I recall a commercial in my early years regarding a certain brand of dog food. Three children were happily singing a song about their dogs being faster, bigger, and better than others. This was supposedly due to their pets eating Ken-L-Ration.
The commercial ended, with a spokesperson claiming that Ken-L-Ration was comprised of government inspected horse meat, as if that was something worthy of mentioning. The complete jingle goes like this,
“My dog’s faster than your dog, my dog’s bigger than yours. My dog’s better ’cause he gets Ken-L Ration, my dog’s better than yours!”
I had problems with that commercial as a kid. Not only did I find horse meat repulsive, but I’d been taught in Sunday school that tearing down someone else to build yourself up is wrong. A part of this lesson dealt with bragging about things you own, like a bigger home, bigger car, and I suppose, a bigger dog.
In later years, I was told that folks doing so had low self-esteem problems. We see a lot of this on social media and especially on a daytime talk show called, “The View.” I find that program just as repulsive or even more so than horse meat.
A German word for tearing someone down to make yourself bigger is called schadenfreude. The true meaning for this word is: the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another. I simplified the word and meaning by labeling it, nasty behavior.
An article I read, said that self-esteem has a negative relationship with the frequency and intensity of schadenfreude experienced by an individual; individuals with lower self-esteem tend to experience schadenfreude more frequently and intensely.
The article ended by claiming someone with low self-esteem, in viewing someone who is more successful, this success poses a threat to their sense of self, and seeing this person fail can be a source of comfort because they perceive a relative improvement in their internal, or in-group standing.
In-group standing amongst certain social media sites such as Facebook seems to be highly important to low, self-esteem individuals. I base my opinion, after viewing countless times, a “friend” making a comment that doesn’t fit the group’s ideology, and getting jumped on from all directions like hyenas attacking a lone zebra. The snarky little laughing-out-loud emoji seems to be their weapon of choice.
Getting back to those three kids in the Ken-L-Ration commercial singing that degrading schadenfreude jingle. Because this commercial came out in 1964, and the children appeared to be around eight or nine at that time, they’d be my age.
Hopefully, before they reached maturity, someone slapped some sense into them. I know had they grown up in the ‘hoods where I lived, and went around criticizing other kid’s dogs, they wouldn’t have sang that tune for very long!
I like to write junk... 