Recently, there were reports of a man who bought a new Ferrari, then destroyed it in an accident just one hour later. I know I once wrote an article about how hard it is to write-off expensive, limited-edition sports cars, but I think this guy may have done it. I'm also amused by the description of the accident, "The vehicle left the road." To my knowledge, Ferraris do not have any sort of self-driving technology, so the car didn't leave the road without some guidance. "It suddenly burst into flames." I'm sure it happened "suddenly" in the sense that it wasn't on fire one moment, then the next moment it was. But "suddenly" implies a lack of obvious cause. In this case, it likely had something to do with a low-sitting car being driven through a farmer's field at high speed. So that would be like saying, I drove head-on into a brick wall, and suddenly the car was shorter than it used to be.
Fortunately, his injuries were limited to cuts and bruises. Well, that might not be so fortunate; his injuries are in the laugh-without-guilt range. It might have been worth it to him to break a wrist or something if it deterred people like me from writing about it.
But he didn't, so here we are, wondering what causes a person to destroy a car in the first hour of ownership. I figure there are two types of people in the world: given something expensive and powerful, there are the people who want to see its limits right away, and those who ease their way into it. I'm definitely in that second group. I'm not saying we would never drive the car fast, but we would want to work our way up to it over the course of a month or twenty.
That may seem like a waste: driving a fast, powerful car so conservatively. But I think there are other ways to get joy out of a high-end sports car. See, the other day, I was passed on the highway by a minivan going about 140, in the far right lane. Of course, I was hoping that he'd think about the oddness that the guy with the slowest car was going the fastest. But I'm sure that was too subtle. It occurred to me that this would be a good time to be driving an obviously fast car: someone speeds by you in an SUV. Then you honk, and flash him an incredulous look while gesturing at you car, with the unspoken message, "Really? You, a schmuck in a Hyundai Santa Fe feel the need to go faster than a showoff in a Ferrari? "
Showing posts with label Schadenfreude. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Schadenfreude. Show all posts
Saturday, July 29, 2017
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
London Mauling
A few days ago the people of London, Ontario got rather upset over an article published on line. Wait, "upset" doesn't seem like the right word. What do you call that feeling when, after years of anonymity, someone says something mildly bad about you, and you're not sure if you are glad about the recognition, or angry at the insult? There probably isn't a word for it, since it's only experienced by introverts and Canadians.
Anyway, the mildly bad thing was an article titled, "10 Problems Only People From London Ontario Will Understand" at the website WhatCulture (a Buzzfeed wannabe.) Of course, as a resident of nearby, similarly-sized Kitchener-Waterloo, I wanted headed straight for the list as soon as I heard about it.
The main thing that strikes me upon reading it is that it’s not exactly a hard-hitting list. You’d think a genuinely critical shot at London would include its notorious east-west class divide. (We in Kitchener-Waterloo at least have the decency to maintain our archaic two-city setup to make our class divides less obvious.) Most of the items in this list apply to all of Southern Ontario, if not all of Canada. Really, cross-border shopping is inconvenient? How about "your newspaper makes Fox News sound neutral"?
The only one that applies specifically to London is the shot at its unoriginal name. I totally agree, but I realize that naming your city after a more famous place is one of those things that makes sense to Canadians, but that I’ll never understand. It’s right up there with the monarchy, Don Cherry, and Hedley. You might think that the London name is just a matter of tradition, but here in Kitchener - where we dodged the same bullet by dumping the name “Berlin” during WWI - there’s still a significant part of the population that wants to go back to the Berlin name, despite London’s teachable example.
I was going to write a list of legitimate bad things about London, but I don't have enough venom. One of the entries was going to be that you couldn’t make a list of top ten tourist attractions without padding it out by including White Oaks Mall. But then I realized that to pad my list out to ten entries, I would have to add something about how hard it is to find your way around White Oaks Mall.
But I do have to take issue with the part about the embarrassment of former mayor Joe Fontana. For one thing, it was hard for anyone in Canada outside of Toronto to be embarrassed of their mayor over that time period. But my problem is that the article makes it sound like he was a good mayor who made one perplexing mistake. It even says "he was able to get some things done". Actually, if his term is known for anything other than scandal, it will be for U.S. Congress-style division and paralysis in city council.
Anyway, the mildly bad thing was an article titled, "10 Problems Only People From London Ontario Will Understand" at the website WhatCulture (a Buzzfeed wannabe.) Of course, as a resident of nearby, similarly-sized Kitchener-Waterloo, I wanted headed straight for the list as soon as I heard about it.
