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Comment by striking | Hacker News Reader

> Do you enjoy the misery of others?

That seems like a pretty loaded question.

You have attributed malice to something that may have been an understanding. Liking how a potential buzzword sounds shouldn't (in my opinion) be equated to enjoying the misery of others.

"Unicorpse" is a fun word (in my opinion). Although it might be offensive, it is also fun to say. I don't think the user was showing "glee at the prospect of failure of others" as much as he or she was commenting on how fun it is to say.

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> "Unicorpse" is a fun word (in my opinion). Although it might be offensive, it is also fun to say. I don't think the user was showing "glee at the prospect of failure of others" as much as he or she was commenting on how fun it is to say.

Correct.

It's not loaded, the GGP has the following passage:

"hopefully it becomes out go-to word to describe the upcoming batch of startup failures"

It smacks of 'schadenfreude' (for which there is an English term but I can't remember it).

Everyone enjoys seeing someone else get their comeuppance (which may or may not be the word you were looking for). Is that something to be proud of? Certainly not, but neither should it be particularly shocking.

If you wanna wage a campaign against this, then you might as well start with the term "unicorn", which is itself subtly mocking; after all, unicorns aren't rare: they are non-existent. The root term implies the same thing that bothers you about the derived -corpse: these valuations are irrational, and a reckoning will be had.

That's something else entirely, it does not point at all start-ups. Anyway, I disagree with the 'unicorn' bullshit as much as anybody else, the whole idea that some start-ups are 'special' before they've actually reached the cashflow positive state is a troublesome development. The cycle of hype definitely could use some pushback but to label failed start-ups with a thinly veiled form of name-calling is imho not fair.

We'll make an exception for those start-ups that call themselves unicorns.

> It smacks of 'schadenfreude' (for which there is an English term but I can't remember it).

"Comeuppance," maybe? I don't take pleasure in the misery of others in general, but when smarmy hucksters are brought low, I can't help but feel a little twinge of satisfaction. It feels a bit like justice...

We have understood the same sentence in two different ways.

Such is the beauty of language, and the absurdity of communicating through it.

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