There is a German word for what Germany did to Brazil yesterday. Schadenfreude. It means to derive pleasure through the misfortunes of others. Sounds about right.

Adding insult to industry, as if losing on their own home turf as favorites was bad enough, early TV estimates show that it was the most viewed game in the World Cup tournament so far. Think about that for a second. Think about how many people all concurrently viewed the same thing all at once. Not only a lot of shock and awe being shared, but thats a pretty far out cathartic experience all happening at the same time.

I mean if you think about it, FIFA estimated that at least 1 BILLION people watched the 2010 World Cup Final game alone. In a world that has 7 billion people, thats every 1 in 7 people watching the game. That has got to be the biggest showing in record history. Fast forward four years and the global growth of devices, smartphones, tablets, etc etc are everywhere. I’m no genius, but I think the number of viewers this year will far surpass the previous record, maybe even 2 BILLION viewers. Betting on that now – sheer scale.

From another perspective, this by and far has to be one of the largest global audiences concurrently watching a match. I don’t think even governments could ever fathom such an accomplishment. It reminds me of the movie Joe Dirt. It’s about a saddened redneck played by David Spade, who literally lost his family (they forgot about him at the Grand Canyon) at a young and tender age. To remind himself that his family was still out there, he would tell himself that whenever he felt lonely, he would just look at the moon and know his family was looking at the same one too. That is what watching the game was like. We were all watching in real-time, second by every painful second, the same exact seven goals scored at the same exact time across time zones and 25,000 miles. Thats pretty rad.

The effect also reverberated on Twitter. The whooping of Brazil was the single most tweeted about game EVER with over 35 million tweets, surpassing the 2013 Super Bowl at 24.9 million during the game. Not to mention the memes, yes, the memes. In the words of Borat, “Very Nice.”

What I’m trying to get at here is:

1. This was the most watched public display of shaming that’s been broadcasted for the world to see.

2. Mobile devices not only increased viewership but enabled the whole world to engage in the onslaught like never before. Developing countries benefitted most from inexpensive mobile devices that onboarded internet viewers at its fastest rate ever.

3. The world has never been more global and connected before – we all felt really really bad for Brazil together.

Prost.