Topic Of The Day: What Is Vicarious Pleasure?🧐🕵🏾‍♀️

Hello, we’re in February and I’m back with the first blog post of the month🙌🏾

I was thinking on the way to my local supermarket, about Fifty Shades Freed coming out next week. I’ve watched the first film and I was wondering why it’s inciting. That took me on to my next thought, it must be something to do with vicarious pleasure. I decided to look into it more. There isn’t much on the internet about it. The topic interested me and got me thinking about certain aspects of my life.

Here is the accurate definition of vicarious pleasure (Vicarious Pleasure Definition (website cited): “Vicarious pleasure is the pleasure you get not by you doing something but by watching or reading about someone else doing it. For example, you cannot play a game, but someone close to you plays it well”.

So, essentially you get excited from seeing someone else participate or do something , as if it’s happening to you directly. The whole concept is strange, because it raises the subject on how that is possible. For example, you can see someone eating pizza and  you can understand how good the pizza must be. You get pleasure that way, because you’re aware of how nice it taste, even when you’re not eating yourself. This is one way to describe vicarious pleasure. In this circumstance you’re ‘imaginarily’ eating the pizza too.

Back on the topic of Fifty Shades Freed, hopefully you know of Fifty Shades of Grey; it’s a highly sexualised film. It follows the story of Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele. I’d suggest googling the film, because I don’t wish to go in too much details about it. I’ve heard mixed reviews about it, but after watching the film. I can understand why it appealed to so many people. The film represents the forbidden fruit. It is something you want, but you can’t touch or couldn’t even imagine taking part in. Another way it does it, is by bringing out the sexual energy unexpectedly within you. I don’t know whether this is done on purpose or that’s just how your body responses to what you’re seeing and hearing in front of you. Either way, the film was made to provoke some sort of reaction or emotion out of you. This is another example of vicarious pleasure.

Finally, you can gain vicarious pleasure through any activity. You can get from going to a performance; seeing your favorite artists perform on stage or listening to music. It is being in the atmosphere and seeing how everything fits together to provide a good show. You gain vicarious pleasure from seeing others enjoy themselves and how the artists behave, whilst showcasing their music. Consequently, as in the definition, even if you can’t do what they do, you gain pleasure from seeing the importance of it to them and their ability to do the activity.

I know this was a random topic, but I wanted to write out on it to get it out of my brain LOL.

Thank you for reading this post☺️

Feel free to share your views and comments on vicarious pleasure in the section below👇🏾

Yours sincerely,

Chanda D

Image source: The Independent