Offensiveness and the Subjectivity of Humor

Facebook had the audacity to tell me that I have been wasting my life on their site for 10 years.  In those 10 years, I have reconnected to many old friends, made new ones, found communities of like minded people and it helped me stay in touch with my family.  Those that have known me…REALLY KNOWN me since before social media have always known that my sense of humor has always dipped into the very dark and very blue area.  I blame my parents for that.  My dad has a typical “dad joke” sense of humor coupled with some very dark undertones.  My mom, she loved “working blue”.  She was the queen of the dirty joke.  For both of them, no subject was off limits.  And yes, that was mixed and stirred and fermented into my psyche after I had absorbed it through osmosis. My parents planted the seeds and I became that overrun weed. This past week, I have suddenly been attacked because I poked fun at some popstar OD'ing on heroin despite the years of putting thing up MUCH worse than that.  It is as if they don't even know me.

I have taken the philosophy that NOTHING is too sacred to poke fun at, including myself.  In fact, the more sacred it is viewed, the more I feel it needs to be poked at.  It can help open dialog about bad things, it can make awful things be reduced and viewed ridiculous and also weakened to those who support said awful things. It also can be cathartic in tragedy and so on.  Many people do this too.  Life is too short and too tragic to be taking it seriously all the time.  If you cannot laugh at things around you from time to time, you WILL find yourself miserable.  Now, are there some good to follow rules when making jokes about taboo subjects?  Yeah, for the most part, there is.  You should try to punch up and not down.  Self-deprecating humor also helps.  You should try to attack character and content and not what somebody physically is.  Even then, there are times it is ok to bend that. Being generally mean is not the goal.

Over the years, I have made a million jokes about a million bad things.  Some of it highbrow, some of it tackling the low hanging fruit and it all ranges from race, sex, sexism, sexual preference, gender identity, drugs, rape, tragedy, disabilities, death, pedophilia, body shaming and the list goes on.  I even make shock jokes too.  A joke that is intended to solely to get a rise out of people.  I do that to see people squirm and be uncomfortable.  It makes ME laugh to see somebody not be comfortable in what they just read or heard. These have their place in the world too but you should know your audience for that. Does this mean I actually believe in these jokes on how you should actually treat people?  No.  You have to be some sort of complete idiot if you do.  ACTIONS DO speak louder than words.

Here’s the thing, if you are easily offended, overly sensitive or what have you about any of this, that is ON YOU and not the joke teller.  If you do find yourself offended or triggered, it means you cannot control your emotions, you are probably not seeing the context and you probably have some issues that you need to sort out. Yeah, I may cross a line occasionally and not follow the rules I stated above, but know this, those are jokes and I will NEVER apologize for making them.  I shouldn’t have to.  Look at my character, my actions, how I actually treat people and you will see the real me.  I am not a perfect person but I will always try to be best person I can be in most situations. 

Nobody has time in this world to be triggered or offended by some taboo jokes.  If you are going to be triggered, offended, pissed off at something…do that against the people calling the police against a black family having a picnic in the park.  Be pissed off at the police violence against people of color.  Be triggered by those assholes that are trying to normalize racial bigotry.  Be angry at the politicians trying to legislate the female reproductive system when that has ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with running our government. Be offended that people like Jared of Subway for doing horrible things to children.  Be incensed by the monsters that are running Hollywood that been taking advantage of women for years.  Be intolerant of those that refuse to accept the responsibility of their actions when they put themselves in harm’s way by picking up that addictive substance for the first time but STILL KNOW that it could do harm. Get up in arms over that business that refused to do business with people of a different sexual preference than what their religious books claims is right. Be outraged by our government treating immigrants as animals.  These are things to be offended by.  Not some jokes about it. 

Now that I have explained that,  I have to get back to constructing a joke about a hungry Ethiopian child being raped by Harvey Weinstein and Jared along with Papa John cheering them on in the corner all after the child was caught and beaten by ICE while crossing the border with his belly filled with condoms full of cocaine by the drug lords that keep him as pack mule slave.