Zeitgeist

The term zeitgeist is one of those fancy German exports people like to drop in conversation to sound intellectual.

But here’s the kicker—it’s not even real. Sure, philosophers like Herder and Hegel liked to play with it, but nobody walks around Germany saying, “Ah, the zeitgeist is strong today!” It’s a construct, a way for intellectuals to slap a label on the mood of the times, like calling the 1980s “big hair and bad decisions.”
And if zeitgeist didn’t already sound pretentious enough, there’s always someone ready to misuse it in a meeting about quarterly sales. Spoiler: no PowerPoint ever captured the spirit of the times.

More bad Decisions

Which brings us to Gunther, an eccentric local musician who saw the term zeitgeist and thought, “Band name!” Thus, Schadenfreude and the Zeitgeists was born—a postmodern polka-punk band with a penchant for ironic lyrics and accordion solos.

Gunther swears the name reflects “the existential tension between joy in others’ failure and the prevailing cultural ethos", but really, it’s just a great excuse to wear lederhosen on stage. Tragically, the band never quite caught the zeitgeist of their own era, and their debut album Spiritual Despair and Schnitzel flopped harder than Gunther’s attempt at a mohawk.

Turns out, shouting zeitgeist at a concert feels less like rebellion and more like failing a philosophy exam.