Why Do We Secretly Enjoy Watching People Fail?

In this episode of To All The Girls Out There, we’re talking about something uncomfortable but important: why we’ve become so comfortable with hating, judging, and watching other people fail.

From social media comment sections to celebrity downfall culture, we explore why someone else’s success can sometimes make us feel uncomfortable and why another person’s failure can bring a strange sense of relief.

We discuss schadenfreude, the psychology behind taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune, and unpack what’s really going on beneath comparison, jealousy, resentment, and insecurity.

This episode dives into:

✨ Why social media has normalised hate culture
✨ The psychology of schadenfreude and comparison
✨ Why other people’s success can feel triggering
✨ How resentment and unresolved hurt can fuel negative reactions
✨ What your triggers reveal about your desires and insecurities
✨ How to shift from being a critic to becoming a supporter

📚 Mentioned in this episode:

Schadenfreude  (taking pleasure in the pain of another)

Website👩🏽‍💻: toallthegirlsoutthere.com

Instagram📷: @toallthe_girlss

Transcript

To All The Girls (00:00)

Hey beautiful, welcome back to another episode of To All the Girls Out There. I am one of many Fatimas, and as always, it is an absolute blessing to have you girlies here with me. Today I'm going to be talking about haters, being a hater, and how we've normalised that. How we've become a generation who have

thrived off of watching people fail and a lot of us get our confidence from that a lot of us feel a lot better by watching people fail and just by hating on people and being such a negative person like whenever we go online and we see a lot of things online now

Sometimes you don't see the love like that. It's always people so fast to hate, judge, assume the worst, you know, quickly go to your comment section to send like negative comments. It's ridiculous. And

I just wanted to uncover that topic and understand why we do it and where it comes from. The thing is is I don't a I don't think a lot of people actually notice that they're being a hater. Like no one's actually gonna sit there and think, Hey, I am a hater, like I go out of my way to sit there and hate on people but it can sometimes be a unconscious thing where you don't realise that

your reactions to other people's success might not actually be the best and you actually result to something negative before you think positively. Again, you don't actually think that you're doing anything bad. Cause sometimes it's not even about dropping a negative comment comment. Sometimes it is about where your mind is at, where your head is at when you see something. And yeah, it's not something that

people notice and it's not some it's a hard thing to admit to yourself as well. You're not gonna sit here and be like, Yeah, I am a hater when in fact you actually are. but yeah that's why we're here to have this topic now because I can help call it out and help us you to notice because I'm not perfect. We all find ourselves in these situations

And this concept of w wanting people to fail and like being happy for someone to fail, there's actually a psychol like a psychology term behind it.

and it's called Schadenfreude. So I think I'm pronouncing it right. But anyway, yeah, so it's called Schadenfreude and

Basically, if you was to dissect the word, it's derived from a German German and it literally means

harm or pain and joy. So it just means harm, joy or pain, joy

And yeah, so what it means is is taking pleasure in someone else's pain or misfortune. So you feel a lot better about yourself or you feel good when you see someone else doing bad or someone else failing or someone else being upset or sad or something that doesn't go someone else's way makes you feel a lot better about yourself. And it's not necessarily you going out of your way to make someone suffer.

So it's not you trying to hurt someone, it's not you trying to do something to make someone else suffer. But it is that in the event of someone else's suffering, you feel good, you feel better about yourself. So an example of that might be you see someone else fail a test and it makes you feel better about yourself because they failed a test. Or someone a friend or someone else they came out of their relationship and it makes you feel better.

at the fact that they've gone through a breakup now. Or you just genuinely find that sense of release basically when of happiness or yeah comfort when something else goes wrong in someone else's life. But it's a problem because you shouldn't need someone else to be struggling for you to feel okay. And there's a like a plethora of reasons why we do this.

one of them being comparison. Like, sometimes you see someone and they have a lot of the things you want. So seeing them fail makes you feel a lot better about yourself. For example, someone that's really had really good grades, really pretty, everyone just loves being around them, you know? And then all of a sudden, I don't know, they might do bad have a bad grade or there's someone that doesn't like them.

It makes you feel better because it's like, wow, everyone loves this person and you want that. You want to be loved. You wanna be an it girl and at the fact that there's someone else who dislikes her, it makes you feel better about yourself like you know well, at least there's someone that dislikes her type of thing. And these things happen s without us actually realising that it happens.

