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I find it difficult to believe the number of people who claim to be "just making a joke" were honestly doing just that, and had no offensive motives. Isn't tha
by diminoten 12y ago
I find it difficult to believe the number of people who claim to be "just making a joke" were honestly doing just that, and had no offensive motives.
Isn't that the classic response to offense? "I was just kidding!"
I'm guessing these folks were in CYA mode when they responded to these surveys. "Oh shit, Facebook is going to discipline me if I tell them I was being mean on purpose!"
- chipsy 12y agoIn general, people experience an emotion first, take action based on the emotion, and then their brain covers up self-harmful reflections on the action by building a rationale for their action being appropriate. We can do this astonishingly quickly, enough so that other people will also believe that it was a reasoned action and not just an emotion.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- austinz 12y agoThis is definitely a phenomenon that has been around for a long time. From a certain epistolary novel published around seventy years ago I quote the following passage: "If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is 'mean'; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twits his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer 'mean' but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful— unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke."
- Kalium 12y agoIt really is funny... to them. They don't expect it to be funny to the target.