> I also have seen incredibly too much "It's just a joke bro" "defenses" for saying certain things that I have little sympathy for it. People often seem to fai

> I also have seen incredibly too much "It's just a joke bro" "defenses" for saying certain things that I have little sympathy for it. People often seem to fail to understand that humor is inherently a complex system of shared values, consent, trust, and context. The personal jabs my gym bros and I make at each other would be near fighting words of said by a stranger. The sometimes off-color jokes made by my girlfriend and I to each other are understood to be parody, based on years of trust and context around who the other person is, while an outsider would have no way of distinguishing them from the real thing. A person going to a comedy show may well hear jokes they'd never tolerate in a work context. But a certain subset of the population seems to not understand this and think they can just shout out whatever terrible thing they want and everything it should be fine because it's a "joke". Either that our they are just pretending not to understand to cover their own bad behavior.