4 ms·

Well, male coworkers pick on each other all the time. Even when they have absolutely no incentive to hurt, once there's an awkward situation and they can say so

Well, male coworkers pick on each other all the time. Even when they have absolutely no incentive to hurt, once there's an awkward situation and they can say something smart - they'll fire. Most if nor all of humor revolves around something bad happening to someone. That's what funny. (In normal workplace setting women are actually shielded from that friendly fire because men don't feel as comfortable/can't predict what's OK and what's not) You want jokes, you have to acquire certain skin thickness. If you don't, then I don't want to work with you. Fun is fun.

pingswept 15y ago
I agree with your description of how humor typically happens, and because of that, I don't enjoy working in most places. While it seems "fun is fun" for you, the same fun sucks for me. But I'd suggest that an alternative exists-- you can actually be hilarious without knocking other people down. I think that's a worthy goal.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  Well, neither am I comfortable working with people as fragile as Ming vases. Received autism is not a virtue. Some people seem to be honing their internal conflict and blaming it on people whose jokes (or anything, really) touched it accidentally. A person without serious internal conflict would not be hurt by a mild nerd humor. Hate there isn't, just some reflection on the awkwardness of human existence.
  - pingswept 15y ago
    Agreed that we should strive to be less fragile. I think Jon Postel put it well in RFC 793: "TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others." http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc793#page-13 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc793#page-13
wpietri 15y ago
Your notion of what's funny is sadly impoverished. But even within that context, there's a line between saying something funnily negative that the person can take and saying something that hurts them. If you've attempted a joke that fell flat because it was hurtful, then the problem isn't the target being too thin-skinned; the problem is you having poor judgment (or a taste for cruelty).
reneherse 15y ago
"Most if nor all of humor revolves around something bad happening to someone. That's what funny." Hardly. That describes only the most ignoble, uninspired level of humor.
stcredzero 15y ago
(In normal workplace setting women are actually shielded from that friendly fire because men don't feel as comfortable/can't predict what's OK and what's not) They didn't used to be shielded like this, because men didn't used to think "what women thought was OK and what's not" mattered. In the same way, "white" men used to feel universally entitled to make off-color comments about the silliness and inferiority of "non-whites". Now the power relationship has changed, and now there is some thought given to what's appropriate and what's not. You want jokes, you have to acquire certain skin thickness. If you don't, then I don't want to work with you. Fun is fun. "Skin thinness" has to do with a certain degree of wounding and the remnants of institutionalized injustice. Both the wounding and the echoes of the injustice in the culture might take some generations to completely fade away. That said, all people have fun. All people want to relax and be genuinely themselves with someone, sometime. Are you entitled to have fun with absolutely everyone in the particular way that you know? I'm sorry, but it might not even go as far as the small subset of your workplace. "Fun is fun" is pretty naive. If one studies humor, one finds that it's mostly highly contextual and cultural. This is particularly true for what's acceptable between men and women. That's not some conspiracy to rain on your parade, it's just how things are in the world. Just get to know people first.

pingswept 15y ago

I agree with your description of how humor typically happens, and because of that, I don't enjoy working in most places. While it seems "fun is fun" for you, the same fun sucks for me. But I'd suggest that an alternative exists-- you can actually be hilarious without knocking other people down. I think that's a worthy goal.

guard-of-terra 15y ago
Well, neither am I comfortable working with people as fragile as Ming vases. Received autism is not a virtue. Some people seem to be honing their internal conflict and blaming it on people whose jokes (or anything, really) touched it accidentally. A person without serious internal conflict would not be hurt by a mild nerd humor. Hate there isn't, just some reflection on the awkwardness of human existence.
- pingswept 15y ago
  Agreed that we should strive to be less fragile. I think Jon Postel put it well in RFC 793: "TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others." http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc793#page-13 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc793#page-13

wpietri 15y ago

Your notion of what's funny is sadly impoverished. But even within that context, there's a line between saying something funnily negative that the person can take and saying something that hurts them. If you've attempted a joke that fell flat because it was hurtful, then the problem isn't the target being too thin-skinned; the problem is you having poor judgment (or a taste for cruelty).

reneherse 15y ago

"Most if nor all of humor revolves around something bad happening to someone. That's what funny." Hardly. That describes only the most ignoble, uninspired level of humor.

stcredzero 15y ago

(In normal workplace setting women are actually shielded from that friendly fire because men don't feel as comfortable/can't predict what's OK and what's not) They didn't used to be shielded like this, because men didn't used to think "what women thought was OK and what's not" mattered. In the same way, "white" men used to feel universally entitled to make off-color comments about the silliness and inferiority of "non-whites". Now the power relationship has changed, and now there is some thought given to what's appropriate and what's not. You want jokes, you have to acquire certain skin thickness. If you don't, then I don't want to work with you. Fun is fun. "Skin thinness" has to do with a certain degree of wounding and the remnants of institutionalized injustice. Both the wounding and the echoes of the injustice in the culture might take some generations to completely fade away. That said, all people have fun. All people want to relax and be genuinely themselves with someone, sometime. Are you entitled to have fun with absolutely everyone in the particular way that you know? I'm sorry, but it might not even go as far as the small subset of your workplace. "Fun is fun" is pretty naive. If one studies humor, one finds that it's mostly highly contextual and cultural. This is particularly true for what's acceptable between men and women. That's not some conspiracy to rain on your parade, it's just how things are in the world. Just get to know people first.