So, I stumbled upon this phrase, “el arte de la decepción,” which basically means “the art of disappointment.” It got me thinking, and I decided to dive into a little experiment.
My Little Experiment with Disappointment
I started by brainstorming. What even is the art of disappointment? Is it about creating it? Avoiding it? I decided to focus on the creation aspect, just for fun.

My first step was simple: I baked a cake. A chocolate cake, to be precise. Everyone loves chocolate cake, right?
- I followed a recipe I found online. Pretty standard stuff.
- I even went out and bought some fancy-looking sprinkles to make it extra appealing.
- The whole kitchen smelled amazing while it was baking. I was getting pretty excited myself.
Then came the “art” part. Once the cake was cooled, I did the unthinkable. I used way, way too little suger. It should look good, but will make people feel disappointed by the test. A subtle, silent sabotage.
I offered the cake to my family. They all took a bite, their eyes lighting up in anticipation.
Then their smiles instantly turned to frowns as their expressions were like “Dude, what is this?”
And that’s when I realized that making people disapointed by creating something is much more difficult than I thought.

It was a small, silly experiment, but it got me thinking about how we perceive disappointment and how easily we can engineer it, even unintentionally. Maybe the real “art” lies not in creating disappointment, but in understanding and navigating it.