Is a hated person more engaging than the nice one?

I really forgot where I got this interesting quote, which, overall, says, “In life, you have to choose what to be, either a good example or a bad one.” So, my point is that we often talk about someone behind their back. And you know what we would do that: Because they are a bad person. Bad as in someone who tends to annoy us, be it in a friend’s circle, work environment, or whatever. 

In my case, I worked with someone who apparently was my direct supervisor. He’s a family man. Living a decent, happy life with his good wife and two happy children. There’s nothing wrong with him at a glance. But when you know him in terms of working together. He’s totally a bad person. 

Here, I really don’t want to elaborate too much on how his traits really annoy the entire team he supervised. But let me spoil a little bit, what are the characteristics he has that make him considered a bad person:

​Never comes up with a clear direction.
He tends to disagree with all the ideas the team brings to him, but he never offers any clues or solutions for improving them. That leaves the team completely clueless about what to do. Usually, it ends up causing extreme overtime.


The hilarious part is that when he wakes up in the morning and asks about the work progress, he can easily change his mind and reject everything the team worked on all night. That forces them to start over. Wtf.

Everything done by the team will be owned by him as if it were his.
But as the time went by, I was like “Fuck. I think there’s something wrong with him. This person is a self-centred ass shit, think. Or, by today's generation, he would be considered an NPD guy. How long would I be able to stand with this kind of person? Shit.”

He’s so easy to scream or wack his own team in front of the forum.
Which is a total red flag to me. Thank god he never did that to me. And I don’t know if there’s any stimulation or self-satisfaction when he does that. Lol.

I think that’s enough. And I ended up quite elaborating a lot here.

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Again, my point for this journal is not about to talk badly about him. What I want to say is, why do people still talking about him? (whenever I hang out with his team, the main course of our conversation will always about this person) Which makes me questioning my self “Is hated person is more engaging than the good one?”

That's why we love spending time or putting effort into having a kind of discourse about a bad or hated person in our circle.

#1 Are being good boring?
Somehow, I always think that maybe we have a tendency, or even we are wired, to love to face some challenges in life. Because being boring is just too safe, perhaps? So we need an "enemy" we can face together, or at least enjoy it, even though it always discomforts us. That's why maybe we need something that has contrast, which is necessary for us to grow, or at least to learn not to become a bad person. 

#2 Bad person existence is more realistic? 
I see this as the same as how the world runs in my life. Good things, somehow, are too good to be true. The news always reports bad news. Even in this modern society, some live in famine, yet we don't give a single fuck about them. Unless social media forces it into our feed. And even then, all we do is press "like" and move on.

#3 Bad person triggers our self-defense mechanism?
Maybe our tendency to talk behind this person’s back, make fun of him, or complain about him is actually a way for us to survive. Almost like a coping mechanism.
Instead of facing the situation directly or solving the real problem, we release the tension through conversation. Maybe it even gives us a small dopamine hit — a temporary calm — without having to confront what’s really happening.

#4 Or, are we innately a bad person? 
Maybe it feels relatable on some level. Even if it makes us uncomfortable, there’s still something familiar about it.
And maybe that’s the scary part: perhaps we recognize that, if we were in a position of power or superiority, we might end up doing the same things this “bad person” does.

We just don't know yet how good it is to be an asshole to others.

#5 Good thing/person is lack of depth in life
It never lets us to learn. It tends to pamper and indulge us. So our self-awareness or survival instinct is getting lack. That's why maybe god put so many assholes to the world. So, at least, we can learn and don't become one.