So it just becomes a way of you kind of like trying to make yourself feel better about yourself but you make it about the other person. It's a form of projection. And yeah, another way is like insecurities, things that you might be insecure about.

you don't like something about yourself, or there's something that you want that you know you don't have, and someone else so when you see something in someone else, you start to project, you start to hate. So for example

you might have done really bad in a test or re done really bad in an exam and your friend then has also done bad in the exam. Now you feel a lot better about yourself because your friend also did bad in the exam. So it's like, well, I'm not the only one, you know? It's a way to protect your ego. It's a way to make you feel a lot better about yourself.

You know, when you're not doing so well in something, to see that someone else is not doing so well in the same thing, it just gives you a lot more comfort and you hide from the fact that you're unhappy with what you've done. Rather than trying to see, okay, what can I do better next time or I'm actually not feeling too great about this, you find comfort in the fact that someone else has gone through that hardship too, you know?

So again, one can be comparison and hate at the fact that someone has something that you want and the other thing is just making yourself feel a lot better. But they're ultimately both the same thing. Another reason can be hurt and resentment. Sometimes someone has hurt us and someone has made us feel really bad or caused like emotional pain or suffering to us. And so we want to see them

have pain and suffering too. It happens. It happens a lot of the time. You see, it happens with a lot of people. It's like you wanna get your get back. You want something bad to happen to them. and then when it does, like it makes you just feel a lot better about yourself because it's like like shame, you got what you deserved or now you know how it feels type thing. And I've been there, like even recently I had there was a negative encounter that I had with someone and like

For me, I'm someone who I really just like to let go and move on. But this person I didn't realise that I hadn't let go and moved on. And so at one point like

I would notice that when someone says something I would low key like not that I was being extremely mean but I would low key like not have the best reaction towards them and I realised why is this person so relevant? Like they shouldn't be that relevant. Like who are you that you have enough time on my mind to hate? You're so irrelevant. And that's when I had to actually sit down and realise, okay, I need to let go, like

I need to understand I don't want to be a hater, that's not the person that I wanna be. And I want to have my energy to be able to use on other things. I want to have mental space in my head to use on other things that matter to me, not on this person. And so again, it wasn't like I was thinking about this person all the time, but it's just that I noticed once they were brought up, I was just like,

And yeah, it came from the fact that this person had inflicted pain or suffering or whatever you want to call it on me at a point that made me resent them. And I held on to that resentment, not knowing that I held on because I thought I didn't care. I don't really like to hold grudges. I don't like to make anyone that relevant. But in this case I did it without even knowing. And now I'm just like, whatever, I don't even care anymore. But before I would hate and I'll

And I hate being a hater. But yeah, it happens. It does happen. a lot. A lot of us do hold grudges and I think this one can be very common as well. When you see someone and they've done something to you and you just want bad to happen to them.

So it does make sense. But feeling these things, I wouldn't say it's necessarily the biggest issue. As human we have these points, we have these moments and we're gonna have these feelings. It's a problem when you entertain it, when you really allow that feeling to grow on you, to become your whole persona and to do it to the point where now you are actually a hater and you're hating all the time. And

it's so important to figure it out and notice when you're doing it. For example, like what I had to do when I noticed that, wait a second, I didn't like how I responded to when I heard this person's name or when this person was mentioned. That's not the kind of person I wanna be. How can I change it or how can I look at it and just decide that, you know what, I released this, like I don't wanna hate anymore.

Making sure you have the awareness. When something happens, wait a sec, I noticed that I felt happy when they failed. I noticed that I said something negative when they succeeded. You know, catching that. Catching those thoughts and being like, Is this really what I want?

Rather than keep checking for they're downfall laughing at them or trying to bring them down, that's literally controlling you and the next thing you know you're gonna be a hater. You need to really sit down with yourself and think, Why do I need someone else to lose for me to feel like I'm winning? Because the same way your confidence shouldn't rely on someone else's compliments and someone else's

Opinions of you, positive opinions of you, someone else's downfall and someone else's life shouldn't make you feel better about yourself either. It shouldn't be the fact that someone's failing is the reason you now feel confident. No. It shouldn't be the fact that you are downplaying someone else's success is the reason you feel confident. You should feel confident in yourself.

and control over yourself because that's the only thing you can control at the end of the day. And we s we put so much emphasis on making sure that you are confident in yourself and it doesn't come from other people and it doesn't come from compliment compliments. But I don't think we talk about enough how important it is to make sure that your confidence is also not coming from the failure of others, the misery of others. Because it's become so common now and it's something that we've generally forgot about.

