The r/instantkarma subreddit has continued to grow by leaps and bounds since 2012. It went from 1.9 million members the last time that we wrote about the community to more than 2.3 million redditors now.

It seems like many people are fans of seeing justice being carried out, and awful, entitled, and arrogant people getting a taste of their own medicine. And, if we’re completely honest with ourselves, many of us enjoy that, too. Wouldn’t you agree, dear Pandas?

The joy that we get from seeing someone else failing or being humiliated is called schadenfreude. It almost perfectly describes how someone feels when a jerk gets humbled for being mean or doing something really awful.

It feels as though there actually is justice in the world, and that everything’s working as it should. However, it might not be divine retribution that we’re seeing, but a mathematical and statistical inevitability.

It makes sense that out of all the possible outcomes in any given situation, some of them happen sooner while others happen later. That, at least, explains the ‘Instant’ part of ‘Instant Karma.’ 

Furthermore, it’s only logical that many people would consider some of those possible outcomes to have a negative impact on the awful individuals who they feel should be punished. From a purely statistical standpoint, it’s practically inevitable that some jerks will get their comeuppance almost instantly, and that someone will be around to either take a picture or film what happened. 

Meanwhile, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that there are probably tons of situations where folks experienced karma, but nobody else was around to witness it. That’s not to mention all of those cases where justice took an incredibly long time to be carried out. Or all the cases where awful people didn’t have to deal with the consequences of their actions… or even ended up being rewarded.

Yes, it’s satisfying to see people getting what they deserve—whether for good or for ill—but we shouldn’t be naive to think that this happens all the time.

If it did, r/instantkarma probably wouldn’t exist as a community because instant karmic justice would simply be how the world works.

The ‘Instant Karma’ subreddit is successful because human beings have a need for closure and fairness. We want to see complex situations being resolved. And we crave clarity: we’d prefer to know that action A leads to consequence X, instead of having to swim around in a soup of chaos and uncertainty.

It can feel comfortable to believe in concepts like karma, fate, and luck because they help make sense of the world and make us feel like there’s clearly-defined order and structure in the world. These ideas can give you hope and optimism for a brighter future. However, these very same ideas can leave us feeling like we lack freedom and agency. People can simply shrug off responsibility for their actions, as they blame ‘bad luck.’

Believing in luck and fate is useless if you don’t put in the effort to move toward your goals. Previously, Bored Panda looked at how seeing yourself as a ‘victim’ of luck or fate should be avoided. For example, if we believe that bad luck ‘follows us around,’ we might start using that as an excuse not to try harder at school or work or at building our relationships with others. We tend to confirm our personal self-biases, as we look for evidence that would support our theories.

Yes, luck does play a role in our success. Without a doubt! However, attributing all of our achievements in life to luck and luck alone essentially means that we ignore the need to make good decisions, work hard, and take ownership of our actions. Why bother being a good person who takes the high road if all you really need is just a run of awesome luck to have everything you want to achieve? You can’t rely on luck and karma and fate to get to where you want to go. However, the mature thing to do is to be humble enough to recognize that we can’t control all of the outcomes of our actions. Alas!