made up of schaden meaning damage, you're hurt, and Freude meaning joy.

In other words, taking pleasure in others' misfortunes.

 

Jono Hey:

Does me laughing at this say something terrible about me?

 

Rob Bell:

Hello and welcome to Sketchplanations, The Podcast.

 

You'll never believe what this listener did after she tuned in to this week's episode.

 

Also, here's seven things you need to know about Sketchplanations, The Podcast hosts.

 

And don't miss out because this weird trick will take your podcast listening experience to whole new levels.

 

And finally, this guy listened to Sketchplanations, The Podcast on the way to work.

 

What happened next will blow your mind.

 

Hmm, right then.

 

I feel like we might have grabbed your attention maybe.

 

With some of the oldest clickbait tricks in the book, ha!

 

Come on, of course we're not going to talk about any of that.

 

It's meaningless, there's no substance to any of it.

 

Plus, we've got some serious podcasting to do.

 

I'm Rob Bell and joining me once again, the Wikipedia of wonder, Jono Hey, and the Buzzfeed of Brainiacs, it's Tom Pellereau.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Hello.

 

Rob Bell:

How's it my broo?

 

Tom Pellereau:

I'm really intrigued by those clickbaits.

 

Are we going to get the answers or is that just it?

 

Rob Bell:

Do you ever find yourself clicking on clickbait articles because of those headlines?

 

It just drags you in when you're tired and your guard's down.

 

Tom Pellereau:

They're so annoying, aren't they?

 

And I hate some browsers that kind of bring them up as default.

 

They just appear as soon as you open the browser.

 

And you're like, oh, but your brain just goes, ooh, but no, I came here to do something important.

 

Rob Bell:

And you know that there's absolutely nothing in that article, right?

 

You know, I'm not into celebrity gossip at all, but every now and then I do find myself clicking through to read some no news celebrity story.

 

Like, I don't know, Tiger Woods has been seen buying shoes in a shop somewhere.

 

But the headline is something like shocking Tiger Woods spotted in shoe store.

 

You won't believe what he's buying.

 

You know, he's buying shoes.

 

That's it.

 

And you read through the story.

 

That's it.

 

That's all there is.

 

Jono Hey:

Literally.

 

It's the same on YouTube now as well, isn't it?

 

Because, yeah, I mean, you've got such a small thing to get your message across that.

 

Well, actually, YouTube, at least you get a thumbnail as well.

 

But yeah, it's like, I bought 800,000 bricks.

 

You'll never guess what I did with them.

 

I see the kids and they're like, they can't help but like, watch that stuff.

 

Because you're like, but who cares?

 

I never cared what he did with 800,000 bricks before.

 

Rob Bell:

Have you ever been tempted to...

 

No, but I'm intrigued now.

 

I'll ask you later.

 

Have you ever been tempted to use a bit of click baiting in your marketing, Tommy?

 

Tom Pellereau:

The old sort of five beauty hacks or the ten best things you could do with a...

 

Like, those do work and our PR company have written things like that in the past.

 

And we do think about writing them.

 

And we do think about writing blog and chat.

 

GPT can be very powerful for writing blogs.

 

But as you say, it does seem to be pretty sort of pointless.

 

So it's always that question of, do you play the game or, you know, do you try and rise above it?

 

And certainly we do try to rise above it with our innovation.

 

But sometimes you do get told you should just learn to play the game as well.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, there is a difference between click bait titles and, you know, clever.

 

I don't know if clever is the right word, but kind of clever punny headlines as well, aren't there?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Sometimes things can be fun.

 

And also sometimes things can be really helpful.

 

We've written a lot of bacteria copy about why you should clean your makeup brushes.

 

And it looks just like it's click bait, but it's actually like really helpful advice.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, I think some of it is finding the really interesting thing in what you're doing.

 

So like going through like a little process of just ideating, you know, five or ten titles and picking the best one and then working to improve it.

 

It's just like good copywriting.

 

And actually, there's nothing there's nothing wrong with that.

 

If that is what you are actually showing when you click through, right?

 

Yes.

 

If there's a point to what you're doing and you're just expressing the point better than Greg, express it in an interesting way so that I'm intrigued to learn.

 

Rob Bell:

But don't draw me into some no story.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, I get I get strong, like I'm anti click sentiment for the clickbait titles now.

 

I'm not going to click on that.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

Principle.

 

Rob Bell:

I know what you're doing.

 

Principle.

 

Jono Hey:

I refuse.

 

I refuse if you're going to use that tactic on me.

 

Rob Bell:

Let's dispense with the clickbait, right?

 

Do away with the sensationalism.

 

Let's just be frank.

 

What's about to happen next might not blow your mind, but it might expand your horizons.

 

It might leave you deep in thought.

 

Or at the very least, it will while away the next 40 minutes or so.

 

I'll say it as plainly as I can.

 

Here's this week's podcast.

 

Jono Hey:

I want to know what the guy did with the bricks.

 

Rob Bell:

This week, we're talking about Schadenfreude, a German word made up of Schaden, meaning damage or hurt, and Freude, meaning joy.

 

In other words, taking pleasure in others' misfortunes.

 

And already, just thinking about it has brought a semi-reluctant grin to my face.

 

But you should be able to see the scenario that Jono set out to explain this in his sketch up on your podcast player screens right now.

