11 ms·
Lately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job, because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody. Nothing stays funny for long, because soo
by nonrandomstring 4y ago
Lately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job,
because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody. Nothing stays
funny for long, because soon enough it's true, and then banal.
In a world where all things are absurd, ipso facto nothing is absurd.
An interesting question becomes what remains? What are the solid
relations that underpin our humanity?
Having a boss that tells you what to do? No, long since passed the
point where I have to tell my boss what to do - it's called being the
consultant in a clueless, inverted meritocracy.
People wanting to take your money? No. The insane conceit of a
"cash-less society" has already created situations where you cannot
physically force someone to take money from you.
I'm honestly struggling to see what is cast in stone. Even death and
taxes are looking worried. <shakes fist at clouds>
- ekianjo 4y agoTaxes have never been as high as now in recent history. You dont have to worry about them going away.
- throw827474737 4y agoIf that just be true for every tax group we would be in a much fairer world with less issues...
- ThunderSizzle 4y agoNo, that is insane. If anything, sending arbitrary amounts of money to be spent on the interest to pay for the debt of corrupt and failed political ventures is not fair in any regard. If taxes actually paid for government services, you might have a point, but they do not.
- pavlov 4y agoIn the US, the highest marginal tax rate for individuals was 70% as recently as 1981. It was 92% in 1952. Today it's 37%. So it's really the other way around — taxes have never been as low as now in recent history.
- jean_tta 4y agoIt's really tricky to compare marginal rates like that. Has the definition of taxable income changed over time? How many people were actually taxed at those marginal rates? And so on.
- mantas 4y agoWhat about tax for a median citizen?
- pavlov 4y agoI don’t know. It’s pretty difficult to compare when the median citizen’s circumstances have also changed so much. But in the context of reality’s absurdity reaching escape velocity from parody, it seems fitting that the rich barely pay taxes anymore and are seeking immortality cures like Thiel does. Death and taxes are the postmodern libertarian’s greatest enemies.
- ekianjo 4y agoTaking extremes is a strawman. What matters is what most people pay.
- eesmith 4y ago"Average federal tax rates for all households, by comprehensive household income quintile. 1979 to 2018" at https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-average-federal-tax-rates-all-households https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-averag... "Average Total Federal Tax Rate (percent)" is lower for every percentile from 1979 to 2018. Year 1979 2018 Lowest Quintile 9.3 0.0 Second Quintile 15.0 8.1 Middle Quintile 19.1 12.8 Fourth Quintile 21.7 16.7 Highest Quintile 27.1 24.4 All Quintiles 22.4 19.3 81st - 90th Percentiles 23.6 20.0 91st - 95th Percentiles 25.2 21.9 96th - 99th Percentiles 27.1 24.2 Top 1% 35.1 30.2 So is "Average Individual Income Tax Rate (percent)" Year 1979 2018 Lowest Quintile -0.2 -12.0 Second Quintile 4.1 -2.1 Middle Quintile 7.4 2.2 Fourth Quintile 10.1 5.9 Highest Quintile 15.9 15.4 All Quintiles 11.1 9.4 81st - 90th Percentiles 12.3 9.0 91st - 95th Percentiles 14.1 11.4 96th - 99th Percentiles 16.8 15.5 Top 1% 22.6 23.5 That makes it really hard to accept your claim that "Taxes have never been as high as now in recent history." Now, sure, there are state taxes, and sales taxes, and payroll taxes, and all sorts of other taxes. Still, where do you get the numbers to back your statement that after 40+ years of Reaganism and unending legislative attempts to lower taxes, that the numbers now are higher than ever before?
- otikik 4y agoNot for companies or wealthy people.
- ekianjo 4y agoAre you either?
- otikik 4y agoIrrelevant
- ekianjo 4y agoNope, because most people are not companies nor wealthy either, so you don't make such an argument on the extremes. That's what is truly irrelevant.
- otikik 4y agoAt the time of this writing, 3 Americans own as much as the bottom half of all the Americans [1] . https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/#richest-americans https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality/#richest-amer... I don't know how you qualify that. I would qualify it as extreme. The fact that "most people are not companies" doesn't matter, what matters is where the wealth is.
- papito 4y agoThe race to the bottom, this unwinding of civilization, should halt and rewind at some point after people realize this is unsustainable. Hopefully. Seems like the nihilists, the "nothing matters" crowd, and the neo-libertarians (chaos is good) have been having a bad streak lately.
- pmontra 4y agoThey can turn to satire. There is an endless stream of public figures unwillingly creating scripts for them.
- coldtea 4y agoYes, but satire is not so effective when everything is satire-able, and people get along fine with everything turned so. Satire needs a point of sanity and order to stand on (and refer to as the way things should be, versus the bad version it mocks).
- jpm_sd 4y ago"Satire died when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize" - Tom Lehrer
- jonathanstrange 4y agoThey can just literally quote real-life dialogues instead. Rick & Morty featured a whole court session that really happened.[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bjDkQR57fA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bjDkQR57fA
- sethammons 4y agoWow, that is batshit crazy.
