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Look, you aren't right to excuse this shirt as legitimate humor any more than other folks are right to think that it was deliberately evil: it's an algorithm. A
by Steuard 14y ago
Look, you aren't right to excuse this shirt as legitimate humor any more than other folks are right to think that it was deliberately evil: it's an algorithm. Algorithms don't get to claim they're trying to provide some sort of social commentary by way of their offensive output.
The main lesson I see here is that the people behind this shirt company set themselves up to sell a horrifically inappropriate item. They weren't being deliberately awful (as far as we know), but they were painfully thoughtless about where their algorithms would eventually take them. And doing harm unintentionally still counts as doing harm.
- jiggy2011 14y agoI don't see a cut-off point between legitimate and illegitimate humour, anything that amuses some people must be legitimate humour in some way. You could certainly see a lot of humour as potentially offensive to some people, or in some cases slanderous (which I think is worse than merely being offensive). You could also think that somebody who chooses to wear a shirt like this might be advertising themselves as bit of a dick. Inappropriate is also a sticky concept, it might be an inappropriate item for a kindergarten teacher to wear to work but it might not be so inappropriate to wear around adults who would understand it as humour.