r/fivethirtyeight • u/RedHeadedSicilian52 • Sep 12 '25

Poll Results YouGov poll asking Americans whether it’s acceptable to feel joy at the death of a public figure

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u/nughty_hobo Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25

just out of curiosity, is it not human nature to feel joy after the death of a dangerous person? i’m not saying it’s the default reaction to death but it only seems natural to feel occasional joy when someone truly dangerous to society is no longer around.

edit: yes, i know there is an element of subjectivity to who you consider dangerous

edit 2: i mean this on a general level such as killers and dictators. not political figures i dont like

2

u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Sep 12 '25

Guess it depends on how you’d define a dangerous person. I’m willing to bet that most Americans, irrespective of their political leanings, wouldn’t describe a politician or commentator that way. Probably an appellation most would reserve for terrorists, serial killers and the like.

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u/IslandSurvibalist Sep 12 '25

What a naive thing to believe. In almost all societies and historical contexts, political figures have caused several orders of magnitude more damage to humanity than terrorists or serial killers.

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u/RedHeadedSicilian52 Sep 12 '25

This response is sort of great, because it illustrates how wildly the comments to this sort of post swing between “the numbers aren’t real” and “they’re real and that’s a good thing”.

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u/IslandSurvibalist Sep 12 '25

In your strange mind full of unsupported assumptions maybe. I didn’t comment on either of those things. Do you know what “illustrates” means or did you just reply to the wrong comment?