- creshal 4y agoGermany's highest form of comedy is political cabaret, i.e. someone quotes a politician verbatim and the audience, briefly, imagines they were actually serious. It's the only form of entertainment that keeps getting funnier every year.
- mark38848 4y agoThere is Tatortreiniger and Stromberg, both of which are funnier.
- asddubs 4y agothis is a fan-made animation, it wasn't on the show (the voices are of justin roiland though)
- googlryas 4y agoStand up comedians are saying this while they're...performing standup?
- coldtea 4y agoYeah, so? Your comment is like saying "CEOs saying the current market is bad for their industry, while ...still running companies?!" It's not like the observation that a trade is being hurt (in this case, in the kind of disconnect between your job being pointing out absurdity as something that stands out and making it funny, and a society that seems to drown and revel in it) cannot be done by practitioners of said trade while they practice it...
- robertlagrant 4y agoNo it's like saying "CEOs saying they're out of a job while being CEOs".
- aikendrum 4y agoStandup comedian is a freelance job. It's perfectly possible to be unable to perform and still be a comedian, whether due to lack of material or lack of opportunity.
- googlryas 4y agoYes. But it is not possible to perform while not being able to perform.
- coldtea 4y agoIt's still possible to perform while being less able to get gigs, less able to come up with good jokes, less able to make those jokes relevant, increasingly feeling the jokes are superfluous as everything seems to get at satire-level status by itself, etc - in other words while "not being able to perform" and being slowly put out of a job. Which was the point (and even made in jest)...
- coldtea 4y ago>The insane conceit of a "cash-less society" has already created situations where you cannot physically force someone to take money from you. You'd be very very surprised...
- hammock 4y agoYeah isn’t that the sinister point of CBDC’s… transforming our world to what you get is doled by daddy govt
- keithalewis 4y agoYou can always count on the existence of charlatans in every society. People who deceive others to get something by lying have existed since the beginning of recorded history.
- otikik 4y agoMy dog has no nose. Ask me how does it smell.
- wizardforhire 4y agoCareful, you’re treading in ITAR territory.
- user_7832 4y ago...Does their dog use a radar to smell? (Context: there was a recent HN post on radar software being restricted in the US partly due to ITAR)
- ArcMex 4y agoLike a dog?
- easywood 4y agoIt smells terrible!
- 867-5309 4y agoactively it cannot, passively like dogshite
- dr-detroit 4y ago
- oneoff786 4y agoIt’s just another wave of some people getting older and decrying all change as bad. Comedy is thriving. The world is fine. Also, are you complaining that you cannot be mugged as easily?
- bluGill 4y ago> Lately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job, because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody. Nothing stays funny for long, because soon enough it's true, and then banal. I've heard them say that as long as I've been alive. I'm sure 3000 years ago traveling bards were saying the same things. There is a lot of comedic value from the statement, so of course any good one will use it from time to time. That doesn't mean it is true.
- asveikau 4y agoFrankly there's parts of life where this resonates more today than any time I've been alive. I've followed US political news since I was a kid. 2016 and onwards shit started getting really weird. Political satire from 2015 was no longer relevant by 2017ish not due the passage of time, but due to the fact that the events that followed are more ridiculous. I imagine this has happened before. For example, my mom's generation always says 1968 was a crazy year in politics and culture. I imagine early 60s political satire looked tame by the late 60s. But I don't think political satire from 2008 looked ridiculous in 2014, for example.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mbg721 4y agoI'm not sure if it's related to or orthogonal to everything actually being absurd, but there has been a decades-long trend of America/the West taking longstanding elements of culture less and less seriously, just as a matter of fashion. That removes a lot of the low-hanging fruit for comedians. Decades ago, acts like Monty Python or Allan Sherman were subversive; now they might still be kind of funny, but certainly not shocking. When you have generations that grew up on self-conscious irony, where the way to be cool was not to be seen caring about anything, it's harder to make comedy stick. Politicians and religious figures may not be any more or less corrupt and out-of-touch than they always were, but now they can gain enough support to keep their jobs without anyone actually taking them seriously, and that's where the self-parody comes in. I wouldn't say comedy is failing because the source material is too ridiculous, I would say it's failing because the audience is a tough crowd.
- germinalphrase 4y ago“I wouldn't say comedy is failing because the source material is too ridiculous, I would say it's failing because the audience is a tough crowd” We are certainly a more ‘educated’ crowd living completely awash in content.
- zitterbewegung 4y agoThere was an issue while I was giving a presentation for a cryptocurrency startup I was a part of and I started telling jokes. Afterward people asked me if I did stand up and I said well I do now. Absurdity will find a way .
- Barrin92 4y ago>Lately, stand-up comedians have been saying they're out of a job, because the absurdity of reality is escaping parody that's not a recent phenomenon. It's a cultural debate that's been going on for decades, probably the most prominent figure is David Foster Wallace, the 'New Sincerity' genre as a response to detached irony and that sort of thing.
- kjkjadksj 4y agoA good comedian can split your sides with a bit about waiting in line even.
- jeltz 4y agoI think that you are just getting old.
- nonrandomstring 4y agoThat is true. And the older I get, the funnier things are. I just don't see many young people laughing these days.
- yackback 4y agoSimulacra! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulacra_and_Simulation