 

But if not, then follow the link in the podcast description down below, and that will take you through to this illustration on sketchplanations.com, the home for the literally hundreds of sketchplanations in circulation.

 

Jono, do you wanna explain this sketch, explain what's in the sketch a little bit, and then tell us a bit more about what Schadenfreude is?

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, for sure.

 

So yeah, the sketch is pretty simple.

 

I was just literally trying to explain this concept and think up a scene where you could just see the situation happening, where you could understand from the participant's point of view the feeling of it.

 

And so what's happening, because in a way, there's almost like two here, so perhaps there's a bit of a double, right?

 

So in the scene, you've got an innocent looking person at the front of the picture, who's carrying a massive pile of books and they've just tripped up and the book's about to fly everywhere.

 

At the same time-

 

Rob Bell:

It is funny.

 

It is funny.

 

I'd laugh at that if you saw what happened.

 

Jono Hey:

And at the same time, you've got some fellow in the background who's spotted that and he's pointing at the person and laughing out loud with a bit of glee about the fact that they're about to drop all their books.

 

And yet that person is not paying attention to where they're going and they're about to fall in a hole, which is right in front of them.

 

And so the idea with this, as you might imagine, was in a way you can see that the guy at the back, who doesn't look very friendly, is laughing at the guy dropping the books.

 

And so maybe they're feeling a bit of Schadenfreude, which is the pleasure of someone else's misfortune.

 

But what's gonna happen next is the person who was being a bit mean perhaps is about to fall in the hole.

 

And so even this innocent person who's about to throw their books on the floor might get a little satisfying feeling of revenge, in a way, at the person who's just been laughing at them as they fall into the hole.

 

And I put on the quote there because I thought it was quite a nice quote, like Friedrich Nietzsche once called it the revenge of the impotent, Schadenfreude.

 

So yeah, taking a bit of pleasure at someone else's misfortune was the idea.

 

Rob Bell:

Yes, and that quote there from Nietzsche, the revenge of the impotent, that really says to me that, you know, that misfortune that's happened to that other person is likely nothing to do with you, the person who's enjoying that.

 

Jono Hey:

Right, yeah.

 

And actually, I think often it's, you perhaps experience it a bit more from a slight distance.

 

It's a bit easier to experience it than right in somebody's face.

 

Rob Bell:

It is.

 

Tommy, what's your experience with Schadenfreude?

 

Tom Pellereau:

It's a number of different levels, isn't it?

 

There's the slapstick humour level, which I think it can be just so hilarious to see for some reason, there is a certain level of humour at seeing a certain level of misfortune happen to another.

 

Often, actually, someone you know being the better, like the more you know someone.

 

And also for me, it does have to be quite innocent, like and clearly not too painful for them.

 

I think it's quite important.

 

But yeah, the slapstick humour of it is brilliant.

 

Rob Bell:

Let's just revel in that for a little while, shall we?

 

Because I have been known to laugh at quite a few of our mutual friends' misfortunes in accidents they've had.

 

And as you say, Tommy, it's important that they're not too seriously hurt.

 

It's important to me.

 

Some have pushed those boundaries somewhat.

 

Jono Hey:

You might say you're renowned for it.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, I think slightly unfairly, but yeah.

 

So preparing for the podcast, I was sitting at the desk thinking about examples of this.

 

And I can't help but laugh now, just thinking them through in my head.

 

They're still so funny.

 

I mean, I can think of a friend, Philly, crashing over his handlebars, mountain biking down a track, and he broke his sunglasses.

 

He flipped right over the front.

 

He went over a big log.

 

There's so, so many for our mate, Nolzi.

 

Fell off a moped in Thailand, burnt his leg on the exhaust.

 

Did a ski flip, back flip, unintended on his part, and he fractured his spine.

 

He fell down a crevasse.

 

Tom Pellereau:

On that second one, because I was very much there, and unfortunately recorded it on my camera as he came down.

 

And I seem to remember you were in fits of giggles, unable to, even when the ski patrol was arriving, you were kind of unable to talk to them because you felt so bad.

 

Rob Bell:

I had to take myself off.

 

And it's horrible.

 

I didn't want to be laughing.

 

I understood the seriousness of the situation and the amount of pain that he was in, but I just couldn't stop laughing.

 

But I'm not sure if that's Schadenfreude, though.

 

And I'd be really interested to talk to you guys about that, because I think there's something else going on there.

 

I really try not to laugh.

 

I don't want to be laughing.

 

I know that I shouldn't be.

 

I feel like it's inappropriate laughing as opposed to Schadenfreude.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah, I wonder.

 

Rob Bell:

Does that make sense?

 

Well, I started looking into inappropriate laughing.

 

And there is some stuff medically about that, right?

 

It's on a sliding scale of severity, but it's also called paradoxical laughter, pathological laughter, and the pseudo bull bar effect.

 

And medically, it's been associated with various conditions such as schizophrenia and psychosis.

 

I'm not saying...

 

Tom Pellereau:

It's not looking any better for you, Rob, here.

 

Rob Bell:

It's not.

 

But I'm not sure if it's Schadenfreude that when I'm laughing at our friends who've hurt themselves, well, I don't want to be, and I don't get any joy out of it other than the joy that laughter brings you.

 

I don't know.

 

It's a tricky one.

