Why is it wrong to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others?

[Ironside]

• For example 2, my impression is that the pleasure is not felt at B's failure itself, but rather that B's previous pattern of success indicates B is smart, and B's lower grade on this test indicates that the test is particularly hard; hence A's greater pleasure at their grade on the current test is because it is a perfect score on a more difficult test. So, B's failure is a measure of the difficulty of the accomplishment, and A's pleasure is at A's own accomplishment rather than B's failure.

I think there may be a complication here with the rivalry issue. As tribal creatures, perhaps we suspend our expectation of empathy when the injured party is some 'other.' Your teammates may not expect the same empathy from you when a rival team suffers as they would in other circumstances. At its worst, this kind of suspension of empathy would be what makes genocides and the like possible, but it's probably common to all of us in its milder forms. That doesn't make it a good thing, but it's probably an inevitable thing.

Ajax

Example 2 often contains a lot of gloating. So, nope it's often a lot about beating the other.

To add on the rivalry, one big thing about schadenfraude is that it's creating rivalry.

I wonder if the friendly version is actually a sort of establishment of that the friendship is strong enough to endure it.