#metacommedy of errors

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what do you find funny? “things that aren’t racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted.” okay, but what do you find funny? “things that don’t punch down, that aren’t mean-spirited.” that doesn’t answer the question—i didn’t ask what you don’t find funny. “things that aren’t unfunny/unkind.” so what do you find funny?

you can define yourself wholly in the negatives, but always remember that whatever you’re against you’re about.

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“bigoted humor is categorically unfunny” is a different statement than “whether or not something is funny is irrelevant to whether it is moral.” this is what punching up/down/back/side language fails to account for. the aristocrats!

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way i see it, anything can be funny if the joke is executed with enough skill. yes even That. but the more sensitive the topic, the more difficult it is to land the joke—the landing is possible but you’ll need to do a triple aerial flip to get there.

anything is permissible so long as it is funny, and on that we can never agree

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I like your blog and have followed for a long time, and I am wondering if maybe you are being a little bit too defensive over someone being a little obnoxious while making a valid point about a kinda shitty joke. "Punching down" is bad philosophy but I don't think there's nothing to be said about these kinds of jokes targeting a vulnerable group of people in a genuinely meanspirited way, and it feels as if you're so focused on the tone of that person's message that you don't want to engage with the critique at all. It's just a bit surprising to see on your blog.

i appreciate that, and i’m happy to explain my position in greater depth—the short of it is that ‘punching up’/‘punching down’ discourse fails to actually engage with jokes that target vulnerable groups in meanspirited ways, and jokes that ‘speak truth to power.’

‘punching up’ is often ‘punching sideways’ or even ‘punching down’ in practice. that’s the thing about a punch—it is hard to aim a fist. i’m not going to pretend this isn’t a bit personal; so many antisemitic jokes get accepted because the speaker claims to be punching up, because that particular prejudice cloaks itself in the language of speaking truth to power. people in general are not good at recognizing this.

i also think moralizing about humor misrepresents the nature of both comedy and morality. to your point, i think jokes about sensitive subjects need to be executed extremely well to be funny. the bar isn’t that high when the humor is innocuous.

as to that particular asshole, they were being more than a bit obnoxious to several people who were making perfectly innocent jokes. the post where i first engaged with them was not so innocuous, but i was annoyed that they claimed to have the moral high ground when their whole gimmick is finding popular text posts and going “hmm mid” for no reason. you keep that to yourself or you screenshot it without the OP’s url on your private blog so they don’t get dogpiled/you don’t add to the headache which is a viral post. you don’t dish what you can’t take, and all that.

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i don’t even need a world in which more people are smart. I just need them to be wittier if they’re going to stand on a high horse