Netizen Inquired, “Who Really [Messed] Up Their ’One Job?’“, And 30 People Came Through

From failing this iconic GTA San Andreas Wrong Side of the Tracks mission to the Evergreen cruise ship getting stuck in the Suez Canal, we keep encountering situations where people are tasked with a single task that they're expected to perform well, and yet they fail at it with all their might.

You might wonder how these things keep on happening. Well, as Enrique Rubio explained in his LinkedIn Post, it is usually due to something known as the Dunning-Kruger effect, which basically states that the less someone knows, the more they think they know, and the same goes for their competence. 

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that reassures our ego and self-esteem, making us reject our limitations and overestimate our knowledge or ability to do something. It usually comes from a lack of self-awareness and an inability to assess our own skills accurately, so paradoxically, people who are actually good at something tend to underestimate their value.

Happenings like these might be unfortunate and embarrassing for the people responsible, but for the rest, this usually becomes just another hilarious meme inspiration. In fact, there's a whole subreddit dedicated to memes like this, and it has nearly 800,000 members.

But while some memes like this are just a perfect display of pure incompetence, there are also those that come from the side of misfortune. That makes us wonder: Why do people tend to laugh at the failure of others?

According to Mark Travers from Psychology Today, despite being generally frowned upon, this occurrence is actually quite common. It is called 'schadenfreude,' and it is a German conjunction word made of schaden (harm) and freude (joy). 

However, while we all might enjoy some laughs at the cost of others' misfortune, like watching shows such as Impractical Jokers, it can become problematic when it becomes an overindulgence. High levels of schadenfreude are associated with Machiavellianism, narcissism, and even psychopathy, which usually lead people down darker paths in life.

In the end, no one is safe from messing up whatever task they have at hand, even if it seems to be the simplest thing in the world. It's human to overestimate ourselves, just as it is human to find the failure of others funny. 

But everything has a healthy limit, so if these failures keep happening to you, perhaps you should reevaluate your approach. And if you get to the point where you laugh at someone for something like being unjustly fired, maybe it could be wise to talk to someone and figure out why it makes you feel that way.

What did you think about this story? Do you know any good examples that would fit this list? Share all of them in the comments below!