Why is it that as a nation we really enjoy seeing people embarrassing themselves on national television? The auditions for 'Britain's Got Talent' are on ITV1 at the moment, and most of the show is of bad auditions where people get booed or do something totally outrageous. This is obviously because it makes good television and the viewer finds it more entertaining. It's the same with 'Big Brother', the house mates which are weird in some way are always the ones which stay in until at least the middle of the show. Then of course there's 'I'm a Celebrity. Get Me out of Here!' where the viewers relish at the sight of a celebrity doing a horrible tucker trial. I think this is an odd thing that we as the public do, but it isn't something we would openly admit to in everyday life. We discourage our children from laughing at others and yet we happily watch people being made a fool of. You could argue that they choose to put themselves in that situation, which is true, but who chose to air them on T.V and for what reason?
"The reason we enjoy watching people trip, fall down and hurt themselves, otherwise known as schadenfreude, because it results in positive self-evaluation. Simply put, when others are made to look like fools, we subconsciously feel better about ourselves!"
I think this belongs in my Being Bad blog because it is something that we all do but it's not something that we may be overly proud of or would admit that we enjoy other people's misfortune. Laughing at people when they aren't meaning to be funny could be seen as a form of bullying which is definitely bad.
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