The harder you fall, the better the story, and it seems that tales of failure are a very strong social currency at the moment. With outlets like fmylife, failblog or #epicfail to broadcast your lowest moments, the online world is embracing failure and extrapolating the entertainment value from misery, embarrassment, and devastation. What’s behind this obsession with failure, and is it a good/healthy/concerning thing?
The failure community portals appear to offer a win-win situation. Victims of failure can share their pain and feel less isolated in depressing situations, helping them laugh instead of cry about their bad luck. Readers get the entertainment value of the horribly funny stories and may also leave feeling better about themselves and their own problems.
However, my concern is that with these failure celebrations, people have converted their desire to succeed into an enjoyment of defeat. I fear that people’s motivation toward positive outcomes is being replaced by a tolerance for and comfort with personal, societal, and global flops. What will it take to put our positive thinking caps back on?
I suspect there’s a strong correlation between celebration of failure and the reporting of the economic downturn. News and media keeps telling us how much stuff sucks right now: the economy is doomed, job market is hopeless, banking system is incompetent… There are only so many times we can react with ‘Oh my, that’s horrible, what a shame!’ so I think the attitude instead becomes, ‘Wuhoo another crappy thing to gripe about!’ It’s an easier way of coping with the news instead of accepting a tone of worry and danger, but the attitude seeps into other areas of our life.
While I am tremendously entertained by late-night fmylife browsing, I don’t want to derive more pleasure from failures than successes. What do you think? Can we have more of a MyLifeRocks or #epicwin mentality, or are we too humble and downtrodden to celebrate the highs in life?
Couldn’t agree more Jessica. Very well said!
Assorted thoughts on the matter:
Too much failure is, obviously, bad. A little bit of failure from time to time is necessary to keep things interesting, and to actually learn anything. Documenting that failure and laughing at it is a good way to learn from it as a community.
The “celebration” of failure is a mechanism for getting over it , learning from it, and moving on. It allows us to get over it quickly and get back on with doing stuff, without overly dwelling on it.
We get a lot of stories about how great a life is, celebrating the works and lives of various great people. It’s hard for anyone to write about how awesome their own life is without coming across as conceited and a bit of a twat, it’s obviously much easier to write about ones own failures, especially with the anonymity of the internet. It’s also just boring unless the failures and the difficulties they had to overcome are included. Would be like a fairy tale with just the “They lived happily ever after.” bit.
Also, you missed out the amazing http://grouphug.us/
This discussion reminded me of Tom Kelley’s talk on STVP:
http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2101
(that might not be completely the right section …)
Paraphrasing Kelley, he said, be careful, fail too many times and you just become a failure. You have to learn from failure too.
In the interest of full disclosure I am the author of the just published book, Celebrating Failure: The Power of Taking Risks, Making Mistakes and Thinking Big. Celebrating Failure is not about misery and embarrassment, just the opposite. You should wear your failures as a badge of honor for having the intestinal fortitude to try something great. Rather then being embarrassed by the failure and wanting to sweep it under the rug, it is better to hold it up in the bright light of day and use it as a learning experience to make improvements to your failed effort and turn it into a success. Sadly, the majority of people still freeze up and become defensive when they fail and thus the opportunity to learn and grow is lost. We are nowhere near an enjoyment of defeat. You can relax. Ralph Heath
Using the scientific method, failing means eliminating and or changing theorems.
In art, failing creates a result that wouldn’t be achieved otherwise, helping to explore and expand thought.
While educating ourselves, failure only opens more doors to truth.
Of coarse, these endeavours are all one and the same thing to the human condition, recognising failure in this, is how we grow.
In other words we fail to move forward.
Hi all,
It all depends on your attitude. Celebrating failure can be as fun, healthy and instructive as celebrating success, under one condition, you keep safe distance.
If “failure thinking” becomes your way of thinking, you’re in trouble.
On the other hand, those who are addicted to successful life, may take their failures too seriously, blaming themselves on every occasion and worrying about things which they can’t change anyway.
After all, it’s a cultural thing too. Your positive, Californian attitude may slightly differ from my Polish “martyrdom alike” mindset 🙂 As long as we both can laugh at this, it’s fine 🙂
With regards to whether we are letting our diet of failure stories/tolerance of failure affect our desire and ability to succeed – I think that the current economic climate and associated stories in the media provide a very handy excuse for certain personality types to ‘fail’, especially as failure won’t necessarily be seen as a reflection of them but of external events outside of their control.
Really appreciate all the comments here, has kept me thinking about this issue and why it still doesn’t quite sit well with me.
Completely agree that celebrating failure is an important part of the learning process and that it can help take the pain out of fumbles. And I accept that failures along the way are inevitable – and I do not seek to entirely remove them.
I suppose my concern occurs with this ‘along the way’ bit, the part where we’re on a path toward a goal. Presumably it is in the pursuit of a positive outcome that failures creep in. However, I am increasingly noticing people that expect failure to be their outcome – in everything – and wind up just pursuing failure itself so they can celebrate with the phrase “f* my life” when things do go crappy. With no signs of forward progress…
And then I wonder where that mentality comes from.
Thanks for pointing out Grouphug, John, which almost had me in tears but at least there’s an aura of hope there. I also missed out on http://mylifeisaverage.com, an fmylife-style site to boast about how mediocre your life is. And http://www.mylifeisg.com, which is intended to celebrate the good in life but honestly it’s pretty depressing too.
Ralph, I’ll have to pick up your book sometime, thanks for dropping in and adding to the discussion here.
Maybe what I want to see is a site for happy twats… is that such a horrible thing?
An example of excellence celebrating mediocrity.
Equally, an example of greatness just celebrating.
What do you find more inspiring?
Ah interesting contrast there Dave…
Seems to be a lot of celebrating average-ness in a comical way. Perhaps it makes us feel good, safe, and validated to know we are average and not alone? Definitely laughed at his claims of average problems, skills and abilities.
As for the second video, I found that totally heart-warming and inspiring, gave me chills of happiness to watch. Ironic choice there though as I also just discovered that video was all a hoax – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogcqFaNbah4. But should that take away from the message?
Regardless, think we should all have a little happy dance =).