 

There's some kind of emotional wiring mix-up in there, maybe.

 

Tom Pellereau:

You're definitely not finding it funny in terms of revengefulness, right?

 

Rob Bell:

Old one-year-oldmanship.

 

Tom Pellereau:

You just...

 

Rob Bell:

I'm not.

 

Jono Hey:

It's just funny.

 

So, what I mentioned in the description of the sketch was...

 

And it's part of what made me think of it at the time.

 

So, there was a book by Tiffany Watt Smith called Schadenfreude, where she investigated what Schadenfreude was, and the joy in another's misfortune, or, in fact, why we feel better when bad things happen to other people.

 

And I think in part of it, and I read in an article about it, they distinguish between good Schadenfreude and bad Schadenfreude.

 

And I don't know how I was thinking about this, because babies and little kids, right, they will just laugh when, in fact, they love it when adults hurt themselves in kind of a funny way.

 

And even as a baby.

 

I remember if the kids were upset or they tripped over or anything.

 

And actually, our elders would sometimes do that for our youngest now.

 

There's a way of cheering them up.

 

You just do silly things, like whack himself on the head or walk and pretend to fall over.

 

And it's the classic stepping on a rake or something like that.

 

And so some of that is, yeah, I don't know, there's something quite innate there, but there's nothing like, there's no sense of that revenge or gloating or anything like that.

 

And then, and then there was the, the bad Scheidenfreude, which was this, you have the pleasure, but it's swirled a bit with shame, which was, does, does me laughing at this say something terrible about me that I'm, I'm really happy that I didn't get the promotion because I really don't like him and they were mean to me, like that kind of thing.

 

Rob Bell:

Yes.

 

Jono Hey:

As opposed to, yeah, somebody hurt themselves.

 

Because I think when I mentioned that we were going to talk about this, because my wife has a similar reaction to you, Rob, when I hurt myself.

 

Yeah, which is funny because, you know, very mild-mannered generally, but I was trying to think we were, we were in the, in the mountains in the snow and we went sledding and we had these like round sled and we'd hiked up the hill and the kids are having a brilliant time.

 

I hiked up and I was going to lie on the sled and go down on my chest face first.

 

And of course I put the, put the sled down, holding it with both hands.

 

The first thing that happened, facing downhill, and the first thing that happened was the sled went off on my hands and I faceplanted into the snow.

 

And it really quite hurt, but she could do nothing but laugh.

 

And it's the same, you know, you're walking around in the bedroom and you catch your knee on the bed, corner of the bed or something.

 

And for some reason, it's just funny.

 

And I don't think she's got some secret, like, oh, great, he's finally getting a taste of his own medicine there.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, there's no sense of revenge.

 

And so those were the two elements that I think I was confused by.

 

And I don't think I had appreciated maybe the nuance within this term, Chardon-Floyder before.

 

I thought it was all about laughing at other people's misfortunes in that way that I find myself and your wife, Jono, as well, find ourselves doing.

 

But there is more nuance.

 

Are you saying that there's this kind of good Chardon-Floyder and bad Chardon-Floyder, if you want to kind of simplify it?

 

Jono Hey:

That's what they talked about.

 

So yeah, I think in the ones that you're doing, you don't have that sense of shame.

 

So a lot of the other examples are quite like...

 

You perhaps, you find it a bit funny, but you also realise that you shouldn't find it funny, and you perhaps don't like it that much.

 

And so I was trying to think of...

 

So one that would happen for me, which is probably in the bad side, was, you know, I've had these times when, like, you're driving along perfectly fine, there's a really aggressive driver comes up behind you, they're pushing past you, eventually they just zoom round you.

 

And then it's somehow really satisfying to me to catch up with them in a minute with them sat at a traffic light and me just roll gently past them.

 

Rob Bell:

Yes!

 

Jono Hey:

Just looking out their window, you know.

 

And like, it should, I mean, they should just be another car, as by the time I get to the traffic light, but they're not.

 

There's something about, like, yeah, see?

 

You can just drive...

 

Rob Bell:

Or even better, when they sped past you, they get flashed by a speed camera.

 

That would just be like, ugh.

 

Jono Hey:

You see them being pulled over for a speeding ticket or something.

 

Rob Bell:

Brilliant.

 

Jono Hey:

So, but that one, you know, like there, you're actually reveling a bit in...

 

Rob Bell:

Yes...

 

Jono Hey:

.

 

genuinely their misfortune.

 

And it is a bit more of the revenge side of it, isn't it?

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

I was thinking about this earlier.

 

I came up with the term the villains come up and...

 

That's...

 

I thought that, yeah, that about does it.

 

Another example of that, and I didn't come up with this.

 

I read it somewhere.

 

After a waiter has perhaps been treating you quite rudely in a restaurant, you might secretly enjoy seeing him trip up and drop his tray and have him soup all over himself later on.

 

It's that villains come up.

 

It's right.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

Initially, it was funny.

 

I was thinking about films and villains as well, because actually, in some ways, at least a lot of Western plots for films, like bad guys get in there, come up, it's like a really central part of a plot, isn't it?

 

And I guess as a viewer, you sort of enjoy that moment.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah, there must be something in us that sort of enjoys seeing that.

 

Maybe it's a sort of calmer thing as well.

 

I wonder if the laughing aspect is something clearly amuses us, but a lot of these things come from somewhere.

