Well, there’s the Wayne Newton original, which probably should come with a trigger warning, if only because of his execrable German pronunciation:
And then there’s the karaoke music. You’re welcome to sing along with my revised lyrics:
Schadenfreude, darling, schadenfreude
I find myself feeling overjoyed.
Blogging site, on the Internet
Was the place we met,
Then the jet, trip and yet, you made threats;Danke schoen, darling, danke schoen
Did you lie? Darling don’t explain.
I recall, stories that enthralled
How you beat your fate, won Kuwait, recreate;Junior high, just like junior high
Still more lies, whether laugh or cry,
Ghost your friend, dump her in the end
Make her out to be
Such a mess, seek redress, pile on stressFind the drones, darling find the drones
Those who daren’t let you stand alone
Those who thrust, and who do not trust.
Thought for once you’d try
On your own, take the bone, Stone of Scone
(No such luck. What a cuck.)My heart says schadenfreude
Schadenfreude, oh darling, schadenfreude
I said thank you for showing me again,
Though we go on our separate ways
Still the memory stays, for always, can’t rephraseSo, darling, danke schön.
I could go on. But perhaps you get the point.
Have you ever had a day in which the joys of schadenfreude outweigh even those of Spring? Of the flowers that bloom? Of the dainty lambs prancing in the fields? Of the scents and sounds of the world reviving, and of the circle of life and faith re-energizing from Easter onwards? Even more than those?
If not–if you’re so good and so holy that the discombobulation of others in a righteous cause doesn’t ever thrill you in the least, then I’m afraid you’re too good for me.
Because–as I’ve said more than once here–I’m only human.
And every once in a while–even if I’m not especially proud of the feeling–there’s an enormously human sense of validation in recognizing that my own assessment of the ugliness and instability of a very few who’ve crossed my path over the past several years was justified. That my opinions were correct. And that I–in modern parlance–“totally got it.”
Today is such a day for me. The one in which I’m pretty clear that–whoever’s come late to the party in terms of understanding the social dynamic of a malignant narcissist or two, that problem isn’t mine. Or even perhaps ours. (Jury’s still out on that.)
Still, pretty sure I’m OK. And it’s a very good day down here on the farm. I feel a feeling that–if you’ve never felt it yourself–I wish for all you reading this at some point in your lives.
Schadenfreude.
God bless us, every one.
Perhaps now is the time for two or three people to recognize that there are many worse things, when it comes to “talking trash” about people on the public Internet, than saying that a person is one’s dear friend who is welcome in one’s house at any time. I don’t expect that those two or three people are actually smart enough to say that, but whatever.
If I were to offer a suggestion to rational and perhaps unwary, adults who’re new to the social media scene and who think they’ve discovered new “friends” through it, it would be simple and direct: Do not engage in any sort of non-public messaging or communication with those “friends” until you are absolutely sure they are 1) who they say they are, 2) rational, 3) sane, and 4) not out for themselves and their own agenda at the expense of everything, and everyone, else.
I got burned by this a couple of times on Ricochet, when people who’d had private communications with me about one thing and another, subsequently lied publicly about them. Of course, you’re not supposed to bring up the content of private communications in public, so when I said something equivalent to “that’s not quite right, here–in general terms with no specific quotes–is how that went,” I was the one pilloried for “exposing” the private chat.
That. Will. Never. Happen. To. Me. Again.
And I urge all of you to beware of the same sort of thing.
Choosing to post anonymously on the Internet is one thing. Slapping yourself on the back for posting under your own name is another. Both things are perfectly fine.
Lying about what you’ve said or been told by others in private chats, in order to further your favor with another person, or to (so you think) make yourself look better in public, is a separate issue indeed.
To that end, I publish here a post I wrote on Ricochet in March of 2019. Before I posted it, I told my friend (of some of the private conversations), that if he didn’t stop lying about, and attacking me publicly, I’d let the site know of our relationship and his mendacity. In response, he doubled down. So I kept my word.
When I did publish it, I restricted it to the member feed, so that it would never be available in front of the site paywall. (The same people who lied about the other matters have lied about that, too.)
In what I thought was a good faith agreement with a person who turned out to be lying (imagine my subsequent surprise), I took the post down within hours of posting it, with the understanding that–if I did–she’d drop her dogged and defamatory attacks on me, and we’d move on. That didn’t happen then, and hasn’t happened since. In the meantime (on at least four different sites), I’ve been accused of everything from doxing and “trashing,” and destroying the subject’s private life to being the crazed Basic Instinct bunny lady.
So, for posterity and the record, and because I think I’d like it to be out there on the web for all to see, for all time (no paywall required now–perhaps an example of the ‘law of unintended consequences,’) here’s the post.
A Letter to the Ricochet Community
As I said, there are worse things to accuse a person of on the public Internet than being a dear friend who is welcome in one’s house at any time. And yet, I’ve been portrayed for years as a crazy, malicious bitch for doing so.
The trouble with that sort of behavior is pretty much that which besets those who overuse the “F” word in everyday discourse. Once you’ve gone to the limit and have lived there for years, what do you do when you run into a person who actually deserves the epithet? Because, really, you’ve shot your bombastic wad, and you have no place else to go.
(Those of you who more-or-less continually whine and whinge and cry about “women who lie,” I invite you to expose the lies, either in my post, or in anything else I’ve said here. If you can’t put up, then perhaps you’d be better off to simply shut up, and stop using the hit-and-run tactics of the Left to (you think) bolster your pathetic little story.
The rest of you, please be very careful and wary about what you say in ‘private’ on the Internet, even to people you think you can trust.)
Apologies for the grammatical infelicity. Not enough of a grammar nazi to care.