The r/instantkarma subreddit has continued to grow by leaps and bounds since 2012. It went from 1.9 million members the last time that we wrote about the community to more than 2.3 million redditors now.
It seems like many people are fans of seeing justice being carried out, and awful, entitled, and arrogant people getting a taste of their own medicine. And, if we’re completely honest with ourselves, many of us enjoy that, too. Wouldn’t you agree, dear Pandas?
The joy that we get from seeing someone else failing or being humiliated is called schadenfreude. It almost perfectly describes how someone feels when a jerk gets humbled for being mean or doing something really awful.
It feels as though there actually is justice in the world, and that everything’s working as it should. However, it might not be divine retribution that we’re seeing, but a mathematical and statistical inevitability.
#7 Atlanta Police Fire Tear Gas At Protesters, Wind Blows It Back In Their Direction
It makes sense that out of all the possible outcomes in any given situation, some of them happen sooner while others happen later. That, at least, explains the ‘Instant’ part of ‘Instant Karma.’
Furthermore, it’s only logical that many people would consider some of those possible outcomes to have a negative impact on the awful individuals who they feel should be punished. From a purely statistical standpoint, it’s practically inevitable that some jerks will get their comeuppance almost instantly, and that someone will be around to either take a picture or film what happened.
#12 Twitch Streamer Kisses A Random Woman On The Cheek For The Sake Of Views Instantkarma
Meanwhile, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that there are probably tons of situations where folks experienced karma, but nobody else was around to witness it. That’s not to mention all of those cases where justice took an incredibly long time to be carried out. Or all the cases where awful people didn’t have to deal with the consequences of their actions… or even ended up being rewarded.
#13 Guy Attempts To Steal Package But Gets Caught. When He Drives Away His Car Gets Stuck In Snow
#14 Not The Normal Type Of Karma We See In This Sub, But Still Karma
#15 Driver Tries To Avoid Traffic By Driving On The Sidewalk. Meet A Bunch Of Gents That Teach Him A Lesson
Yes, it’s satisfying to see people getting what they deserve—whether for good or for ill—but we shouldn’t be naive to think that this happens all the time.
If it did, r/instantkarma probably wouldn’t exist as a community because instant karmic justice would simply be how the world works.
The ‘Instant Karma’ subreddit is successful because human beings have a need for closure and fairness. We want to see complex situations being resolved. And we crave clarity: we’d prefer to know that action A leads to consequence X, instead of having to swim around in a soup of chaos and uncertainty.