 

And certainly I find when kids kind of hurt themselves, sometimes I have to be really careful not to clearly be laughing.

 

And Poppy gets quite angry sometimes if I'm laughing, and I have to like look away and not talk.

 

But that was quite funny, but obviously she doesn't.

 

But also pain can often be healed by laughing oneself.

 

So I don't know if that kind of helped by us laughing at them, they then laugh, like that expression, you know, laugh it off or that sort of thing.

 

Maybe it's something we do to kind of encourage that person to also laugh and sort of get themselves through that pain, potentially, I don't know.

 

Or if it is just purely an evil thing.

 

Jono Hey:

It could be like a manner of coping in many ways.

 

You certainly don't wish your daughter to hurt herself in any way.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Right.

 

Jono Hey:

So it's a bit different.

 

Some of the examples was in football and as a football fan.

 

Rob Bell:

Go on.

 

Jono Hey:

Well, I think it's just a little more satisfying.

 

Like if you go to watch a game and there's a really niggly player in the other team and they're always like falling over, getting free kicks, leaving their leg in, complaining to the ref, it's so satisfying if they go on to like get sent off or miss a penalty or something, right?

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.

 

Jono Hey:

And you're like, ah, take that.

 

And apparently there was a study in 2015 where fans smiled more readily when rivals missed a penalty than when their own team scored.

 

Tom Pellereau:

I believe it.

 

Rob Bell:

I totally believe it.

 

Tom Pellereau:

So harsh, isn't it?

 

Jono Hey:

And then the sort of classic one, obviously, like, you know, Germany being so good as a football team for basically our whole lifetime.

 

And so I think it's sort of built in for England fans to have this like satisfaction, secret sort of satisfaction if Germany are not doing well.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Jono Hey:

And apparently when Germany went out to Spain in the World Cup, the viewership skyrocketed as everybody came in to listen and watch them go out.

 

But that's and it is there.

 

I think it's like you because they, you know, they've been so good for so long and there's a sense of like justice at last, you know, but very topical given the origin of the word.

 

Yeah, yeah, perhaps.

 

Although somebody I did read somewhere that maybe it came from from I mean, it's German word, but from Dutch as a concept.

 

I read them.

 

There was a really nice article in The Guardian by Stuart Jeffreys when he was he was talking about the book Tiffany wrote and he said, I much prefer bad Schadenfreude.

 

The boss calling himself the head of pubic services on an important letter.

 

The joy the Remainers took in the apostrophe in the slogan Brexit means Brexit, whether it was an apostrophe in the means where apostrophe required or giggling over the MP who called Jane Austen our greatest living author, who's been dead for centuries, scores of years.

 

And there were other ones where they shouldn't be funny, but somehow it sort of is.

 

There was an example of like NASA lost a $125 million Mars orbiter because half the team were using Imperial measurements and the other half metric.

 

Rob Bell:

That is quite enjoyable, isn't it?

 

Jono Hey:

Because, you know, nobody is benefiting there.

 

Rob Bell:

Why is that enjoyable though?

 

It's the silliness.

 

It's the I have absolutely no interest in NASA screwing up.

 

It doesn't know.

 

You know, I'd much rather that they do succeed with what they're trying to do and advance our knowledge of space.

 

But for some reason, I do find that funny.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah, the oversimplification of an era that an organization who repute, you know, who we all believe to be so intelligent and that and that we wouldn't be good enough to join could make such a sort of common sense.

 

See, cool type of mistake, maybe.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, I think like Tiffany Watt Smith talks about, like you identify a feat when you get that smile.

 

There's something in there that gave you that satisfaction.

 

And I think quite often it's about feeling superior.

 

And maybe there is a little bit there like, God, they're idiots or something.

 

You're not an idiot, they're an idiot.

 

Rob Bell:

So this to me was almost another little branch off of that bad Schadenfreude that Tiffany Watt Smith was talking about.

 

So first of all, it was that villains come up and start thing that we talked about just a minute ago.

 

That's kind of revenge factor.

 

But then, yeah, that feeling of superiority over someone, that was a new concept for me as well for Schadenfreude.

 

I'd not thought about it like that before.

 

As I said, I only think about it in that, I had only thought about it in that pure slapstick way.

 

But yeah, I found that really interesting, that feeling of superiority over somebody because they have suffered some misfortune or a fail of some kind.

 

Yeah, I find it, I actually find it hard to understand that emotion.

 

Tom Pellereau:

It's definitely not as funny if you feel that you're laughing at someone because you feel that you're superior.

 

That's not.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, I'm not sure it's necessarily the laughing.

 

It's just that feeling of joy, isn't it?

 

It's that feeling of haha type thing.

 

Tom Pellereau:

That to me feels a bit shameful.

 

Well, yeah, but I feel I'm laughing at someone because of that.

 

I'm laughing because maybe it is sort of slapstick funny.

 

But unfortunately, what you're saying is potentially I'm actually laughing at them because that gives me a superiority boost sort of thing.

 

Rob Bell:

But by all accounts and a lot of psychology studies go on to show this and Tiffany Watt Smith as well talks about this in her article that, you know, there is a natural human reaction that you can have this.

 

This was what I found really interesting.

 

You can simultaneously experience the emotions of joy and sympathy at the same time.

