6 ms·
Social Psychologists: 36 Days After a Tragedy, Jokes About It Become Funny
- BoppreH 13y agoFor comparison, the Onion 9/11 cover: http://media.zenfs.com/en/blogs/thecutline/onion-911.jpg http://media.zenfs.com/en/blogs/thecutline/onion-911.jpg
- dror 13y agoLooks like it was actually published on 9/26 http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-life-turns-into-bad-jerry-bruckheimer-mov,220/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-life-turns-into-ba... http://www.theonion.com/issue/3734/ http://www.theonion.com/issue/3734/ Because they stopped publishing right after 9/11 http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/remembering-onion-9-11-issue-everyone-thought-last-162024809.html http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/remembering-onion-9-11-i...
- matchu 13y agoMakes sense. I'd be pretty surprised if they managed to write all that on 9/11, for a number of reasons.
- afterburner 13y agoIt says on the cover 27 September-3 October 2001.
- omilu 13y agoan example of keep calm and carry on. the wit of the onion is trancendental.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- RexRollman 13y agoThese kind of jokes are a time honored coping mechanism. I can remember that it wasn't long after the shuttle disaster in 1986 that I first heard the "Head & Shoulders" joke.
- davidw 13y ago"What did Christa Mcauliffe tell her husband before getting on the shuttle? You feed the kids, I'll feed the fish." Was the one I remembered. I also remember walking into my 5th grade class and finding the teacher crying. She'd applied for the spot on the shuttle, and had made it through several rounds of the selection process.
- dubcanada 13y agoNope... 22.3 years.
- mhurron 13y agoGetting AIDS was the best thing that could have happened to me.
- TempleOSV2 13y agoYou are walking around with a hatchet stuck out of your forehead and it's ghastly cause you don't know you're dead. God says... fool chump_change SupremerCourt joking failure_is_not_an_option BBC why_do_I_put_up_with_this prosperity tiffanies bickering what's_up Moses That's_my_favorite class__class__shutup busybody what's_it_to_you rubbish debt busybody I_pitty_the_fool so_let_it_be_written tree_hugger where's_the_love Ramsay when_hell_freezes_over Ghost not_too_shabby humility well_I_never BRB repent Ivy_league Jesus you're_wonderful ---- Just talking up a storm, chatting. "What?"
- biggerwinky 13y agoHow many Jews does it take to change a shower head? I lost count. I'm loving this new 36 day rule!
- anigbrowl 13y agon=1. Talk about missing the forest due to the 36 foot tree in the way.
- Zenst 13y agoDoes this mean one has to return in 36 days to comment on some posts, could work. But are we talking somebody not associated/involved or influenced by the tragedy and just other people as with most things, relativity applies.
- danohuiginn 13y agoI'd be interested in how it differs internationally. The US must be one of the countries least comfortable about black humor. [cultures which have gone through the worst seem to have the blackest jokes. Israel and Bosnia leap to mind, though much of eastern Europe has something similar going on]
- justincormack 13y agoUsually starts same day in the UK. We like our dark humour.
- richforrester 13y agoIndeed. Your neighbors are much the same.
- samstave 13y agoGiven the weather; all your humour happens in the dark...
- robbrown451 13y agoAnd it has nothing to do with the magnitude of the tragedy?
- hawkharris 13y agoHumor can be painful because there's a grain of truth in every joke. For example, think about some of the jokes that are considered crass and offensive in American culture: bits about black people being poor; women being treated as housewives. While the stereotypes are false, they relate to deep-rooted societal problems. Income inequality is still associated with racial inequality. Women are still underpaid and underrepresented in some industries. Political correctness is not noble. It's a form of cowardice, a band-aid that prevents us from using humor as a vehicle for thinking about uncomfortable problems. The harder an issue is to joke about, the more it requires jokes.
- ewoodrich 13y agoOne could also argue that your examples of crass humor normalize these stereotypes, and therefore perpetuate them. If I were to constantly make jokes about how black people were all burglars and rapists, and women should spend all day in the kitchen, at some point I might blur the line between irony and implicitly endorsing the generalization. I don't claim that I haven't made the types of jokes you describe, but at the same time, I don't consider it "cowardly" that some find such jokes categorically offensive
- rimantas 13y agoI also do not consider anyone finding some jokes offencive as cowardly person, just a stupid one.
- ewoodrich 13y agoSo just to be clear, literally no joke can be offensive? I guess I'm stupid then, because I have fairly high tolerance of irony, but I would never such a sweeping claim.
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoThat sounds like a challenge to me. Let's start with your Mom...
- 13y ago
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- ADFASFGADA 13y agoGot to say, the jokes usually fly literally minutes later here in the UK. People either laugh straight away or never.
- joelrunyon 13y ago> McGraw believes the spread of social media has imposed new limits on what comedians can get away with. > “Comedy is a space that has its own set of rules,” said McGraw. “Then it gets posted on the Internet and broadcast to people sitting at their desks— people who weren’t intended to hear it and aren’t in the mindset to appreciate it.” I've noticed this lately with people taking comedian set jokes out of context via a recording or second-hand party blowing them out of proportion. It's a real shame. If a joke isn't funny - don't laugh at it - that's the worst response a comic will ever get. But don't blow them up on a twitter, try to make them apologize for making a joke that wasn't particularly funny.
- protomyth 13y agoFunniest joke about a tragedy was told to me and others by a friend's wife about 20 minutes after the friend died. It was very near the worst day of a group of people's lives and we really needed to laugh because it was going to suck for a long while.
- sTevo-In-VA 13y agohttp://bit.ly/1fMaFnS http://bit.ly/1fMaFnS This was too soon to be funny.
- lmm 13y agoIMO it's more that it wasn't funny enough to be funny.
- uptown 13y agoThis took longer than 36 days, but they made the Titanic a kids slide: http://24flinching.com/word/gold-seal/crazy-world/sinking-titanic-deck-slide-for-kids/ http://24flinching.com/word/gold-seal/crazy-world/sinking-ti...