Personal setbacks can remain visible long after the event itself has passed, giving other people repeated opportunities to follow what happened next. MyIQ research suggests that failure has a particular ability to sustain that attention.
A mistake used to have a natural boundary: the meeting ended, the relationship moved on or the people involved stopped talking about it. Digital visibility has made that boundary less reliable. A setback can remain searchable, circulate between private conversations and public feeds, and return whenever there is a new development.
That environment gives other people’s failures an unusually long social life. In a MyIQ survey of 10,847 adults across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Latin America and the European Union, 63% said another person’s failure had held their attention more closely than that person’s success.
The behavior extended beyond well-known people. Respondents reported following setbacks involving former colleagues, acquaintances, friends and people they encountered online. 53% said other people’s mistakes had given them something to discuss with friends. 42% had continued following what happened to someone after losing interest in the incident that first attracted their attention.
The age difference was substantial. Among adults aged 18-34, 72% said they had followed another person’s failure more closely than their success, compared with 66% of those aged 35-44 and 56% of respondents aged 45 and over.
Country results were closer together. The figure reached 68% in the UK, followed by 64% in Australia, 63% in Latin America, 62% in the European Union, 61% in the US and 59% in Canada.
The survey also shows how attention can shift from the event to the person involved. 44% said they had tried to work out what someone else’s mistake revealed about that person’s personality or decisions. 47% said they were more likely to discuss why somebody had failed than why they had succeeded.
That interest often survived the first conversation. 31% of respondents had sent a friend an update about another person’s failure. 27% had deliberately checked back later to see what happened next, rising to 35% among adults aged 18-34.
“A setback can become useful to everyone watching while remaining deeply personal to the person living through it,” said Sarah Meyer, Managing Director of MyIQ. “Once someone else’s mistake starts functioning as a case study, the boundary between learning from it and consuming it becomes much harder to see.”
Success offers less of this unfinished material. A promotion or achievement usually arrives with the central question already answered. A failure can leave its causes unclear and its consequences unresolved. The MyIQ survey cannot establish why respondents find that uncertainty compelling, but their reported behavior shows that many continue looking for information after the original event has ceased to be their main interest.
This is where the idea of “vulture culture” becomes useful as a description of the attention surrounding failure. The survey does not show that people enjoy seeing others suffer. It does show that setbacks are discussed, interpreted, and revisited in ways that success often is not.
The sharpest contradiction appears in how respondents viewed the same attention when imagining themselves as its subject. 38% said they had discussed another person’s professional or personal failure despite knowing they would not want comparable scrutiny if the same thing happened to them.
About MyIQ:
MyIQ was launched in 2024 and is used by over a million individuals worldwide. It is a digital self-knowledge platform that offers more than an IQ score, with over 9 million completed tests across the various test categories: cognitive, personality, and relationships, all with personalised, actionable insights. The platform offers over 25 brain games, more than 150 intelligence puzzles, over 20 hours of expert video content, and 300+ available lessons on emotional intelligence, problem-solving, innovation, confidence-building, and decision-making. Through its IQ test, full-spectrum personality assessment, and relationship insight quiz, MyIQ delivers structured, personalized feedback that helps individuals better understand their inner world and behaviour.
MyIQ was launched in 2024 and is used by over a million individuals worldwide. It is a digital self-knowledge platform that offers more than an IQ score, with over 9 million completed tests across the various test categories: cognitive, personality, and relationships, all with personalised, actionable insights. The platform offers over 25 brain games, more than 150 intelligence puzzles, over 20 hours of expert video content, and 300+ available lessons on emotional intelligence, problem-solving, innovation, confidence-building, and decision-making. Through its IQ test, full-spectrum personality assessment, and relationship insight quiz, MyIQ delivers structured, personalized feedback that helps individuals better understand their inner world and behaviour.