3 ms·

Yeah, because making death threats is just a "joke" right?

• tillinghast 11y ago
  Not necessarily in good taste, but… yes. At this time (1996) having an obvious overreaction like this would have appeared to be a joke.
• oldmanjay 11y ago
  It's not necessarily in good taste, and not necessarily universally funny, but yes, it's totally possible to make anything serious into a joke. The usual technique is to bring a lot of absurdity to the situation, which truthfully I didn't see in this post. On a personal (potentially explanatory) note, my first death threat came from a man aiming a loaded gun at my face. No joke was intended there! I think that experience has left me somewhat unable to manifest concern about threats that aren't backed up with firepower, which probably leaves me more open to seeing the humor.
  • rconti 11y ago
    I think it helps that it's not a direct threat to an actual person. The reader gets the feeling that the writer not only will not figure out who made the decision (and, therefore, who to kill), but also won't even bother trying to figure it out.
• Joeboy 11y ago
  I guess if they're just a joke, they're not really death threats. But I've seen lots of things worded like death threats, that were clearly jokes. Example: http://zedshaw.com/archive/programmers-need-to-learn-statistics-or-i-will-kill-them-all/ http://zedshaw.com/archive/programmers-need-to-learn-statist... That's a joke, isn't it?
  • GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
    Maybe there's a bit of a gap between 'I am going to kill a hypothetical person' and 'I am going to kill Raymond Chen'.
    • Joeboy 11y ago
      Yes, if Raymond Chen had been named in the feedback it would have looked more like a serious threat.