"Lighten up, it's only a joke."

Discussion in 'Debate Corner' started by Ars Nova, May 1, 2014.

  1. Ars Nova Just a ghost.

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    OR IS IT?

    ok, DISCLAIMER BEFORE ANYONE BITES MY HEAD OFF: First off, tw rape culture talk for that link. Second, THAT IS NOT NECESSARILY WHAT I WANT TO TALK ABOUT HERE. Let me zoom in on the part I DO want to talk about:

    And there are references and ext. links all throughout that article, if anyone's interested in fact-checking for themselves of learning more. tl;dr comedy can pretty much brainwash you under the right circumstances. So maybe we should be more careful with it? What do y'all think?

    My first argument against this mentality is, similarly to the article, if someone takes issue with your joke then that's one less person who laughed at it; so it's not only a joke, it's an inferior one. You could do better. And the second is, well, we can't say these things cause negativity but if we're to follow this train of thought then it's absolutely a contributing factor. And I think anyone feeling reasonable will admit that. It's not the cause, but it does compound the problem.

    The issue is that conceding either one of those points—that it's not the cause for one side or that it contributes for the other—usually gets you yelled at, threatened, and called dirty names. You kinda get forced to pick a side, when neither side benefits from turning it into a war. So where do you stand? Are you firmly on a side, or do you see points from each camp? Or do you think they're all blathering idiots?
     
  2. Patman Bof

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    Those points aren' t mutually exclusive.

    Unless you' re in awful company that kind of jokes only work when they' re based on the mutual understanding that you don' t mean a word of them. So yeah, in that case I don' t mind them. I' m pretty sure blithering idiots don' t need any "validation" from me or anyone else to remain blithering idiots.