The main thing that strikes me upon reading it is that it’s not exactly a hard-hitting list. You’d think a genuinely critical shot at London would include its notorious east-west class divide. (We in Kitchener-Waterloo at least have the decency to maintain our archaic two-city setup to make our class divides less obvious.) Most of the items in this list apply to all of Southern Ontario, if not all of Canada. Really, cross-border shopping is inconvenient? How about "your newspaper makes Fox News sound neutral"?
The only one that applies specifically to London is the shot at its unoriginal name. I totally agree, but I realize that naming your city after a more famous place is one of those things that makes sense to Canadians, but that I’ll never understand. It’s right up there with the monarchy, Don Cherry, and Hedley. You might think that the London name is just a matter of tradition, but here in Kitchener - where we dodged the same bullet by dumping the name “Berlin” during WWI - there’s still a significant part of the population that wants to go back to the Berlin name, despite London’s teachable example.
I was going to write a list of legitimate bad things about London, but I don't have enough venom. One of the entries was going to be that you couldn’t make a list of top ten tourist attractions without padding it out by including White Oaks Mall. But then I realized that to pad my list out to ten entries, I would have to add something about how hard it is to find your way around White Oaks Mall.
But I do have to take issue with the part about the embarrassment of former mayor Joe Fontana. For one thing, it was hard for anyone in Canada outside of Toronto to be embarrassed of their mayor over that time period. But my problem is that the article makes it sound like he was a good mayor who made one perplexing mistake. It even says "he was able to get some things done". Actually, if his term is known for anything other than scandal, it will be for U.S. Congress-style division and paralysis in city council.
Friday, November 28, 2014
Seen One, Seen A Mall
Today was Black Friday. No, I didn't buy anything. It wasn't a matter of principle, I just didn't need anything, and the advertised prices at Canadian Black Friday sales just didn't seem trample-worthy to me. Apparently the concept is spreading to other countries too. The British started getting into fights over limited quantities in stores today too. That didn't seem to happen here: I saw a sensationalist news items about consumers camped-out in line waiting for stores to open, but it ended with them all walking calmly into the store without incident. It was the most Canadian thing I've seen in a long time.
As you can see, I did take note of the news today in a fiendish desire to see the annual customer stampede stories. But ultimately they were disappointing. Sure, we got to see people yelling at each other, fighting for flashy cardboard rectangles. But it didn't satisfy even my guilty pleasure of marvelling at crazy behaviour. It's just the same thing over and over, in each city, year after year. I'm sure that in previous years, I learned that lesson about how disappointing it is. But I forgot over the intervening year. Ironically, that's probably why the shoppers keep fighting for bargains every year.
As you can see, I did take note of the news today in a fiendish desire to see the annual customer stampede stories. But ultimately they were disappointing. Sure, we got to see people yelling at each other, fighting for flashy cardboard rectangles. But it didn't satisfy even my guilty pleasure of marvelling at crazy behaviour. It's just the same thing over and over, in each city, year after year. I'm sure that in previous years, I learned that lesson about how disappointing it is. But I forgot over the intervening year. Ironically, that's probably why the shoppers keep fighting for bargains every year.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Neutral Observer
Earlier this year, a U.S. court struck down laws defending net neutrality. If you're not familiar with it, net neutrality is the concept that all the information growing around should be treated equally. Nothing should be given preferential treatment and allowed to go faster.
The nightmare scenario of an Internet without net neutrality is one in which owners of Internet infrastructure (mainly the big telecommunications companies) close their networks to any businesses who don't pay big bucks. Big companies can do business over the internet, but anyone else is out of luck.
What I find frustrating about the net neutrality issue is how it exposes the weakness in your average geek's political philosophy. As I touched on when discussing Bill Gates, many techies are politically naive and thus fall prey to simplistic view points. And the most likely is extreme libertarianism or objectivism.
Because of that, your typical geek's answer to pretty much any problem is, “less rules.” Of course, there's plenty to be said for small government and less regulation, but any reasonable person recognizes that government and legislation occasionally has its place. And if net neutrality is important to you, that's going to have to be one of those places.
But the tech world has been slow to admit this. You still find geeks who are very passionate about the need for net neutrality, but then advocate against laws backing up the principles. So - much as I’m worried for the end of net neutrality - I do feel a bit of schadenfreude when I watch uncompromising libertarian geeks forced to lie in the bed they’ve made.
