Laughter through (Web Video) Cruelty

About a month ago, I started watching videos of people from various places around the world traumatising themselves via a horror video game called "Amnesia", developed by Frictional Games. It is a, now possibly infamous title that revolves around some poor sod stumbling around various rooms and corridors of a castle trying to avoid getting torn to shreds by monsters and his own nerves. The amusement for me comes from these people panicking over said monsters when they are being chased by them (And occasionally by their own friends trying to trick them into thinking a monster is chasing them). That and the fact that when faced with something extremely scary in said video game, even the toughest of males is reduced to screaming and blubbing like a 10 year old girl...


The first of these videos was some Asian guy being egged on by some unseen friend on some Skype chat. Predictably, or possibly not, he was left shaken every time one of those monsters clawed his character to death. As a result of the humour had from seeing said individual suffer, I started looking up other videos to do with people playing Amnesia. Or rather, people getting their wits scared out of them because of Amnesia. One of them even spawning a minor meme on it's own.

From this, I ended up looking at videos of "let's plays" of Amnesia's spiritual predecessor, Penumbra and it's various sequels and expansions. This game turned out to be no less scary, due to infected dogs, crazy spiders and oversized worms. A later appearance of infected, nude zombies does not help matters. Once again, more hours are wasted just laughing at the misfortune of many people who think they can handle a few scares and then realise the contrary, or those who know what they are in for and get frightened anyway.

Another title with unexpected scares, and cheap laughs at people being scared by it, is an indie Japanese horror game called "Ao Oni", a 2D game that has you trying to escape a house that has a large blue demon chasing after you at random (Starting to see a pattern folks?). Despite the low quality graphics, it can be genuinely scary. Especially when the titular blue demon run after you unexpectedly (Although it does get unintentionally funny due to the strange face on said demon).

Through repeated viewings of these videos, I eventually encounter a Youtuber by the name "Pewdiepie" (Read as "Pew-Dee-Pie" although the way it's spelt made it look like "Pew-Die-Pie" to me), a Swedish gentlemen who has brought it on himself to entertain us through his suffering, both psychologically and physically (As he hurts his leg bashing them off the table in response to some scares). His funny commentary certainly helps, especially when inappropriate. Be aware he does use some coarse language, so don't view his videos if you get easily offended.

This does lead me to an interesting question. Why do we laugh at other's misfortunes? Why is it so funny that someone almost defecates in their underwear as a result of a jumpscare in a video game? Why do I laugh so hard when someone jumps up from their chair so hard they actually knock over their webcam that is filming themselves jumping up?

Some say it is because we all inherently are afraid of getting into the same situation, hence our first instinct is to laugh because the tragedy is being inflicted on someone else other than ourselves. A form of relief if you will. Others think it is just because we humans are naturally a cruel, sadistic species.

Well, regardless of the reasons, to balance things out in the wider cosmos, I decided to give myself the pleasure (Or pain) of scaring myself witless with a Half Life 2 Mod called "Nightmare House 2". I decided to play this after seeing the aforementioned Pewdie play it himself. Sadly he no longer allows general members of the public to view some of the videos in that particular series due to unknown circumstances. This spurred me on to play it to see what it was like.

The story of NH2 revolved around a gentleman who stumbles into what appears to be a haunted house, goes insane and gets sent to a psychological hospital. Where things go badly wrong shortly afterwards. And after the first few minutes, I wish I hadn't installed the mod. Although I managed to avoid screaming like a little girl, unlike several other "let's players" I wasn't far from it. This may be more because I became so frightened I forget how to scream and simply recoiled from the screen in horror. Monsters and various apparitions appearing out of nowhere didn't help. Having said that, I don't think I would make an interesting subject for a let's play with a fright cam.

As I'm typing this, I'm watching more people give themselves brown stains thanks to another unwanted jumpscare. Am I turning into a sadist? Am I enjoying myself through the vicarious suffering of others playing video games. Or am I just being plain weird?