I do think

social media has made this a lot

worse. I think it has made it a big thing because if you think about before when there was no social media, I think the only people who really had a platform to hate and for it to be big was the news and the tabloids and the radio. They were the only places that had a platform to actually hate and spread that negativity. But

As regular shmegular degular common ordinary people going about their lives, you could express your opinion, yeah, to the people around you, but it's not gonna be broadcasted out there for everyone else to see. And even similarly so, because when you're around your family, you might express a negative feeling or something, maybe to your close friends or something, but then when you're in and amongst people, you're not gonna be spreading that energy. You're not gonna be spreading that hate. Social media has given people the confidence behind a screen.

To say whatever they want, to express opinions that number one, they probably wouldn't have the confidence to say in real life. And number two, they don't mean half of the time. Like they just say that because everyone else is saying it, because they think that that's what's gonna get views because they're following everyone else. It's not a cool thing. Like, every time you go on a post, I will see a girl, I don't know.

She's doing well for herself, bought herself a car, that's daddy's money, she probably has only fans. Like, why hasn't your mind gone to Congratulations?

That is so sick. I love that for her. No, instead you've gone straight to hate.

And it's something that we've accustomed ourselves to. But that's the thing. It makes you feel better about yourself. It makes us to feel better about ourselves. If you know that you want a car and you see she's got a car for herself, excusing her and making it downplaying the reason that she's got it means that you don't have to face yourself.

It means that you don't have to sit here and say, crap, like I don't like the fact that I don't have a car. What can I do to get a car? Instead it's just, well, she she did this and it makes you feel better because it that means that it's not that deep that you don't have your car yet.

But

Ultimately it comes down to you are trying to reduce another person's achievement because it triggers something in you. Maybe the thing that you're hating actually represents something you want.

it represents something that you want deep down. And that's why these things are like beautiful places to do inner work. Sometimes you sit here and you think, crap like

'Cause you I might be speaking now and you might think, my gosh, this might actually be me. I might actually be a s like a l subconscious hater without knowing that I'm a hater. You shouldn't beat yourself up about it because these things are information. It gives you information as to the things that you want and the things that you like about yourself. And when you have that information, you are able to now

Know the things that matter to you, know the things that you want to work towards and do that in a work to be able to get there.

And it's such a big thing with celebrities as well, especially celebrities I guess the thing is with celebrities is like they have a lot of money, they have a lot of fame, and a lot of the time when you don't have that, you can be envious of that, whether you want to admit it or not. Seeing someone have so much love and so much money and so much clout.

Meanwhile, you know, you're out here at home, working the nine to five, stressed out, don't even know how your money just about covers the the next bill, you know, every time you're living paycheck to paycheck, you're stressed out and you see another person online and you know they're living it up, naturally you're gonna feel something, you're gonna feel a type of way, like you're feeling stressed and this person is quote unquote successful, it's gonna

what's the word, ignite a certain feeling in you. I understand that. But at the same time

The projection is where the issue comes now. And with social media and the fact that so many people now have the room to hate, that's why people do that. People go on people's comment sections and say the absolute most. You don't know this person, you don't know anything that they're going through, but you can have so much to say about how they should live their life, what they should do about their life. Meanwhile, so you have a lot of things going on for yourself, but the first thing you want to do is go and tell someone else how to live their life. Have you figured out your own?

And I know it can be a lot to take in, it can be a lot it can be very triggering because like I said, it's something hard to admit to yourself, but at the same time it's like I just think with social media, especially with cancel culture, people have developed this element of feeling like they have control over celebrities now. Now the fact that before it was just like, you know, celebrities

You know, they had all this money, they had all these people loving them. Cool. All you could really do was hate from afar. If you now choose to cancel a person, it gives you that sense of control, feeling like your success is governed by myself or governed by us. And it makes you feel like you have a sense of control over them. And it's like

that is an area of growth. That is an area to look into because this is not about them. This is about you and how you feel and you being unhappy with where you are. And again, like I said, instead of people taking that 'cause you can use it as fuel. You can use it as okay, cool. I don't like where I am right now. This has clearly showed me that I'm gonna take this energy and put it into building something to change my life.

instead it's gone into hating, making them feel worse about themselves so you can feel better about yourself. And it's a thing 'cause I remember before, a lot of the time when I would listen to self help content and listen to people and they would say, when people hate when people say this, it's about them, it's not about you and I would think, but how true is that? Like you can be at fault sometimes and whatnot. And it is true because

we're not perfect as humans. Sometimes we are the bad guy and sometimes there are some genuinely crap humans out there but people don't have the room to get it wrong and a lot of the time I think now it's become so evident that it is a lot of the time about other people. Other people will project to make themselves feel better. And we do it. We all do it quite a lot and we don't realise that we're doing it. You

will sit there and hate on someone and what they have because you don't like where you are.