 

Joy at that misfortune and sympathy for that person at the same time.

 

I thought that was really interesting.

 

You can simultaneously have these these two quite opposed emotions.

 

And if you do, you're not the only one who has that in the world.

 

You know, billions of people experience this all the time.

 

Jono Hey:

For me, I would only feel joy if somebody gets a promotion that's brilliant for them, unless for some reason, deep down, I was jealous of them or something, right?

 

Why are they getting this and not me or something like that?

 

And that's where I think the shame sort of potentially comes out.

 

Rob Bell:

But again, it's so important to remind you and the listeners, when we're talking about this, these are all natural emotions and reactions of being a human.

 

You know, a lot of people react this way.

 

Jono Hey:

I mean, I was trying to think of examples.

 

It's quite hard to think of examples that don't reveal something that I don't really like.

 

Rob Bell:

We're back to one of these.

 

We're back to one of these topics.

 

Tom Pellereau:

We've got a couple of these.

 

All I could really remember is examples of Rob doing this stuff.

 

All I could really remember was examples of other people.

 

Rob Bell:

Right.

 

Well, I will accept that, but I will accept it on the grounds that we all acknowledge that that is the good Chardon Foy.

 

Tom Pellereau:

OK, so I was obviously on a show where each every three days someone would get fired.

 

Rob Bell:

Tom, here we go.

 

Yes, of course.

 

What a great example.

 

Tom Pellereau:

So the apprentice was pretty ruthless in the fact that someone would go the whole time.

 

But if someone else had been fired, you had survived.

 

Rob Bell:

And I'm trying to remember how I fell mainly because didn't there were a couple of guys when there are a couple of guys on the who you develop quite good friendships with?

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yes.

 

But you always have to be very careful with that.

 

And the fact that, you know, it was very likely you were going to end up in the boardroom with them.

 

And I did find it a little bit naive of some people that they made really quite tight bonds early on to to the sort of detriment of other people, so to speak.

 

Because if you're really pally with this person, you're potentially going to irritate that other person because then these cliques build up.

 

And I didn't really get that.

 

So, like, ultimately, it's very likely you two are going to end up in the boardroom against each other.

 

So be careful.

 

But certainly, I think each firing, it was a case of being relieved that it wasn't me and being actually quite feeling sorrow for that other person.

 

Mainly, there was only one person who I was really quite glad when they got fired and it wasn't me.

 

Jono Hey:

That was your moment in the shelter.

 

Tom Pellereau:

That was, yeah.

 

But I don't remember laughing.

 

It wasn't really.

 

Jono Hey:

You know, Tom, you know.

 

Tom Pellereau:

The boardroom wasn't really an opportunity for laughter, but it was probably more relief.

 

Jono Hey:

But a bit of smirk on the inside.

 

Rob Bell:

Might as well have been laughing your head off, son.

 

Tom Pellereau:

In hindsight, I sort of wish I had been.

 

But then the thing is, if you'd laughed in that boardroom, you probably would have got fired immediately straight afterwards for not taking it seriously.

 

So that person would have had their thingy against, you know, their shovel-for-it-or against me.

 

Or karma, I think is probably the best word for it.

 

Rob Bell:

Well, Tom, you raise an interesting point there.

 

Are you guys aware of, Shard and Floyd and other people have experienced, due to your own misfortunes, failures, misgivings?

 

Tom Pellereau:

I'm sure for seven, how many weeks did I lose in The Apprentice?

 

It was a lot, wasn't it?

 

Probably a lot of people were laughing at me being bad again.

 

Jono Hey:

That was your secret, Tom.

 

Because you lost them all, nobody, everybody felt superior to you already.

 

And you snuck up through the end.

 

Tom Pellereau:

You took them by surprise.

 

Jono Hey:

I was thinking of this one time when, again, and this was once where it doesn't necessarily reveal, where it reveals in hindsight something, I'm like, I wasn't being the best person there.

 

Rob Bell:

There's no judgment in this podcast.

 

I think Shard and Freud is anonymous.

 

Yes, go on.

 

Jono Hey:

My name is Jonathan and I first felt Shard and Freud.

 

We had a housemate we were living with in the US, brilliant guy, we were great friends.

 

I remember we had bought these really nice wine glasses and we always washed them up.

 

And I think I remember he'd used one, he'd put one in the dishwasher and it had broken.

 

And I was a bit, I remember feeling, we always wash these out.

 

And I remember saying to him, I remember saying to him, with these glasses, it's better if you wash them up.

 

And he was like, oh, well, how would you normally do it?

 

And so I was just like this, get really hot water, swirl it around, boom.

 

And then I held the glass and I was like, and then I just give it a little shake, boom, and I shook it in the air and smashed it on the tap.

 

The second glass.

 

And it was a real, yeah, bring me back down to earth from my high pedestal.

 

Rob Bell:

Yes, Jono.

 

Jono Hey:

High pedestal of teaching him how to look after my glasses properly.

 

I'm a better person as of that moment.

 

Sorry.

 

Rob Bell:

Oh, that's excellent.

 

Jono Hey:

I apologise many years later.

 

Rob Bell:

That's merging into the bad Chardon-Fruiter, right?

 

I think.

 

Jono Hey:

Well, you know, I probably had a small sense of superiority that I knew how to do this better.

