8 ms·

The repeated joke about killing your ex-girlfriend did not age well.

by wetmore 6y ago

itsajoke 6y ago
That was supposed to be a joke!? I don't think Hans Reiser got that it was a joke either.
oh_sigh 6y ago
I doubt it landed well in the early 2000s either
RandyRanderson 6y ago
"did not age well" - that's ageism and I'm offended.
gherig4 6y ago
What's wrong with it?
- umvi 6y ago
  It's no longer vogue to joke about murdering women
  - stormdennis 6y ago
    It's practically suicidal.
  - mewpmewp2 6y ago
    Joking about murdering men on the other hand is cool, so we can just direct our humor sense a bit.
ianmcgowan 6y ago
I think the same thing every time reading this otherwise-excellent post. I don't think we should attempt to erase history, but it is super jarring, at least for me. Was it ever actually funny?
- stormdennis 6y ago
  Is there somewhere you can check what is or isn't funny?
  - pfarrell 6y ago
    Everybody nowadays is inplementing HumorSensorFactoryFactory to define their own rules for what’s inbounds.
    - ivalm 6y ago
      No, real people use EmotionSensorFactoryFactoryFactory. Why limit yourself only to HumorSensorFactory objects?
      - ljm 6y ago
        You really need the MaybeEmotionSensorFactoryFactoryFactory to avoid getting NullPointerExceptions when applying to psychopaths. An AbstractEmotionSensorSensorFactory would be required to unwrap that.
        goatlover 6y ago
        Java really did a number on the respectability of OOP, but at least it's good for learning and laughs.
  - newsbinator 6y ago
    There is, but the spec changes every 3 ~ 12 months, so you have to keep rechecking and going back to edit.
- danielscrubs 6y ago
  I think it depends on how absurd you think it is. But it is in line with the absurdity of a factory factory and adds to the setting of "why would a developer ever extend the tool to that?" that is at least a common thought for me. But I recently saw "Dont Fck With Cats" on Netflix and if had been a joke about animals I'd also been jared (because in my mind it would no longer be absurd). So I guess it depends on what media makes us fearful off right now.
ngngngng 6y ago
I hope, one day, that we look back on the "woke" over-analysis of the last few years and say "That didn't age well."
- finnthehuman 6y ago
  This too shall pass.
  - ngngngng 6y ago
    I don't have as much faith as you. I believe being "woke" is one of many things filling a void left behind by religion as more and more people find that void needing to be filled. I can't see that changing anytime soon.
- DougBTX 6y ago
  It feels increasingly odd to work in exclusively male teams when there is no obvious biological reason why that would be. Possibly the casual “kill the ex-girlfriend” jokes contribute to that. I mean, some people really think like that, so it isn’t a purely innocent joke.
- suzzer99 6y ago
  You mean like the Honeymooners where Ralph Kramden's running joke was that he was going to cold-cock his wife? Or do we not want to go back that far?
- GuiA 6y ago
  Dark humor is just not professional, and many people expect the content they interact with on HN to be professional in tone.
setzer22 6y ago
I don't think that's ever been funny. What's that, standup comedy for psychos? It's that kind of joke that at best will make you look like a moron and ruin the mood... It's especially sad since the post is otherwise interesting.
- teddyh 6y ago
  > What's that, standup comedy for psychos? You’ve got it backwards. No “psycho” would consider it funny; they would just consider murder something normal one could conceivably do with a hammer. There is nothing funny about it, to them; it’s just normal. The murder joke was only funny to those people who consider murder something utterly unthinkable. It is its very outlandishness which creates the humor. If it is no longer considered funny today, it can mean a few things: Either more people now believe that there are more “psychos” than they thought previously, or an extraordinary number of people have turned into “psychos”. Or possibly both.
  - mperham 6y ago
    There are lots of edgy, ironic white supremacists these days. Masking aggression with humor is an age-old tactic.
    - teddyh 6y ago
      You can only mask outrageous things as humor if they are so utterly outrageous as to be virtually unthinkable. If they become only slightly plausible, they become no longer funny. Therefore, if jokes about murder are no longer funny, it’s because people no longer believe that murder is as likely to be unthinkable as it used to be. This is why I think that masking outrageous things as humor is a losing strategy. Either it is funny, in which case the thing being masked with humor is so outrageous as to be completely niche, making the secret signal irrelevant, since so few people recieve it. Or, the thing is such a relatively common stance to make it no longer absolutely unthinkable, which makes it no longer funny, which removes the mask. (Also, how do “white supremacists” fit into this? The original joke was about murdering an ex-girlfriend. This might possibly be generalized into misogyny, but I fail to see the connection to white supremacy. Please don’t fall into thinking that all people who hold opinions which you don’t like also hold all other opinions which you don’t like.)
overgard 6y ago
Pretty sure murder was taboo back then also. The only difference is people are much more eager to virtue signal these days by finding offence wherever they can.. Edit: to explain my position a bit, what I observe with people that are easily offended is that they can't seem to separate what the character is saying from what the overall piece is saying. Just for example, think of The Office. Michael Scott says a lot of horribly sexist and homophobic stuff right? And we as the audience frequently laugh at it. But I don't think anyone in their right mind would say that The Office is sexist or that the audience that watches it is. Because we understand that the humor is that Michael Scott is saying something really inappropriate but he's also clueless and naive. In this piece, the salesman character makes a dark joke. That is part of the character of the salesman, along with other aspects that are revealed. If you personally don't find it funny -- maybe you just don't like dark humor -- hey, I won't tell you you're wrong, humor is always subjective, but I don't see anything offensive about this. It's not advocating for violence it's simply adding a weird dark personality quirk to an already very weird character. What I find with the easily offended crowd is all they look for is "bad thing involving a protected group in here? OFFENSIVE!" and completely ignore the actual context of everything else. It'd be like if you took a "that's what she said!" joke from The Office and completely ignored the context of Michael Scott's character.
avl999 6y ago
The interesting thing is that Joel is actually gay so he probably specifically went out of his way to not offend the sensibilities of his readers and the culture at large at that time by using "girlfried" as opposed to "partner". Moreover dark humor has its place. Indeed 2 of the biggest comedies of the last 20 years used exactly this kind of humor (Seinfeld and The Office). Even to this day some of the most acclaimed comedies have humor in this vein (Veep and Curb Your Enthusiasm for eg).