And it's something that you really need to work on, it's something that we need to get out of because this whole thing of hating is ridiculous. Because I sit here and I think of the people who that get so much hate and it's like, what have they done? There's people who have done crap things and I get it, fine, but they they're not a bad person. They don't do nonsense. What is your reasoning behind hating them? And it makes you feel better at the fact that

You have gone on your phone, or whatever it is, to type a comment, to hate and to say something, and even if you haven't gone to a comment, you have thought these thoughts because it makes you feel better about yourself.

And you need to ask yourself,

do I actually care about what they did? Or do I just enjoy seeing someone else that's successful lose? Because a lot of the time people just wanna like you just wanna hate at the fact that you wanna feel better about yourself and it's something that you have to sit there and confront yourself about and especially anyway, this is a whole nother topic, but

People lack empathy when it comes to celebrities. It's l anyway. But yeah. Sit with yourself and confront yourself. These are the hard parts, but this is where growth happens. This is where inner work happens. The things that are so hard to admit to ourselves, that's where the beauty of growth is.

So of course we've got a little scenario, problem, situation, whatever you want to call it for you guys, to help us put this into perspective.

might also help you notice if this is you. Cool. So we have Aisha and Mia who work together. One day Mia posts on social media that she's got promoted and she's excited and she writes, Can't believe it, a lot of work finally paid off. A lot of hard work finally paid off, sorry. So Aisha immediately thinks, Well, she probably had connections, she's always showing off

She's acting like she's the only person who works hard. The interesting thing about this is Aisha doesn't think of herself as a hater. She wouldn't, 'cause it's just like

She doesn't think she's hating in it. Cause she never left a negative comment. She didn't attack her or say anything mean to her. It was just her thought trail led her to thinking that. But here's the thing she doesn't even know whether any of those things are true. She's just let her mind go there. She doesn't know if she had connections. She doesn't know, you know, if she actually thinks that she's the only person who's working hard. She just let her mind get to that point.

And instead of sitting there and feeling happy for Mia, what does she do? She looks for reasons why the achievement didn't count. And do you see how these things show up? There are different ways of you could you can look at things. Notice the patterns of when you are seeing posts, when you are seeing other people's success, or when you are seeing other people's failures too. How did that actually make you feel? And be real with yourself.

If you see a friend or someone post that they're gonna do this or I don't know that they've just bought their first house, are you hating and thinking or is your mind going to yeah, but she's got a boyfriend so they did it together? Or is it, my gosh, that's so sick, I would love to do that And sometimes it can be both, but the first thing was the excuse or the second thing was the excuse, but that's to make yourself feel better.

okay, so bringing it back to our scenario, on the surface it looks like Aisha is judging Mia. But underneath, what she might be feeling deep down is, I've been working hard too. Why hasn't this happened for me? What if I'm falling behind? And those are normal feelings. As humans naturally we're gonna feel a bit down sometimes, especially when you want goals, you want to achieve something and you feel like you're not getting there.

Seeing someone else get that, seeing someone else have that success will make you feel a type of way, and I'm not saying anyone is bad for doing it, but when you let that overcome you and dictate your moves and dictate how you operate as a person, that's when it can be a problem. Sometimes we minimise someone else's success because accepting it feels uncomfortable. If their success is real.

we have to face our own feelings about where we are. So a better version or more self aware response of Aisha would be her noticing her reaction. Given that provided that she's not already kind of like made that switch in thinking of to being happy for her success.

her reaction would be instead of immediately feeding it, she would ask herself, wait, why did that trigger me? And then she realises I don't actually dislike Mia, but I think I'm frustrated because I want that too, you know, I want a promotion. I want to do better for herself. So now the energy is gonna shift. So instead of she's thinking, Mia doesn't deserve it it becomes, my gosh, that's amazing. I hope I can achieve something like that too one day. Or

What can I learn from someone who's already where I want to be? What has Mia done that I can do to be able to get to that point? Rather than sitting there, hating, taking that energy and channeling it into something that isn't gonna help you. Your body or your brain thinks it's helping you because it helps you feel better about yourself, but it doesn't actually bring you closer to that thing that you want to achieve.

