What do you call this feeling?

Vorpy

So, turns out my work place has a thing similar to Facebook called "Jam". Its basically LinkedIn and Facebook combined, except its exclusively for employees of the company (which isn't very much). You can list your personal info, your interests and hobbies, upload pictures and make status updates. When I saw this on my workplace progress site I chuckled to myself, realizing somebody devoted a lot of programming and code-writing time to something nobody is going to use or take seriously. 

But its like a weird Schadenfreudian pity, like when you see somebody say they're going to make their own Manga with a massive storyline and tons of characters and awesome things, and they have no idea how to draw. and you just pat them on the back because they're trying so hard.

The same thing happened when I saw that Monster Trucks was in theaters.

I felt like this overwhelming feeling of "oh god who is actually going to watch this" but when I laughed at it, I felt bad like, GOD THEY DID SO MUCH WORK ON IT. Its a cute movie but I have a bad feeling its going to flop, and that made me want to watch it out of pity.

It's not schadenfreude though, is it? I thought SCHAD was laughing at something failing because you wanted it to fail or whatever.

lrdgck

Schadenfreude, I think, is having satisfaction out of someone's misfortune. "Laughing at something failing because you wanted it to fail" is pretty much close to that.

I felt similarly when watching Blacula. It was obvious how hard they tried to pull it off seriously, but the result was still as campy as any other no-budget blaxploitation movie from the Seventies.

Also, I feel a bit guilty about me being surprised by this thread turning out not to be wonderposting.

glennmagusharvey

Wouldn't this simply be "enjoying something out of pity"?  Perhaps to be abbreviated just "pity".