 

And it was me demonstrating it and it left with egg in my face.

 

Rob Bell:

But as I say, no judgement.

 

There's no judgement, good or bad.

 

They're just words that we're using to define these two areas of behaviours and activities.

 

Jono Hey:

I think it burst into laughter.

 

Rob Bell:

Of course you did.

 

Good.

 

Good.

 

True to form.

 

Tom Pellereau:

I think that's an example of where you have to be really careful sometimes that you're focusing on the wrong thing.

 

Like when you are normally cleaning a glass, you are focusing on the glass and being careful.

 

But in that moment where you were cleaning it and trying to explain to him, you're potentially focusing on, you know, potentially focusing on your own superiority or potentially focusing on him rather than the glass.

 

And so therefore a mistake is made.

 

And certainly I have to really be careful that I'm focusing on the right thing in all instances.

 

Otherwise I make dreadful mistakes regularly.

 

And if that makes any sense.

 

But so often when you're trying to show someone how to do something, you then really mess it up because you're not focusing on the thing, you're focusing on them or yourself.

 

Jono Hey:

It's like when you had to demonstrate to everybody how to shoot the shot from the edge of the area, Rob, isn't it?

 

Rob Bell:

That's exactly the one that only this second came to mind that we were enjoying when we were up in the Peak District the other week, yeah, football training years ago at university.

 

I'd been practising all summer how to absolutely drill the ball from outside the box and have a shot that would just keep low to the ground and go really fast and difficult for the goalkeeper to save.

 

And I'd really improved at it and I had a bit of skill and consistency behind it.

 

And the coach saw this at some point during the training session and so stopped everybody for me to demonstrate in front of everybody just how good this was.

 

And I felt superior.

 

I was like, yeah, I've bloody got this.

 

I've absolutely got this.

 

So he rolled the ball out from the left into just outside the box, roughly in the middle.

 

And I put my foot behind it and that ball sailed over the crossbar.

 

It sailed over the fence behind the football pitch.

 

It sailed over the fence that protects the athletics track.

 

And it landed in the middle of the field, in the middle of the athletics track.

 

Jono Hey:

What did you do?

 

Rob Bell:

Well, I just kept on running and went to run off into the darkness to go and collect my ball and came back about 20 minutes later.

 

Jono Hey:

So the Schadenfreude there was everybody else.

 

He was like on their knees with laughter.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Yeah, somebody who was feeling superior over everybody else in the team suddenly, oh wow, the table's turned.

 

Tom Pellereau:

You didn't want to be put in that position particularly.

 

Rob Bell:

No, but that's the beauty of it though.

 

It can come at any time.

 

Jono Hey:

I remember that.

 

I don't link to it from the sketch, but there's another sketch which I like, which is quite related actually.

 

You'll have heard of Murphy's Law.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yes.

 

Jono Hey:

So Murphy's Law is like, if it can go wrong, it will go wrong.

 

And Murphy's Law is like wallowing in, of course it went wrong.

 

It's just Murphy's Law.

 

Rob Bell:

The classic example being, if you drop a piece of bread that you've buttered on one side, it will land butter side down.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yes.

 

Jono Hey:

Right, yeah, of course it landed butter side down.

 

Rob Bell:

Of course it will.

 

Jono Hey:

But there's one called Muffery's Law.

 

Rob Bell:

Muffery's Law.

 

Jono Hey:

Which is a deliberate misspelling of Murphy's Law.

 

And Muffery's Law is, when criticizing spelling or grammar of someone else, you'll have made a mistake.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah, that's excellent.

 

It's just such a classic scenario where you take, it's like, it's exactly me with the wine glass, take pains to point out the proper way to do it and then absolutely smash it out.

 

Rob Bell:

And if that is, and if that is in some kind of social media, a tweet or something, then that Schadenfreude will be experienced on mass scale.

 

Jono Hey:

True, yeah.

 

So somebody tries to point out why somebody was an idiot in a tweet and they've got it completely wrong.

 

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

It's quite funny.

 

That feeling of superiority.

 

Yeah, it's great.

 

Why did, another aspect in the article, Jono, that I thought was really interesting is that how you might be able to use Schadenfreude when you experience it to better understand some of the relationships you have or better understand your own psychology.

 

So if you do acknowledge yourself feeling Schadenfreude, joy at others' misfortunes, then you could stop and try and understand why that might be.

 

And that might tell you something that you want to work on either with that relationship that you have with the person who's misfortune she's experienced or perhaps, I don't know, some of your own, I don't know, maybe insecurities perhaps.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, exactly.

 

And I remember that was what I think made me take it on as a concept, partly because for a long time I was like, people say this word and I'm not quite totally sure what it was.

 

And when I was reading about it, I just thought it was really fascinating that it wasn't just this silly thing of laughing at somebody like a You've Been Framed kind of video.

 

Oh, they, you know, tripped over.

 

But actually it can tell you about yourself.

 

And so I was thinking of like the driving one, which is something I probably would feel of like being able to go past this driver who was really aggressive to me.

 

And there I'm like, okay, well, maybe if I got like a sense of justice there, that this is the way you ought to operate in this world and when you're driving and how you should relate to other drivers on the road.

 

And that's what's making me feel that.

 

Or, yeah, or, you know, I was trying to think of other examples.

 

And I was like, this is the one, you know, finding things that you don't really like about yourself.

