9 ms·

The basic rule of comedy, or making jokes, which is amateur comedy, is that you always punch up. It’s funny when you say “ha! you’re fired!” to your boss, but n

• gowld 6y ago
  A US President once gave a speech joking about assassinating the Jonas Brothers with a predator drone to protect his daughter from dating them. https://abcnews.go.com/WN/president-obama-tells-joke-jonas-brothers-draws-criticism/story?id=10548687 https://abcnews.go.com/WN/president-obama-tells-joke-jonas-b... (Not singling out that President, but the incident was shocking.)
  • jdhawk 6y ago
    ....at the White House Correspondent's Association Dinner, which is known for bad jokes?
    • Hamuko 6y ago
      I don't think the issue is that it wasn't recognised as a joke. It was clearly a joke. It's more about what the topic of the joke was. Think of holocaust jokes.
  • sudhirj 6y ago
    Yeah, not funny because Presidents can, and often do, kill people with drone strikes. It would have been funny if he pointed the joke at a hurricane or shook his fist at God while saying it. If he wanted to make a dad joke he could have said he had a shotgun or would box them or challenge them to a duel or something. That implication of superiority with balance can be funny, like Mike Tyson joking that he was going to kick your ass if dated his kids. Enough of a flex, but the balance is maintained because if you train hard enough or knew enough kung fu maybe you could take him. Joking about firing people and calling a drone strike on them are not funny if you can actually do it but they can't do it back to you.
  • brmgb 6y ago
    It's shocking but not because it's punching down on the Jonas brothers. The part making people ill at ease is not Obama as a father talking about murdering famous boys trying to date his daughters. The actually shocking part is that the president views drone stricks, which is to say extrajudicial murders in foreign countries, so casually he thinks it's appropriate to make jokes about them.
    • mywittyname 6y ago
      I'm pretty sure Obama's administration pioneered the double-tap, where a drone strike is followed up several minutes later by another one, which is intended to kill those who are providing aid to the fallen. This is considered to be a war crime. He caught flak contemporaneously for this issue, and not just by Fox News, et al. I'm generally a strong Obama supporter, but this is one area that I feel like his actions were totally indefensible. I'm not surprised by his callous attitude on the subject.
      • MagnumOpus 6y ago
        > I'm pretty sure Obama's administration pioneered the double-tap I am pretty sure it is not a new technique - it was famously featured in the 2010 children's book Mockingjay, and I am sure Suzanne Collins didn't make it up either. Double-tap bombing are a staple of the asymmetric warfare arsenals of spec-ops forces/guerilla/terrorists since at least the second world war, probably much longer. (Also, it is rather unlikely that Obama ordered the airforce to start double-tapping, or even that he knew ahead of the fact, given the amount of extrajudicial killing/assassination the US forces do every month...)
  • unnouinceput 6y ago
    Considering who were/are them, I'd say even if it was bad joke, still was funny. As a father of a girl, I'd say same joke as well.
    • tfehring 6y ago
      Even ignoring the drone strike part, that whole category of jokes needs to die. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMSAcZ90QI8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMSAcZ90QI8
  • Mc_Big_G 6y ago
    Obama: 1 bad joke 45: Infinity bad jokes Interesting who we choose which to focus on.
    • 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
      This whole "It's really interesting that ..." rhetoric that's been somehow on the rise needs to die. State your point. Since you didn't state it, I have to guess. It seems like you're suggesting that HN is overly forgiving of Trump and overly critical of Obama, which is laughable given how HN treats the current administration. But of course you didn't actually make a point, so nobody else can really address it.
      • Mc_Big_G 6y ago
        The downvotes refute your assertion. You know exactly what my point is.
        • dang 6y ago
          Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: would you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? It looks like you've done it repeatedly, and it's really not what this site is for. If you'd review the guidelines and take the intended spirit more to heart here, we'd be grateful.
          • Mc_Big_G 6y ago
            How do I delete my account and all my comments?
      • dang 6y ago
        Please don't respond to one bad comment with another. The site guidelines explicitly ask you not to, for the obvious reason that it just makes the thread worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• XorNot 6y ago
  It applies to pretty much any situation where you have some decision making power that affects someone else, and the only reason something does or doesn't happen is because you decide it too. The joke isn't funny if the only reason its a joke is because you haven't done it yet.
• whatok 6y ago
  "Punching up" is a rather new guideline of comedy touted within specific groups and hardly an agreed upon "basic rule". While standards have changed over the years and deplatforming happens much faster now, unless you want to invalidate entire careers or widely renown material, "punching down" can and always will have the potential to be funny.
  • A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
    I noticed that. Who was that comic, who got Netflix special and made some sensitive jokes and the only complaint I heard was 'well, I guess some find it funny, but he really is punching down'.
