the-pi-guy said:
Because you're missing the critical point that ideas people have, affect how other people get treated.
HIV affected the wrong group, and society collectively decided not to do anything about it. People to this day are still struggling to get help with their mental health, because of poor ideas. Homeless people/people in poverty get ostracized and blamed for their own misfortune. If enough people think black people should be brought into slavery, that's not good (to put it lightly). If enough people think that Jews should be exterminated, that's not good (to put it lightly). Historically and to this day, billions of people have been mistreated or actively murdered because of ideas that other people put into their heads. How do those horrific ideas get propagated? Through propaganda, through news media, through comedians, through governments, through social media. All kinds of different avenues.
It's why conservatives seem really shallow. Because they do not understand how ideas shape society. |
But here's the thing - if an idea is awful or holds no water, it will NEVER gain enough popularity to gain much traction or shape society in the first place. Or if the rare time it does, it will not last long and the pendulum will swing back to sanity and truth, overwhelming it. The truth always wins out in the end. Comedy that bases its humor off lies is never going to be funny on the same level of comedy that draws from truth (or at least a grain of truth). I never understood why people have so much fear of ideas that are false or without merit. If this is the case - if they ARE in fact so false and unpopular, why worry about them, or the effect they'll have? At the end of the day isn't this just another form of "Democracy"?
Again, at the end of the day, if you hate the stuff, just don't watch it. Let society and capitalism sort if all out. It's why I steer clear of people like Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel. I may not like them and find them to be more unfunny propagandists than comedians, but I absolutely think they get to have a voice, even if that voice is reaching a dwindling number of people :P
"We hold these truths to be self-evident - all men and women created by the, go-you know.. you know the thing!" - Joe Biden