What word means "the feeling of discomfort caused by watching people's ineptitude"? [duplicate]
vicarious embarrassment
The very uncomfortable sympathetic feeling experienced while you watch someone else embarrassing themselves. This feeling is often intensified when the person embarrassing themself is not aware of how embarrassing their behavior is. In this case it is more like you are feeling the embarrassment on their behalf.
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The Opposite Of Schadenfreude: Vicarious Embarrassment
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Vicarious Embarrassment: Witnessing Awkward Moments Triggers Pain Centers In The Brain
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Your Flaws Are My Pain: Linking Empathy To Vicarious Embarrassment
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Validation and correlates of the vicarious embarrassment scale
Facepalm (slang) is another possible translation of the import term (from German) fremdschämen.
A German term which describes the process of being vicariously embarrassed by someone else. For example when somebody's concept for a great party gag goes terrible wrong and you watch him fail in the middle of all of his friends. Tom was completely wasted while he held the speech on Mike's wedding party. Fremdschämen in perfection.
urban dictionary
“Fremdschämen describes the almost-horror you feel when you notice that somebody is oblivious to how embarrassing they truly are,” writes Daniel Hawes in Psychology Today. “Fremdscham [the noun] occurs when someone who should feel embarrassed for themselves simply is not, and you start feeling embarrassment in their place.”
... the auditions for American Idol and all of the related rip-offs are Fremdschämen factories,
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/369402/how-do-you-solve-problem-wendy-jonah-goldberg
Alo's suggestion of 'cringeworthy' is also very valid.
More generally, here in the UK we sometimes talk about 'car crash' or 'train crash' TV. In the US they call it a "train wreck".
I quite like cringeworthy to describe this.
I feel it on a weekly basis watching The Apprentice but keep coming back for more!
For example "James singing nursery rhymes on the coach was so cringeworthy".
From MW
so embarrassing, awkward, or upsetting as to cause one to cringe
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cringeworthy
The other answers offer good, technically-correct answers, but I wouldn't use any of those in everyday conversation to express the exact idea you want. There is a phrase, however, I find is used quite often in normal conversation: to feel embarrassed for someone, i.e. when someone makes a fool of themselves (especially during a public performance or appearance) you feel embarrassed for them.
It might mean you "feel the embarrassment they are or should be feeling", in other words a sort of empathetic embarrassment. Or it might have a more personal meaning: you "feel embarrassed for being a member of the same species".