Joy in the harm
In an extract from her latest book, Schadenfreude: The Joy of Another’s Misfortune, Tiffany Watt Smith looks at the human impulse to revel in someone else’s misery
The other day, I was on a train when an email pinged into my phone. It was from my husband. ‘Have you seen this?!?!’ was the subject line. When I was in my twenties and worked as a theatre director, I once had a more senior male colleague who endlessly flirted with the female playwrights and actresses we worked with, rating their attractiveness behind their backs. I didn’t stay long at that particular ...
