Sadism

So, I've been watching some MSP youtube video's lately, and they have a lot of sadistic things in them. Is it normal for me to be feeling slightly sadistic now?

No. You are totally abnormal and genuinely disturbed, and you should rush to your nearest psychiatrist and ask to be given large volumes of psychoactive medications to bring your shocking deviance under control. :-J

Ah. Well, what about the truth? I'm feeling veeerry sadistic right now.

The way I see it, there are varying levels of sadism. The lowest level, which I and I would guess a fair number of writers are at, is when you enjoy seeing fictional characters in pain and emotional distress. A step up from that is laughing when other people get hurt, which... is unfortunately very common in our society: Look at the number of horribly painful things people laugh at on Youtube. Another step up, you want to inflict pain on people yourself, but are okay with sticking to people who want to have pain inflicted on them. That's not normal, per se, but there are enough people like that and who fill the opposite role that you can lead a totally healthy life that way. A "true" sadist is one who wants to inflict pain on others and will only enjoy it if they don't. If you're at that level... get help. Anywhere below that and you're probably fine.

If you want one way to find out if you are a sadist, look at all of Batman's enemies (particularly the likes of Joker and Penguin). If you see at least one of them as your idol, then you are a sadist.

All joking aside, if you laugh at some random person who is in pain, then yeah, you probably are a sadist.

Alright. Thanks for all the advice. I'll try to keep my sadism in my writings alone.

Well, if you ask me, this Nano stuff is all S&M. Those that participate by writing are the M's, and those that spend more time in the forums are S's. But seriously, there is a difference between those that watch and those that do. If you could never do it yourself but are somehow drawn to watch someone else do it I'm not sure you would be a real Sadist. Call it morbid curiosity perhaps. Just like folks who don't like looking at dead bodies but stop at an accident scene to see if there are any. So if you are someone who gets the subliminal message and after viewing Sadistic content want to go out and practice it yourself, you just might be a Sadist. But if you only want to look you are probably only some sort of creepy perverted voyeur.

I might point out that if you enjoy Gilbert and Sullivan then you are a fan of things sadistic - that should include a substantial percentage of the English speaking population.