Increasingly, we're seeing the internet and the tech world pitted against politicians. So far, politics has been kicking technology's ass. Beloved tech principles that the Internet is a world-wide, uncensored, private medium are falling, and technology proponents seem powerless to stop it. I wish I could go back in time to the mid-nineties and rub this in the face of geeks in Wired bragging about how the Internet was making government irrelevant. They should have learned to play the political game then; they're going to have to take a crash course now.
The nightmare scenario of an Internet without net neutrality is one in which owners of Internet infrastructure (mainly the big telecommunications companies) close their networks to any businesses who don't pay big bucks. Big companies can do business over the internet, but anyone else is out of luck.
What I find frustrating about the net neutrality issue is how it exposes the weakness in your average geek's political philosophy. As I touched on when discussing Bill Gates, many techies are politically naive and thus fall prey to simplistic view points. And the most likely is extreme libertarianism or objectivism.
Because of that, your typical geek's answer to pretty much any problem is, “less rules.” Of course, there's plenty to be said for small government and less regulation, but any reasonable person recognizes that government and legislation occasionally has its place. And if net neutrality is important to you, that's going to have to be one of those places.
But the tech world has been slow to admit this. You still find geeks who are very passionate about the need for net neutrality, but then advocate against laws backing up the principles. So - much as I’m worried for the end of net neutrality - I do feel a bit of schadenfreude when I watch uncompromising libertarian geeks forced to lie in the bed they’ve made.
Increasingly, we're seeing the internet and the tech world pitted against politicians. So far, politics has been kicking technology's ass. Beloved tech principles that the Internet is a world-wide, uncensored, private medium are falling, and technology proponents seem powerless to stop it. I wish I could go back in time to the mid-nineties and rub this in the face of geeks in Wired bragging about how the Internet was making government irrelevant. They should have learned to play the political game then; they're going to have to take a crash course now.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
A Note Before I Enter My Green, Drunk-Proof Bunker
A couple of years ago, St. Patrick's day parties in London, Ontario got out of control and resulted in a riot big enough to make the BBC World news crawl. As a resident of rival Kitchener-Waterloo, I have to admit to a sense of schadenfreude. But like the schadenforde from watching Toronto struggle with Rob Ford, an honest person has to admit that it could happen anywhere. London students are no more unruly than anyone else's, and here in a city with two universities and a college, it could just as soon happen in KW.
And sure enough, it is. It turns out that St. Patrick's day parties near KW's universities have been growing, to the point that police are taking notice. It's much like the end-of-school-year parties that used to trouble the same neighborhoods. So now they're trying to reduce the St. Patrick's parties using the same strategy: by setting up a more organized rival party to encourage less anarchic revelry.
But as with the Ford situation, there is also some genuine schadenfreude, and that comes from watching a problem blow up in society's face, after we collectively looked the other way for so long. We know that underage drinking is epidemic, and teens get trained early on that recreation means drinking, and drinking means drinking 'til you pass out. Then we send them away from supervision for the first time, and it's to a place where there's lots of stress and little time for relaxation, and where alcohol consumption is a big joke.
It's obviously a recipe for disaster. Rather than be surprised at the London riot, we should be surprised it doesn't happen more often. But instead we look the other way and pretend it's not a problem, or at least not a problem that affects us.
And sure enough, it is. It turns out that St. Patrick's day parties near KW's universities have been growing, to the point that police are taking notice. It's much like the end-of-school-year parties that used to trouble the same neighborhoods. So now they're trying to reduce the St. Patrick's parties using the same strategy: by setting up a more organized rival party to encourage less anarchic revelry.
But as with the Ford situation, there is also some genuine schadenfreude, and that comes from watching a problem blow up in society's face, after we collectively looked the other way for so long. We know that underage drinking is epidemic, and teens get trained early on that recreation means drinking, and drinking means drinking 'til you pass out. Then we send them away from supervision for the first time, and it's to a place where there's lots of stress and little time for relaxation, and where alcohol consumption is a big joke.
It's obviously a recipe for disaster. Rather than be surprised at the London riot, we should be surprised it doesn't happen more often. But instead we look the other way and pretend it's not a problem, or at least not a problem that affects us.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
This Could Be Anywhere In The World
The German word schadenfreude means taking joy in another's misfortune. Usually when anyone mentions it, they have to make a joke about how only the Germans would need such a word. I like to point out that the English language apparently needs such a word too, which is apparent since we adopted the German word. And at least the Germans didn't try to avoid responsibility by co-opting someone else's word.