The repeated joke about killing your ex-girlfriend did not age well.

itsajoke 6y ago

That was supposed to be a joke!? I don't think Hans Reiser got that it was a joke either.

oh_sigh 6y ago

I doubt it landed well in the early 2000s either

RandyRanderson 6y ago

"did not age well" - that's ageism and I'm offended.

gherig4 6y ago

What's wrong with it?

umvi 6y ago
It's no longer vogue to joke about murdering women
- stormdennis 6y ago
  It's practically suicidal.
- mewpmewp2 6y ago
  Joking about murdering men on the other hand is cool, so we can just direct our humor sense a bit.

ianmcgowan 6y ago

I think the same thing every time reading this otherwise-excellent post. I don't think we should attempt to erase history, but it is super jarring, at least for me. Was it ever actually funny?

stormdennis 6y ago
Is there somewhere you can check what is or isn't funny?
- pfarrell 6y ago
  Everybody nowadays is inplementing HumorSensorFactoryFactory to define their own rules for what’s inbounds.
  - ivalm 6y ago
    No, real people use EmotionSensorFactoryFactoryFactory. Why limit yourself only to HumorSensorFactory objects?
    - ljm 6y ago
      You really need the MaybeEmotionSensorFactoryFactoryFactory to avoid getting NullPointerExceptions when applying to psychopaths. An AbstractEmotionSensorSensorFactory would be required to unwrap that.
      - goatlover 6y ago
        Java really did a number on the respectability of OOP, but at least it's good for learning and laughs.
- newsbinator 6y ago
  There is, but the spec changes every 3 ~ 12 months, so you have to keep rechecking and going back to edit.
danielscrubs 6y ago
I think it depends on how absurd you think it is. But it is in line with the absurdity of a factory factory and adds to the setting of "why would a developer ever extend the tool to that?" that is at least a common thought for me. But I recently saw "Dont Fck With Cats" on Netflix and if had been a joke about animals I'd also been jared (because in my mind it would no longer be absurd). So I guess it depends on what media makes us fearful off right now.

