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sundin13 on 27 July 2019
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EricHiggin said:
sundin13 said:

Unfortunately, a joke that isn't funny enough (or obvious enough) to communicate that it is in fact a joke is in effect often just a small lie. The fact that there is some semblance of truth there doesn't make the bits that aren't truthful any less of a lie, it just makes them harder to discern from lies.

Further, too often with political "humor" someone will just use straw men as a joke, but the goal is to make those straw men the butt of the joke. Jokes about identifying as attack helicopters for example are in essence just a means of making fun of trans people and trans rights by utilizing a misrepresentation of the overall argument. Even when the joke is obvious, if the point is to criticize, doing so through warping reality is not healthy as it functions as an argument and not just a humor piece.

That said, I'm not talking specifically about your "joke" here. Just talking about the idea of casual political humor as it often gets thrown around on message boards.

I disagree, especially based on white lies. Good intentions, but lies nonetheless. Are white lies ok? If so, then a joke that even uses a small 'white' lie to complete it, shouldn't be any different, and that's a lot of jokes. Each person of course may take it differently, the lie in the joke as well as well as white lies, but that's up to them to decide. No joke is meant for everyone. 

This has some truth in certain circumstances but they're also making many separate points overall. One of them being, if you're going to allow people to identify themselves however they like because they feel differently than how society labels them, then it's no doubt going to influence others in many different ways and you would have to allow that for the most part. It's like the people who believe certain others shouldn't be given a platform to speak. If you're someone who doesn't like what's being said and the idea's that come from it, and you want a system that allows for free speech to get your own message out to combat the existing narrative so change can be made, you have to allow everyone the option, even if others are going to use it in ways you wish they wouldn't, within reason. This system like any leaves the door open to some degree to be used in ways it wasn't purposely designed for, but that's just part of the deal. Some people agree with this and think absolute free speech is great, others think certain people should be silenced. Some people think you should be able to label yourself in whatever manner best defines you, others think you should just deal with the existing established system. There really is no 100% right or wrong answer when it comes to these types of scenario's unfortunately.

The ... led me to believe you were focusing on what I had said, along with something I had mentioned in an earlier post to someone else, but apparently this was not the case. My mistake. Not everyone takes everything the way it was meant to be.

A white lie is typically told in order to avoid hurting someone's feelings, so I don't really think it applies in most jokes. And again, I think in a non-political context, a joke which uses a "lie" is typically fine as long as it is clear that it is a joke. It becomes more of an issue, when, like I said before, the "joke" begins to function more as an argument or an attack than a joke. Like, take for example old black face humor. It was certainly meant as a joke, but it was a joke crafted through a lie told to marginalize a vulnerable group. I feel "jokes" which work on that principle should be called out 10/10 times.

In comedy, this distinction is often referred to as "punching down v punching up" and there is some debate and argument regarding this. I am of the mind that comedians should be able to make jokes about anything. On the other hand, typically these jokes are just bad. ContraPoints said while talking about Gervais' "attack helicopter"-esque jokes ("I identify as a monkey lololol") that one of the main issues with this type of humor is not that it is making jokes about being transgender, it is that it completely doesn't understand what is funny about the transgender experience. As such (and these are my own words), it just goes to ridiculously bad arguments to make a punchline instead of jokes.

However, this discussion is primarily framed outside of comedy clubs and instead in message boards. The posting of such a joke in a thread about politics doesn't carry the same innate properties as a joke in a comedy club. It doesn't get that "free joke pass". Typically, it serves as an argument first and a joke second. It is a way of pointing out the ridiculousness in the opponent's argument by exaggerating it and repeating it. However, this type of argument relies on logical fallacy to exist. Yes, it can always fall back on the "it was just a joke" line, but at the same time, it isn't "just" a joke. It is a "joke and..." whether you like it or not, because that is the nature of the forum.

I don't really want to get into the transgender debate here, but I will say this isn't about me wanting to "silence" anyone anymore than it would be if I were to call someone out for the logical fallacies in their non-joke arguments.

And sorry about the lack of clarity about what I was referring to. I have a tendency of doing that. I see an interesting conversation point and I try to talk about it even when I don't really care about how that conversation point came about.