 

I was thinking, oh, if you had like somebody who was a massive health food fanatic, and then you walk past and you spotted them in McDonald's in the window, right?

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, right.

 

You might like an annoyingly fanatical, right?

 

Jono Hey:

Annoyingly fanatical.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, exactly.

 

Jono Hey:

Just always just super healthy.

 

Rob Bell:

I know what you mean.

 

Jono Hey:

And so, you know, if I would get that little twinge of pleasure at seeing them there, what is that?

 

Do I wish that I could really eat as well?

 

I wish I had their discipline to eat as well as they do.

 

And it's like satisfying to me that actually, no, they're just like me.

 

They're just as bad as me or something.

 

I don't know.

 

Yeah.

 

So, yeah, it is so fascinating, isn't it, to ask yourself that question.

 

Why am I feeling this?

 

Tom Pellereau:

And a similar one that you're alluding to, Rob, potentially, is, is it a case of if you have, if you're friends with the kind of people who will laugh at you when you do something painful to yourself, is that a sign that you are with the right people and these are really good friends?

 

Or is it a sign if you need to find new friends?

 

Or, you know, I'm just trying to work this out.

 

Jono Hey:

Yeah, maybe it's the good or the bad.

 

Rob Bell:

I am still friends with most of the people.

 

Jono Hey:

I love that.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Who aren't you?

 

Rob Bell:

Not all, actually.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Or is it just a case of be careful who you, you know, be friends with?

 

A lot of pain can be wright.

 

Rob Bell:

With friends like this.

 

Tom Pellereau:

I think personally, it's important to have friends who will laugh at your misfortune and people who are just a bit too nice to you after you've done something a bit silly.

 

It's potentially, it's not, it's not developed to that level of friendship yet.

 

Rob Bell:

I don't, I don't, and I, and I, this is why I'm a bit confused by it as well, because I don't, I don't know if it's Schadenfreude that's happening to me when I have had those laughing fits, because it's uncontrollable.

 

And I know it's hard, that's why I've taken myself away, because this guy's in pain and I had to take myself away from the scene, because I'm still just giggling and laughing and I look up and it's not funny.

 

This is why I think there's something, I think there's some kind of like wiring, maybe not quite sorted on that thing around those emotions.

 

That's, that's why I think might be going on there.

 

Jono Hey:

It is important that people turn out okay.

 

I was thinking of a mutual friend who woke up in the morning after having put his face through the wall, not realizing it, which in retrospect was quite funny, but he was all right.

 

And if he wasn't all right, it wouldn't have been funny, right?

 

It's like, you know, somebody actually has something really serious happen to them.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Right, Rob?

 

Rob Bell:

It's not funny anymore.

 

So should we feel bad about feeling Schadenfreude?

 

I think sometimes you naturally will feel a bit guilty or ashamed of it, but I don't think you should give yourself a hard time about it because it is natural human emotions and reacting.

 

Tom Pellereau:

You're potentially going to ask, is this good Schadenfreude or bad Schadenfreude kind of thing?

 

Is this sort of, this is funny and slapstick?

 

I'm going to make sure the person's all right, but it was quite amusing and don't necessarily let them see that I'm laughing at them.

 

Or is this like actually slightly evil Schadenfreude?

 

And maybe if it is, then maybe you have to have a bit of a word with yourself.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Or just try and, as we were saying, just try and acknowledge and analyze where that's coming from.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Tom Pellereau:

And there's probably something you need to sort of work out within yourself.

 

Rob Bell:

Probably.

 

Possibly.

 

Possibly.

 

I love these ones.

 

When we're talking about these that are a bit contagious and might put ourselves in bad lights, we always take quite a bit of time constructing our sentences so that we don't handcuff ourselves.

 

Send ourselves down.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Or sort ourselves out that next week I do something ridiculously stupid.

 

Like, I'm not going to go wash a glass now.

 

That's for sure.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah.

 

Tom Pellereau:

Jono, if you could send us a video on how to wash a glass, that would be great.

 

Rob Bell:

Any other business on Schadenfreude you wanted to bring up, boys?

 

Jono Hey:

I think there's my general practice I learned from like Muffrey's Law is be humble.

 

It's so easy to start to think you know what's going on, but most people don't and half of what you've done is probably luck and it'll probably happen to you next time.

 

So be humble would be kind.

 

That's my lesson from all of this.

 

Rob Bell:

What a lovely way to round off.

 

I think probably the most one of the most well known characters for Schadenfreude is Basil Fawlty in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers from the 70s.

 

Loads of stuff, loads of bad stuff happens to Basil.

 

And that is the very nature of the comedy that we all enjoy so much.

 

And it's probably because he's not that nice a character anyway, that we don't feel so much sympathy that we can laugh at him quite as much.

 

But he is probably the icon of Schadenfreude in what I could think of.

 

Okay, well, having just admitted to some of our own emotional shortcomings, we'd love to hear your experiences and your interpretations of Schadenfreude, if you dare send them to us.

 

Jono Hey:

We are nice people, really.

 

Rob Bell:

We are, we are, really.

 

Jono Hey:

I don't wish anybody any ill will.

 

Rob Bell:

Of course not.

 

Jono Hey:

But from that driver who cut me out.