ngngngng 6y ago

I hope, one day, that we look back on the "woke" over-analysis of the last few years and say "That didn't age well."

finnthehuman 6y ago
This too shall pass.
- ngngngng 6y ago
  I don't have as much faith as you. I believe being "woke" is one of many things filling a void left behind by religion as more and more people find that void needing to be filled. I can't see that changing anytime soon.
DougBTX 6y ago
It feels increasingly odd to work in exclusively male teams when there is no obvious biological reason why that would be. Possibly the casual “kill the ex-girlfriend” jokes contribute to that. I mean, some people really think like that, so it isn’t a purely innocent joke.
suzzer99 6y ago
You mean like the Honeymooners where Ralph Kramden's running joke was that he was going to cold-cock his wife? Or do we not want to go back that far?
GuiA 6y ago
Dark humor is just not professional, and many people expect the content they interact with on HN to be professional in tone.

setzer22 6y ago

I don't think that's ever been funny. What's that, standup comedy for psychos? It's that kind of joke that at best will make you look like a moron and ruin the mood... It's especially sad since the post is otherwise interesting.

teddyh 6y ago
> What's that, standup comedy for psychos? You’ve got it backwards. No “psycho” would consider it funny; they would just consider murder something normal one could conceivably do with a hammer. There is nothing funny about it, to them; it’s just normal. The murder joke was only funny to those people who consider murder something utterly unthinkable. It is its very outlandishness which creates the humor. If it is no longer considered funny today, it can mean a few things: Either more people now believe that there are more “psychos” than they thought previously, or an extraordinary number of people have turned into “psychos”. Or possibly both.
- mperham 6y ago
  There are lots of edgy, ironic white supremacists these days. Masking aggression with humor is an age-old tactic.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    You can only mask outrageous things as humor if they are so utterly outrageous as to be virtually unthinkable. If they become only slightly plausible, they become no longer funny. Therefore, if jokes about murder are no longer funny, it’s because people no longer believe that murder is as likely to be unthinkable as it used to be. This is why I think that masking outrageous things as humor is a losing strategy. Either it is funny, in which case the thing being masked with humor is so outrageous as to be completely niche, making the secret signal irrelevant, since so few people recieve it. Or, the thing is such a relatively common stance to make it no longer absolutely unthinkable, which makes it no longer funny, which removes the mask. (Also, how do “white supremacists” fit into this? The original joke was about murdering an ex-girlfriend. This might possibly be generalized into misogyny, but I fail to see the connection to white supremacy. Please don’t fall into thinking that all people who hold opinions which you don’t like also hold all other opinions which you don’t like.)

overgard 6y ago

Pretty sure murder was taboo back then also. The only difference is people are much more eager to virtue signal these days by finding offence wherever they can.. Edit: to explain my position a bit, what I observe with people that are easily offended is that they can't seem to separate what the character is saying from what the overall piece is saying. Just for example, think of The Office. Michael Scott says a lot of horribly sexist and homophobic stuff right? And we as the audience frequently laugh at it. But I don't think anyone in their right mind would say that The Office is sexist or that the audience that watches it is. Because we understand that the humor is that Michael Scott is saying something really inappropriate but he's also clueless and naive. In this piece, the salesman character makes a dark joke. That is part of the character of the salesman, along with other aspects that are revealed. If you personally don't find it funny -- maybe you just don't like dark humor -- hey, I won't tell you you're wrong, humor is always subjective, but I don't see anything offensive about this. It's not advocating for violence it's simply adding a weird dark personality quirk to an already very weird character. What I find with the easily offended crowd is all they look for is "bad thing involving a protected group in here? OFFENSIVE!" and completely ignore the actual context of everything else. It'd be like if you took a "that's what she said!" joke from The Office and completely ignored the context of Michael Scott's character.

avl999 6y ago

The interesting thing is that Joel is actually gay so he probably specifically went out of his way to not offend the sensibilities of his readers and the culture at large at that time by using "girlfried" as opposed to "partner". Moreover dark humor has its place. Indeed 2 of the biggest comedies of the last 20 years used exactly this kind of humor (Seinfeld and The Office). Even to this day some of the most acclaimed comedies have humor in this vein (Veep and Curb Your Enthusiasm for eg).