Disgraced sports doctor Larry Nassar has been stabbed multiple times during an altercation with another inmate at a federal prison in Florida. Nassar is serving decades in prison after admitting sexually assaulting athletes at Michigan State University and at Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics, including Olympic medalists.
Perhaps I got a little poetic with it, but I do think there is a kinda twisted inner instinct in people that enjoys seeing harm come to those who we feel deserve it. A lack of sympathy is just that - a lack of something. But when you look at, for instance, the sheer joy people felt when seeing anti-vaxxers get COVID, I think there’s more going on there than just a lack of sympathy. It’s an active pleasure.
There’s definitely a difference between being unsympathetic about someone’s situation and wishing/celebrating vengeance against them. I’d like to think most most people fall into the unsympathetic group and that thoughtless comments celebrating his attack/antivaxxers getting covid are just that - thoughtless comments, not hateful ones. I’m not at all convinced everyone who makes a flippant comment actively takes pleasure in seeing harm come to others. Perhaps I’m naive.
I guess I’d just imagine that a mere lack of sympathy, and nothing more than that, would result in simply no comments. I don’t talk about things I don’t care about. Some random conservative anti-vaxxer in Texas dying of COVID has no more impact on my life than some random average person in Iowa dying of a heart attack. But if I saw two articles about those two events in a social media timeline, I know which one I’d be a lot more tempted to click on, and which one would get significantly more engagement. And I can’t help but think that it’s because, on some level, a part of us likes hearing about those we consider to be bad people “getting what they deserve”.