Why witnessing the suffering of others brings us joy?

Black Mirror has already reached its sixth season, but the ratings have been consistently declining. Setting aside the groundbreaking first season which laid the foundation for its cult status, my personal favorite remains the final episode of the fourth season, which tells clever and profound stories that has lingered in my memory to this day.

This episode, entitled "Black Museum", consists of three independent short stories. The first one follows a doctor who accidentally connects his nervous system to a patient's through a sensory device. This allows him to personally experience the patient's pain and make most accurate diagnosis.

However, the ability that initially enhanced his diagnosis starts to impact his brain as the endured pain intensifies. He becomes enamored with the feeling and even addicted. Preventing him from indulgence in this sensation is as unbearable as denying drugs to an addict.

His abnormal behavior leads to his dismissal from the hospital. With no patients as a source of pain for him, he begins self-harming. Eventually, even that fails to bring him the thrill and he has to resort to brutally killing innocent tramp.

For ordinary individuals, it is unbelievable to become addicted to pain. How could we possibly derive pleasure from it, which we tend to avoid at all costs?

However, what if the pain was taken on by someone else and you were merely an observer, completely unscathed?

It can be compared to reading a tragic novel, where the reader stands in the protagonist's shoes, experiencing their emotions and feeling their pain. Once the book is closed, the reader can retreat unscathed, even finding some solace in the experiences of the characters.

The love for tragedy and the fascination with pain share a fundamental essence. In his work "The pleasure of pure unadulterated sadness: Experiencing sorrow in fiction, nonfiction and in our own lives.,"（2009） psychologist Goldstein writes that people enjoy watching tragedies because the sadness they evoke is a form of pure, unadulterated sadness. Such high purity is rare in reality, where sadness is often mixed with anxiety, fear and more, which dilute its purity.

In other words, what troubles us is not sadness itself, but the negative emotions that come along. But why does pure sadness bring pleasure? To fully address this question would require knowledge from the field of neuroscience. I can only speculate that the adjacent brain areas, which control sadness, pain, and pleasure, are interconnected.

Another fascinating aspect of this story is its novel interpretation of empathy, Empathy, as commonly understood, refers to the ability to deeply understand and share the emotions of others, responding to them with genuine and compassionate support. The genuine response part is often overlooked, but the point is clear: if one can empathize but takes pleasure in the suffering of others, then such empathy seems ridiculous.

Therefore, it is advised not to share your pain with individuals outside of your family or close friends. In most cases, outpouring will not alleviate your pain but instead provide the listeners with a source of enjoyment through comparison.

The second story continues the discussion on empathy. The male protagonist transfers his comatose wife's consciousness into his own brain, allowing them to share the same body and truly experience each other's emotions and sensations. Through this, the wife is reborn in his mind. It appears to be perfect, but behind overly idyllic illusions, there is always a curse.

As expressed in the renowned quote from "Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman," life never offers anything without a cost, and that fate always demands payment for its bestowed gifts.

Soon, the beauty of rebirth is ended by the boundaryless state of being, the couple both reaching the brink of collapse. Even the closest as a married couple cannot achieve perfect synchronization. Living under the same roof can lead to arguments, let alone living with the same brain. Even within one's own mind, there are often clashes between thoughts, as portrayed in the animation "Inside Out." So, imagine the challenges faced by two distinct individuals.

Therefore, there has to be some distance between two individuals, no matter how close they are; otherwise, it will result in endless suffering.

The darker element is that the mother in the story is ultimately imprisoned inside a monkey doll, with intact consciousness as well as the ability to see everything, feel everything, and experience a multitude of emotions. However, the monkey she can only utter two sentences: "monkey loves you" and "monkey needs a bug."

I can't imagine a even more heartrending experience for a mother to see her beloved child with her own eyes, only to be treated as an object and ultimately forgotten by the child.

The third story is the darkest in the entire episode. An innocent prisoner, wrongfully sentenced to death, has his consciousness extracted at the moment of his execution, and is imprisoned in the form of a holographic image within a cell.

It adds another layer of darkness that he becomes an exhibit in a museum, enduring the electric shocks administered by curious visitors His agony becomes nothing but an attraction for others to observe.

This story may be a homage to the electric shock experiments conducted by Yale assistant professor Milgram. In the experiments, participants were led to believe that they were part of a study on the "effects of punishment on learning behavior."

At the beginning, participants were randomly assigned the roles of either a teacher or a learner. The teachers were instructed to administer an electric shock as punishment whenever the learners provided an incorrect answer. Despite the learners' cries and screams, a majority of the teachers continued to deliver the shocks, and some even derived secret pleasure from their roles as tormentors. These participants had no personal connection or animosity towards the learners, mirroring the situation in the third story where unfamiliar museum visitors inflict torment upon the prisoner. If the first story explores an obsession with one's own pain, the third story delves into the enjoyment derived from witnessing the suffering of others.

The ending of the third story is also profound, and it echoes the second one. The mother living within her daughter's mind feels immense joy upon achieving revenge. However, the question arises whether their relationship, devoid of distance, will eventually mirror the dynamics of the second story. This is where the brilliance of this episode lies: the stories are intricately woven together, mutually reinforcing and proving each other's themes.

I don't understand why some people derive pleasure from witnessing the suffering of others. Even though we know such individuals do exist in reality, like some sadists who hurt children or animals for joy, we generally attribute their behavior to psychological disorders rather than considering it normal. Finding pleasure in the pain of others seems completely unappealing to a normal person, but is it really so?

Another thing that make these three stories stand out is they manage to convey a sense of real and intense pain to the audience. While watching the scenes of the electric shocks, I felt a sense of oppression and sadness. Even long after the film ended, they lingered in my mind like a nightmare. To some extent, I had developed empathy for the fictional character, experiencing his pain and shedding tears for him. However, I experienced the pain without any cost. After the show ended, I felt it was an excellent viewing experience, and I continued to recommend it to others through writing this review, further sharing, spreading, and entertaining in the pain of these fictional characters. What is the difference between this fascination with pain and that of the antagonist in the show?

Psychological experiments have shown that the emotions evoked by virtual works are no different from those experienced in real life. In this case, how do we prove our innocence? Does it mean that, without having to pay a real cost, we also become addicted to our own and others' suffering? In other words, is it possible that watching suffering can become a source of pleasure?

Hi there, you, in front of the computer or phone. After reading this review, would you be curious about the pain and go watch this episode?