Quote:
Originally Posted by slayda
I believe Harry hit it square on. And based on that, I don't think there is any joke that could be told on MR that would not be considered by someone in the MR audience as in bad taste. This audience is just too diverse.
I had a "Diversity Awareness" instructor tell me that you shouldn't tell a joke that was derogatory to anyone. That left no jokes to tell. Even a joke on oneself is derogatory to yourself so couldn't be told under that requirement.
A friend asked me once what made a joke good. After thinking about it I decided there were three things required; - It had to get and keep your interest
- When the punch line came, you had to get it instantly but not see it coming.
- The joke needed to be just a little taboo but not too much or the audience would be offended. What we tend to laugh at usually has a slight embarassing aspect to it, whether it's bathroom humor, dead person humor, racest or sexest humor, religous humor, etc. Otherwise there would be no interest.
This pretty much dictates that audiences be culturally very similar to each other. Other threads have alteady shown the MR community to be culturally diverse.
Just my opinion (but I agree with the Blue Lady on the Simpsons - it's too taboo [i.e. course] for me.) |
I like the moderation in your language.
I haven't commented on
The Simpsons, but I'm one of those people who just LOVE the sense of humor on that series.
What I find interesting about this (among other things), is the diversity of a community's sense of humor, precisely tagged by you - because of our diversity.
This is all very interesting to me. Interestingly, because of my humorous CHAT contributions, I've been called a supporter of domestic violence, which I find immensely humorous - the accusation, I mean. I once taught a
Stephen King seminar and one of the books I used was
Rose Madder. We discussed the idea of domestic violence - a horrible horrible thing in this book, but one used for artistic expression, storyline, and character development. My point here, in this paragraph, is to dismiss the accusation (which was given to me sarcastically, by the way).
I certainly don't support domestic violence; I think reasonable people understand this - especially reasonable people who know me. It's interesting how we all express puzzlement, anger, and other emotions on the web when we encounter something we dislike having been written or expressed.
Don