Starbucks Schadenfreude

A recent New York Times article "The Schadenfreude of café lovers" got me thinking of the concept of Schadenfreude. While I do enjoy the occasional Starbucks coffee, the whole pretentious act of giving stupid names to cup sizes (it’s a large, not a venti, people!) and calling the young teenagers behind the counter baristas as if to imply they had to undergo rigorous three-year training to serve me my morning coffee, just irks me. I'll take a Timmy's Half and Half any day of the week, thank you.

The whole experience got me thinking about the German word defined as “taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune”. The combination of Schaden “harm” and Freude “joy” is a word so wonderfully used that, if it didn’t exist, we would probably have to invent it. While there doesn’t seem to be an equivalent in the English language, similar expressions exist in other countries.

Som Nam Na, which sounds so sweet and cheerful (almost edible) actually means “You got what you deserved” or “I’m laughing at your bad luck” in Thai. Lest some of you think that the spirit of Schadenfreude is foreign to you and you can’t possibly comprehend being that mean-spirited as to enjoy someone else’s bad luck, think again. Schadenfreude is a basic human emotion and whether you like to deny it or not, it exists.

In fact, an entire tabloid and entertainment industry has been built on Schadenfreude. The common folk enjoy sitting down to a cup of coffee and a daily reminder that beautiful and buff celebrities also suffer life’s disappointments. They gloat at the fact that fabulous looks, fame and fortune will not protect them from heartbreak, divorce and a bad hair day. It gives us mere mortals a chance to snicker. As Gore Vidal noted: “It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”

And, in case you make the argument that Schadenfreude is a base and crass emotion, suitable only to those who have very little going for themselves, think again. There have been a number of studies of Schadenfreude in the scientific community; when competing scientists admit to glee when another’s theory has been discredited in public.

That’s right! Mensa card-carrying intellectuals, the people we hope will --one day-- find the cure for cancer and AIDS are no better than us average IQ boys and girls, who laugh when NY Governor Eliot Spitzer, famous for cracking down on prostitution, is forced to resign over his relationship with a call girl or when supremely arrogant Lord Conrad Black is sentenced to 6.5 years in prison for –of all things—mail fraud.

Like the saying goes:“The higher you are; the harder you fall.” That, my friend, is Schadenfreude. Enjoy and have another round of Som Nam Na on me!