Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

if i say that woodworking should primarily be about making quality wood products is that also a political and ethical claim?

It is if you're defending people building guillotines on the basis that their craftsmanship is good.

if i say that woodworking should primarily be about making quality wood products is that also a political and ethical claim?

yes! of course it is! e.g. one could say, alternatively, that "woodworking should primarily be a means by which the woodworker can make a decent living" or "woodworking should primarily be a ritual of giving and receiving the gifts of nature" or "woodworking should primarily be a means of getting the greatest number of useful wood goods to the greatest number of people." or any number of other things. some of which might align, some of which might conflict. people throughout history have argued over this - ruskin, for example, would not agree with the home depot company over what woodworking should primarily be about.

anyway you didn't just say "comedy should be about making people laugh," you said it should be primarily concerned with making people laugh, which indicates that other priorities might be in play, and opens a space where one can assert "these other priorities should be given more weight, such that at times the combination of these other factors might override the concern with making people laugh." basically i think it's actually a really forceful, and not at all self-evident claim to declare what a whole field is "primarily concerned with" or "really about" or whatever.

put another way, the use of "should" moves us from a descriptive claim ("comedy is a vocation that involves people making other people laugh") to a normative or prescriptive one ("comedians should have the following priorities") and once we're in that space, it's contestable precisely around the things that go after "should," which makes it ethical/political.

This is a good discussion about the tyranny of humour

Should note that there is the dr-casino-noted origin of punching up/punching down as a concept, the aims and sentiments behind this origin, the deployment of same in idk possibly useful ways depending on yr outlook on these things then varying degrees of pureness of same thru many gyres and filters until someone of middle-class public school extraction is using it on ilx the way that Mordy describes

So there's that, too

will this infinite jest ever end

You tell us

if i say that woodworking should primarily be about making quality wood products is that also a political and ethical claim?

Feel like this comparison would be more germane if there were people out there carving offensive bas reliefs all over the tables they're crafting and defending them on the basis that the finished product is still perfect for family dinners and card games.

Feel like not tbh

hey

calm thyself

It is if you're defending people building guillotines on the basis that their craftsmanship is good.

― emil.y, Thursday, July 6, 2017 9:30 AM (one hour ago)

if they make guillotines specifically for hanging babies and small children, then they are not only great craftspeople, but they are doing the lord's work.

making guillotines to use on the nobility is beheading up, making them for commoners is beheading down

The same guillotine used for either purpose is either a good or a bad guillotine regardless

xxp look if i pay for a handcrafted guillotine and all it does is hang people, I want my money back. Heads in baskets or no deal.

It just seems weird to me that comedians are being used as shorthand to talk about what jokes are okay and what is funny. And obviously people will laugh at different things in public, in the company of strangers, than in private, with segregated groups in public being an odd middle ground.

Are most of the jokes you hear in the context of a comedy performance? I mean, I'd imagine that most experiences of humor and comedy are in the context of friends, family, co-workers - not public comedians.

What jokes are ok conversation != What is funny conversation and I'm as yet unclear as to whether either is the punching up/punching down conversation tbh

The Simpsons "punched down" all the time and its widely considered one of the funniest shows ever made so there

Richard Spencer getting punched was funny, but I think that was a straight ahead shot, not up or down

I only punch down to hit smurfs

you're not allowed to call them that.

i don't care if they're black, white, or blue ...

I believe the politically correct term is 'testicles'.

One smurf can call another smurf "smurf," but otherwise Neanderthal is right.

Only if the smurf calling the other smurf smurf is of a lower smurf caste iirc

physical abuse is never the answer regardless of how you do it and to whom you're doing it to if you ask me

lots of sexists, classists and racists on ilx tbh

no rockists though

I would punch the shit out of a rock, tbh.

Rockists need to start their own country because they are drowning in the new age with no one to save them but themselves.

What the hell is going on

Trayce otm

"it is what it is."

especially at the end of the day

"this click could change the rest of your clicks"

To be fair...

I don't like "bucket list" anyway, but I really, really hate it when people use it in the context of "stuff I want to do this summer." (i.e. I just saw someone post on FB about their "2017 bucket list.") The entire original context was STUFF YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU KICK THE BUCKET.

Interesting discussion about comedy.

I think I'm on board with Mordy's point that we shouldn't confuse 'whether this joke makes us laugh' with 'whether we should laugh at this joke'. (Have I parsed this properly?)

What seems to be hovering in the background is the idea of the 'sick joke' - a type of joke we shouldn't laugh at, but which we will have to laugh at, because it's inherently funny. I'm wondering if such a perfectly funny joke exists - one that's guaranteed to make us laugh. Or whether the actual physical thing of laughing, the literal movement of muscles and mouth on picking up a joke through the ears, etc, whether what will cause that is not inherent but relative.

^ Terrible phrasing there but that's about as close as I can get to what I wanna ask.

It seems like a crucial thing to try and work out if we were going to make a decision about how, when and where people should laugh, if there should be penalties for laughing at any point, and so on. Because if some things just make all humans everywhere laugh involuntarily then ... but if on the other hand human laughter is programmed/(re)programmable, then ...

That joke is in the first category

If there is a third category, it's the joke that mainly makes us laugh because we know it is in the second category

We thought the banana peel gag was universally funny until we thought about the implications of imperialism.

It's been mentioned already but I keep seeing "virtue signalling" everywhere now and it seems to mean "not being a cunt".

no, it means ostentatiously demonstrating that you are a "good one" for the appreciation of others. pretty much all callout culture is "virtue signaling" since yelling at someone on twitter has yet in history to produce any effect beyond self-aggrandizement.

Uh think you'll find Gandhi yelled at Britain on Twitter that time embarrassed 4u

as a phrase it can be used correctly and incorrectly but it should be useful for everyone. virtue signalling can noise and distraction to a the forwarding of cause. it may prompt a response from the other side that will be equally as aggressive. it can be counter productive to a real honest open dialog.

I've been seeing it recently as the newest version of calling someone a social justice warrior.

I'm kind of amazed "woke" hasn't been taken away by the alt-right and firmly associated with them yet.

It's so ridiculous and delicious that the right probably think it's best left where it is I'd say

lol I see "woke" more often used as a term of mockery than sincerity

'Woke' has lost all sincerity, if it had it to begin with, a long time ago

I've never seen "woke" used positively. Not even in the way people will call themselves a social justice warrior jokingly.

I've been seeing it recently as the newest version of calling someone a social justice warrior.

― Hilarity Winner (doo dah), Monday, 10 July 2017 23:50 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is of course what I was talking about but thanks for patronisingly explaining what it means like I'm some kind of fucking moron.