So the bigger lesson is sometimes the people that trigger us, they're showing us something. The things that trigger us, like I said, is teaching you something and it's that room for growth. It's not always the thing that you're hating on. It's not. Sometimes it's just showing you your desires, your goals, a lifestyle that you want, a quality that you admire in someone, or an insecurity that you need to work on.

They're all different things. You might see someone, everyone is like, my gosh, she's so funny. Wow, like I just love being around her. And then you're like, but she's not that funny. Maybe you want to be funny. Or maybe you feel like you struggle to be funny. Or I don't know. Or something sometimes like your insecurities might come into play. You might not like your body or be content with where you are. And you see someone else that has a nice body.

Or has what you want and so you hate on it because you don't like yours. Or you try to excuse their body because you don't want to be able 'cause you don't want to sit with the fact that you don't like yours. All of this, they're eye openers, is like a magnifying glass that's showing you, hey, this is what I actually want, or this is what I don't like about myself.

Ding ding ding, room for growth. It's not that, there's something wrong with you, but it's just eye openers and eye openers to show you here, here's something I can work on to do better, to grow into a much more amazing person of and version of myself.

so maybe the question isn't why do you enjoy watching people fail?

But maybe a better way of asking it is why does someone else's success make you feel uncomfortable? And if you can answer that honestly, then you stop learning about them and making excuses about them and you start learning about yourself.

So, how do you stop being that person, you may ask? it basically comes back to what I was saying. Understanding that these areas are a magnifying glass and these areas show you the parts of yourself that you wanna gr you wanna grow in and the things that you want. And if you are someone who's like, I don't really have any goals, I don't really know what I want, this is an excellent way to work it out for yourself.

Of course, I know it's hard, no one really wants to admit that, hey, I kind of feel crap about myself or I think I might actually low key be a hater. But it just gives you that room to see the things that you want and you will understand the desires and the things that you have. So choose to see it as an area of growth at first rather than a place to beat yourself up about it. Because your brain is just trying to protect you and make you feel better.

But like I said, realistically, it's not really bringing you closer to the desire you want, it's just making you feel better about not having it. So understand that these things are points and anchors to help you work on yourself and understand your desires. So ask yourself things like who annoys me? Who do I judge so quickly?

What and who who are the people that you secretly want to fail? What are the celebrities that you low key hate on? Even if you don't think that even if you think your hating is justified, write it down. Who do you actually hate? Who do you dislike? Understand that and then think of the reasons that you might dislike them. Cause again, sometimes it is justified, but sometimes there's it actually does link back to

a feeling or something in you that has been triggered, you know?

and it's up to you to then make those have that understanding of yourself and try to make that shift. You wanna work on making a shift. So next time when you notice that okay I h hated on this person or I said something that, you know, wasn't positive towards someone else's success or towards someone else's happiness or even if it wasn't positive but what you said was negative

You wanna either be neutral or positive towards it. So you wanna shift your thinking from why does she get that or why do they have that or they don't deserve that to you. my gosh, that's actually so inspiring. I want that too. Wow, I love that for her. You know what? If she can do it, that means I can do it too. If she has it, I'm gonna learn what she's done to get there, then I can try to do it too.

instead of she probably just got lucky or this person gave it to her. You wanna be able to learn from them. Understand that someone else winning doesn't mean that you lose. You wanna move from being a hater to being a supporter.

But yeah, anyway, at the end of the day, you can spend your life watching other people, the people who failed, the people who have succeeded, the people who are ahead of you, or you can spend that energy on building your own life. One of my favourite like Dave of lyrics that literally is like one of my mottos in life is Would you rather be the person talking or the person doing all the things that people talk about?

I would leave you to answer that question for yourself. But I know who I would rather be. At the end of the day, no amount of hating on someone else's success is going to create your own success. And there's no amount of celebrating someone else's downfall that's gonna solve your problems. The only thing that will is focusing on yourself and executing and making those changes and

to become a better version of yourself and to give yourself the life that you desire with the help of God of course. but yeah thank you guys for listening and listening to me talk about my thoughts. I know this episode might have been a bit hard because like I said no one really wants to admit that.

We are low-key like haters, but it's sometimes we need that. We need that room for growth and that mirror to be held up to us. But yeah, thank you guys again. I will see you next time. And I just want you to remember that someone else's success is not proof that you're failing.

And someone else's failure is not proof that you're succeeding. You got this, guys, and I'll see you next time. Love you. Bye.