 

Rob Bell:

Yeah, we'd love to hear your experience of Schadenfreude, either when you've felt it or even been a victim of somebody else's Schadenfreude.

 

You can send your stories into us via email.

 

Tommy, the address is hello at sketchplanations.com.

 

If you hang around for a wee bit longer, we will be going through last week's post bag in just a minute.

 

But for now, thank you all very much for listening.

 

I'm going to edit out all the bits that were too bad in this podcast that we've said about ourselves.

 

But until next time, go well and stay well.

 

Goodbye.

 

Goodbye.

 

Hello, I'm back.

 

That was quick.

 

It's just me this week because it's half term, isn't it?

 

And the boys are away with their young families and quite right to having a lovely old time.

 

So let me have a rummage around in our post bag.

 

As a quick reminder, our episode last week was on the law of diminishing returns.

 

I really enjoyed talking about that.

 

I've listened back.

 

It's funny.

 

I listened back to the episodes sometimes, particularly if it's one that I really remember editing or I really remember recording because I enjoyed it so much.

 

And the law of diminishing returns.

 

I mean, obviously all of them are excellent, but the law of diminishing returns is really great.

 

I really enjoyed discovering all the different facets that we went through where this applies.

 

Anyway, so Victoria Schmader from Italy has messaged us via LinkedIn.

 

Hello, Victoria.

 

And she says a very interesting and thought provoking episode.

 

Thank you very much.

 

And she particularly agrees with our point about cramming in training or overtraining perhaps before a race.

 

I'd love to know what race that was, Victoria, because I'm imagining that you have an experience from your past in mind here.

 

What kind of race was it, Victoria?

 

And how did you get on?

 

What happened?

 

Let us know.

 

I feel like this needs more more exploration.

 

So, yeah, let us know.

 

Thanks for listening.

 

Via Instagram, we had a comment left from at Bobcha9, saying that he definitely agrees with the relevance of the law of diminishing returns in relation to boozing.

 

We were talking last week about how past a certain point of alcohol intake, the, how would you say, like the increasing, the increasing enjoyment, the increasing fun all starts to tail off.

 

And possibly if the increase your consumption just continues, then I mean, just it goes to hell in a handcart.

 

And Bobcha9 goes on to say that this is especially true now that he's in his 40s.

 

Here, Bobcha9, here, here, I feel your pain.

 

Thanks for your message.

 

Chris has messaged us to say that he thought our episode on diminishing the turns was one of our best yet.

 

Brilliant.

 

Thanks, Chris.

 

Specifically, he found the conversation around the 80% of problems picked up in five user acceptance testing.

 

Five user acceptance, easy for me to say, five user acceptance tests.

 

Very helpful.

 

I remember we talked about that right at the beginning of the podcast.

 

A point from Jono, who obviously works very much in this field.

 

And it sounds like Chris probably does as well.

 

Chris goes on to mention the Ed Emberley simple drawing technique.

 

I think this must have been from a previous episode, an earlier episode.

 

I may be wrong.

 

It might have been in last week's.

 

So Ed Emberley is an illustrator and artist, and he's got various books out that show you a very simple technique to draw.

 

A whole host of different things.

 

And it must have been in reference to Jono's sketchplanation on how to draw a unicorn using Ed Emberley's simple technique.

 

And Chris says he's going to enjoy trying some of those with his young kids.

 

And from the message, he also implies that he'll get something from that as well.

 

I think I would anyway.

 

Check it out.

 

Go and look up Ed Emberley and you'll see what I mean.

 

And finally, we have a message on Twitter from at Motion Gurley.

 

They've put in a request for a sketch, which I know Jono's seen and I know he's acknowledged that.

 

And I think it's actually on his list of sketches to do at some point in the future.

 

And this suggestion would have been perfect to include in our words compilation episode that we did in series one.

 

Because at Motion Gurley has pointed out the wrong use of I instead of me in somebody's sentence construction in a post that one of us put out last week.

 

Now, I know the difference of when you should use I and when you should use me.

 

I know Jono does as well.

 

Tommy probably knows it as well.

 

But I find that I just revert to what I was taught as a school kid.

 

It's just been ingrained into the old brain box there.

 

That it should be and I at the end when you reference yourself in a list of people.

 

But I know that isn't always the case.

 

I know that when I stop and think about it grammatically.

 

And if I do remember to think about it when I'm writing or when I'm talking, then I will get it right.

 

But through a conscious kind of thought process rather than well, what this is, this is a weakness in my grammar for that kind of unconscious speech or unconscious writing when you're just getting stuff down.

 

I forget to think about it.

 

But you're right.

 

Thank you very much at Motion Girly.

 

One of us got that wrong, but more than one of us has definitely got that wrong in the past as well.

 

So I look forward to what hopefully we all look forward to Jono putting out a sketch on that at some point.

 

And finally, before I leave you a quick reminder about Big Ideas, Little Pictures, the book of Sketchplanations which is out on preorder now.

 

And the best way to find out about that and indeed to put in for a preorder is to go to sketchplanations.com forward slash book.

 

Okay, that's it.

 

Thank you all so much for listening.

 

Thank you for sending in your messages.

 

We absolutely love receiving them all.

 

And we'll be back with more next week.

 

All music on this podcast series is sourced from the very talented Franc Cinelli.

 

And you can find loads more tracks at franccinelli.com.