Anyway, there's now a word defined in Urban Dictionary, schadenforde. It's deriving pleasure from the misfortune of Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Of course, there's been plenty of opportunity to do exactly that in recent months.
But I find myself having a sort of second-order schadenforde, in which I take pleasure in watching others experience misfortune as they realize they have a racist, lying, multi-addicted, irresponsible bully as mayor, and a lot of the city wants it that way. No, this isn't an I-hate-Toronto situation: as I said a few months back, I've made some amount of peace with the city. Besides, part of my guilty pleasure comes from the fact that really, Rob Ford could have happened anywhere.
All it takes is a large number of people who don't normally follow politics and have an unfocused anger. That describes a lot of cities. We've known for a while that there are a lot of voters who don't really follow the news, feel highly persecuted in spite of living a comfortable life, and feel very little connection with other people in their community. It's a big problem, but we've always looked the other way. Finally we have a more accurate picture of our society and the people in it.
Anyway, there's now a word defined in Urban Dictionary, schadenforde. It's deriving pleasure from the misfortune of Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Of course, there's been plenty of opportunity to do exactly that in recent months.
But I find myself having a sort of second-order schadenforde, in which I take pleasure in watching others experience misfortune as they realize they have a racist, lying, multi-addicted, irresponsible bully as mayor, and a lot of the city wants it that way. No, this isn't an I-hate-Toronto situation: as I said a few months back, I've made some amount of peace with the city. Besides, part of my guilty pleasure comes from the fact that really, Rob Ford could have happened anywhere.
All it takes is a large number of people who don't normally follow politics and have an unfocused anger. That describes a lot of cities. We've known for a while that there are a lot of voters who don't really follow the news, feel highly persecuted in spite of living a comfortable life, and feel very little connection with other people in their community. It's a big problem, but we've always looked the other way. Finally we have a more accurate picture of our society and the people in it.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Stopping the Streaking
The Miami Heat's 27-game winning streak is over. Or - as the media likes to call them these days - LeBron James and the Miami Heat. That seems odd for a team that is known for being packed with several stars; I don't remember it being "Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls." I wonder if Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh knew they were just signing up to be in James's backing band.
If this game is remembered, people in the future will look back on the footage of it and ask, why do they have "El Heat" and "Los Bulls" on their shirts? Yes, the most notable game of the season just happened to be on the NBA's ultra-tokeny salute to Latino culture by putting Spanish pronouns in front of the otherwise untranslated team names. Does this really impress Hispanics? To put it in perspective, this would be like soccer's Atlético Madrid spending a day referring to themselves as "The Atlético Madrid"
But as I said, the game - and the streak - will likely only be a footnote in basketball history, and thus illustrates the dilemma LeBron James has put himself in. Yes, going to the star-studded Heat has given him the championship that has cooled the criticism of his lack of team accomplishment. But in the process, he's also raised the bar tremendously high. A long winning streak is impressive, but given the talent on this team, it's only the least of our expectations. By uniting a generation of star players on one team, they've invited comparisons not with other teams in the league, but with the greatest teams ever. Rather than remember a great winning streak that would contribute to James's legend, it will be remembered negatively, for coming up short of the all-time record.
If this game is remembered, people in the future will look back on the footage of it and ask, why do they have "El Heat" and "Los Bulls" on their shirts? Yes, the most notable game of the season just happened to be on the NBA's ultra-tokeny salute to Latino culture by putting Spanish pronouns in front of the otherwise untranslated team names. Does this really impress Hispanics? To put it in perspective, this would be like soccer's Atlético Madrid spending a day referring to themselves as "The Atlético Madrid"
But as I said, the game - and the streak - will likely only be a footnote in basketball history, and thus illustrates the dilemma LeBron James has put himself in. Yes, going to the star-studded Heat has given him the championship that has cooled the criticism of his lack of team accomplishment. But in the process, he's also raised the bar tremendously high. A long winning streak is impressive, but given the talent on this team, it's only the least of our expectations. By uniting a generation of star players on one team, they've invited comparisons not with other teams in the league, but with the greatest teams ever. Rather than remember a great winning streak that would contribute to James's legend, it will be remembered negatively, for coming up short of the all-time record.
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