How to Define Schadendouche

From Boing Boing comes the tale of a guy who allegedly steals some computers and inadvertently posts pictures of himself on flickr for the world to see.  From the post:

"Last week a number of computers were stolen from our office in
Vancouver, BC. One of those computers was a shared iMac with
Flickrbooth, an app that automatically uploads photo booth shots to our
flickr account, installed on it.
Just this morning a friend called to tell us that there are photos of
whoever has the computer now in our flickr stream! Obviously the guy
didn’t know he was uploading images of himself and his awesome tattoos."

Here’s a link to the shots on the company’s flickr account. Do you know who this guy is? The theft victims and the Vancouver police would love to hear about it. Looks like the SomethingAwful forums are all over the case, too.

Update: A gem in the comments thread:
"There should be a word for this, thinking you’re getting away with
something on the sly while the world laughs at you, anticipating your
inevitable demise — schadendouche?" [beatnik]

To help us understand this exquisite new term (schadendouche) let’s explore its roots.

First we have schadenfreude: a German word meaning ‘pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune’.

Then we have douche: Douche bag, or simply douche, are considered pejorative terms in Australia, the United States, Canada and New Zealand. The slang usage of the term dates back to the 1960s.[4]
The term may be used in a phrase such as "that guy is such a douche
bag!"

Yes, I think we have a winner and I also imagine that we’ve all had our moments of schadendouche-ism…or would it be schadendouche-ity?


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