I’d been working on an essay this week, not just a column, a longer piece about the end of shame, when this very large pot boiled over in my timeline.
Mister Robinson is, naturally, refusing to withdraw. Crucially there is a hard deadline looming in a couple of hours because paper ballots have to be mailed out to serving military members, or someting. Bottom line, if he’s still on the ballot by the time we reach beer o’clock today, Robinson will remain Trump’s guy in North Carolina.
I think I’d like to see how this pans out before I write today’s column. The new schadenfreude, as I think of it, isn’t just about a lack of shame in our culture, it’s about joyously embracing your shameful shit, and I have a feeling that’s about to happen here.
It’s not just a story about US politics or politics in general. I started thinking about this when the news broke about Dave Grohl’s, er, little accident. It feels like there’s some weird inversion happening in our culture. Traditionally schadenfreude, shameful joy, describes the guilty pleasure we feel in contemplating the misfortune of others. But modern schadenfreude is the preserve of those who should feel shame but now revel in their own mendacity. Grohl gives no sign of revelling. He seemed somewhat ashamed to have been caught. But that just made him stand out and got me to thinking.
Maybe it’s the digital age, in which the only currency is attention. Maybe it’s more collateral damage from our civilisational rush to extinction.
But now I really want to see what this ‘black Nazi’ porn guy does in the next 24-48 hours. And whether Trump and JD give him a hand.
So, I’ll be back on Monday with the essay. If you want to throw me some research, examples of influencers or YouTubers or corporate villains absolutely leaning into their villainy, go wild in the comments. I’d be curious to see if you turn up one that I haven’t.
Until then, enjoy this awesome segue…
Speaking of bad timing! I submitted the manuscript for the last book in The Cruel Stars trilogy nearly a year ago. And I’m still waiting on edits. I waited long enough that I decided to do a novella just to remind everyone the series still exists.
It’s here, for anyone who’s interested. That’s a universal book link from Books2read. It’ll take you to your nearest preferred booke shoppe. It’s a novella, not a full length novel, and it tells the origin story of one of my faves from The Cruel Stars, Lucinda.
We’ll talk on Monday.
All of Sky News?
Looking forward to it. With the mention of schadenfreude I learned there is a word that means 'taking joy in other people’s successes' Freudenfreude. Those Germans have a word for everything.