    • Hamuko 6y ago
      I think I heard that about David Chappelle's Netflix special.
      • whatok 6y ago
        Yes, that's correct. In his case, specific quotes were selectively disclosed and context on his overall point (whether you agree with it or not) was completely lost in the process. Most modern successful comedians are not known for one-liners. Selectively quoting through text/audio/video effectively reduces all comedians' material to one-liners and completely eliminates all the nuance and context of the original performance piece.
• Reedx 6y ago
  I know you're specifying amateur comedy, but it's not so clear what's up or down. A lot of people think Dave Chappelle punches down, but is he really?[1] "Comedy is subjective, and it's offensive, it really is. And people are making these imaginary rules, like, 'Comedy can punch up, but it can't punch down.' No, comedy punches down too sometimes, sorry. You don't make up the rules for my business without consulting a few of us. This is just people deciding these random rules about my business, and they're not even the funny people at their office, probably." - Jerry Seinfeld "Who decides what’s punching up and punching down? I have a routine about these comedians writing articles in the Guardian, trying to set the rules of comedy, insisting that we should never punch down. And I say sometimes you’ve got to punch down." - Ricky Gervais Also, it's important to understand what the actual target of the joke is. Chris Rock sums it up as, "Talk about what they do, not what they are"[2]. I think that's a useful rule of thumb. 1. https://arcdigital.media/dave-chappelle-punches-up-55dfe906efb8 https://arcdigital.media/dave-chappelle-punches-up-55dfe906e... 2. https://youtu.be/OKY6BGcx37k?t=2533 https://youtu.be/OKY6BGcx37k?t=2533
  • sudhirj 6y ago
    This gets interesting, especially with Dave Chapelle, but professional comedians like Dave and Seinfeld etc. have one very specific attribute that allows them to punch up, sideways and even down – everyone always knows they're joking (sometimes even when they're not). And comedians have no power of their own, so they can speak truth to power as much as they want. The problem is only when someone with power punches down, unlike a professional comedian (who has no power over the group s/he's punching at). That's fine, we can all laugh at ourselves. There's also a problem with punching down when you're not a professional comedian, because now nobody knows you're joking. If you try this, you'll sound racist/classist/sexist/elitist. The rules about comedy don't apply to professional comedians, because you know if they break them they're still trying to funny. Just like if a beginner plays a bad note on a piano, it's a novice mistake, but if a master does it it's dissonance that shakes your soul.
    • whatok 6y ago
      > The rules about comedy don't apply to professional comedians, because you know if they break them they're still trying to funny. I don't think this is true in the modern age. Countless non-established or up and coming comedians and adjacents have gotten fired for one-off remarks in old material or social media posts. If there's a constantly evolving list (which no one person on Earth is completely aware of in its entirety because of constant evolution) of "problematic" topics that will get you fired, all you will end up with is bad comedy. More than 30 years after its release, Eddie Murphy was basically forced to apologize for Raw; undisputed one of the greatest standup specials by one of the greatest comedians of all-time. People were calling for a boycott of Netflix because of Chappelle and Seinfeld gets shit for his remarks all the time. If these were up-and-coming comedians, they would not have a career.
• 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  I've always disagreed with that rule, but apparently for opposite reasons from most people. I think that punching up and punching down are both bad, as a rule of thumb. They're great comedy in certain situations, but as a rule of thumb, I think they're to be avoided. As for when they're appropriate, it's about A) the potential damage that can come from it being misconstrued or B) the potential damage that can come from you doing part of it wrong. It's more common for there to be potential harm when "punching" down than up (hence the rule of thumb), but there are situations where it's fine or bad in either direction. But a lot of those situations are only in a context of real trust, for example with friends you don't have power over who know you well already, or a comedy club where it's understood that it's all for laughs.
• adenverd 6y ago
  Don't know if I agree with "never" punching down, but I wanted to share a poignant example of what punching down poorly looks like: https://twitter.com/davejorgenson/status/1269288466493341696 https://twitter.com/davejorgenson/status/1269288466493341696 Wayne Brady and Aisha Taylor handled this extremely well, but I'm glad he stood his ground and didn't smile and laugh along, despite the situational pressure to.
  • jldugger 6y ago
    Not even sure that's an example of punching down. Highlighting the absurdity of 'fits the description' is punching the system, is it not?
• razadot 6y ago
  As someone who gets paid to do standup comedy, this is not a basic rule of comedy. I get that it's not appropriate to punch down (especially in the work place). It is always riskier to punch down with comedy but it is 100% not a rule of comedy not to punch down.
  • nogabebop23 6y ago
    as a general rule, all punching in the workplace is frowned upon