Jokes about school shootings are jokes about America and its priorities. The punchline is America and its ruthless protection of firearms, not dead kids.
Jokes about obesity are jokes about a person and their weight. They’re the subject and the punchline and there is no meaningful observation other than “I find them repulsive.”
I mean we’re kind of talking about two things here. We are talking about our own philosophies about comedy, and we are also talking about the general culture of the site. I think we’re both getting a little twisted up in the Venn diagram, but they are definitely very distinct.
As far as the culture of the site goes: sure, of course it is inconsistent with some trends holding. There are a lot of people here, different people are on a different times, etc. There isn’t a whole lot we can do about it.
As far as the larger discussion about comedy, it’s just boils down to punching up vs punching down, and who is the subject of your critique. Could you say the SpongeBob thing was tasteless? Sure. But again, it’s not really “ha ha kids are dead.“ I think you would have to look into some pretty dark corners of the Internet to find that (like anti-natalist groups). The general sentiment is “America doesn’t care about children. They care about guns.“
I think the big issue is that joking about school shootings is satirical to bring up how common it is in hopes to change it, while joking about fat people is just to be mean. No one is going to change because you made fun of them, in fact it might make the problem worse as state of mind is a factor in being unhealthy.
You could probably make the same argument about abortion jokes being satirical, but I don’t think abortion jokes are made in order to enact social change. It’s usually just to be offensive. Satire is usually used to point out how ridiculous something is, the hope is that we as a society will see it and do something about it.
You can be offensive and funny at the same time. But it’s an extremely fine line, and difficult to pull off. Watch Jimmy Carr if you want to see it done properly.
Removed by mod
Jokes about school shootings are jokes about America and its priorities. The punchline is America and its ruthless protection of firearms, not dead kids.
Jokes about obesity are jokes about a person and their weight. They’re the subject and the punchline and there is no meaningful observation other than “I find them repulsive.”
Removed by mod
I mean we’re kind of talking about two things here. We are talking about our own philosophies about comedy, and we are also talking about the general culture of the site. I think we’re both getting a little twisted up in the Venn diagram, but they are definitely very distinct.
As far as the culture of the site goes: sure, of course it is inconsistent with some trends holding. There are a lot of people here, different people are on a different times, etc. There isn’t a whole lot we can do about it.
As far as the larger discussion about comedy, it’s just boils down to punching up vs punching down, and who is the subject of your critique. Could you say the SpongeBob thing was tasteless? Sure. But again, it’s not really “ha ha kids are dead.“ I think you would have to look into some pretty dark corners of the Internet to find that (like anti-natalist groups). The general sentiment is “America doesn’t care about children. They care about guns.“
I think the big issue is that joking about school shootings is satirical to bring up how common it is in hopes to change it, while joking about fat people is just to be mean. No one is going to change because you made fun of them, in fact it might make the problem worse as state of mind is a factor in being unhealthy.
You could probably make the same argument about abortion jokes being satirical, but I don’t think abortion jokes are made in order to enact social change. It’s usually just to be offensive. Satire is usually used to point out how ridiculous something is, the hope is that we as a society will see it and do something about it.
You can be offensive and funny at the same time. But it’s an extremely fine line, and difficult to pull off. Watch Jimmy Carr if you want to see it done properly.