• mindbleach
    291·
    1 year ago

    Conservatives don’t know how comedy works. I call it the Yo Mama hypothesis.

    When you were a kid, and other kids lied about your mom, you got mad, right? And eventually they’d say - relax, it’s a joke, stop crying. And if you’re reading this then you probably grew to understand the difference between saying something and meaning it.

    I don’t think every kid got there.

    I think a lot of kids, maybe a whole quarter of humanity, only learned that jokes are insults you have to shut up and take. They’re cruelty you’re not allowed to get mad about. How would those kids act differently? They’d stop crying, mostly, when people told rude lies about their mothers. They’d snap back at other kids, telling rude lies about their mothers. From those events you’d figure, great! They get it. It’s not real. Except… they only look right from the outside. On the inside, they’re gathering a list of excuses for vicious behavior.

    These people know what jokes look like. They’re clever enough to build a punchline. They kinda get how you tell jokes. But they have no idea why you tell jokes.

    People defending Dave Chappelle insisted “he’s a comedian!” like that absolved all his opinions. I’ve walked those people through how jokes require setup that reflects sincere beliefs. (Like how “eat the rich” is a joke about classism and cannibalism, but it’s only joking about the cannibalism.) I’ve cited the many times Dave repeated certain claims far from any stage. But these folks never come acknowledge that being a TERF is not part of the act. That’s not how it works, in their worldview.

    Being a comedian means he gets to say things you’re Not Supposed To Say, even if they’re things you absofuckinglutely believe. That’s all they thought Jon Stewart was doing. That’s why they thought Stephen Colbert was on their side.

    The same people routinely parroted “you can joke about anything,” which is equally revealing. They’d heard it because they insisted “you can’t joke about [blank]!” even for the most benign, supportive, and inoffensive gags. And also for dead-baby jokes and antitheism. Point is: these types don’t care about severity, because they don’t care about meaning. They believe in blasphemy. They think condemnation, criticism, or even just speaking less-than-reverently about a subject is profaning something sacred, and chances are good they’ll hit kids for doing it.

    We told them every subject is fair game for fair jokes. They’d stop yelling, mostly. And from that event we’d figure, great, they get it. But on the inside, they still believe the issue is what a joke is about. They still think joking is an attack under agreed-upon rules of engagement. So of course funny black man shit on trans people. They don’t like trans people. It’s hardly a secret. What’s our beef, saying he’s not allowed to spout jokes full of prejudice and hatred? They’re jokes. That’s what they’re for.

    • SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
      111·
      1 year ago

      I think conservatives are just generally bad at creative endeavors because they lack empathy. You need to understand the audience to be able to connect with them. Someone who lacks in empathy is going to have a tendency to not care about what they’re doing affects other people. If it’s funny to them, then it’s funny. The audience’s feelings don’t matter.

      This has been exacerbated by podcasting. Used to be if a comedian bombed, there was nothing to do about it other than work on their material. Come up with some new jokes. But now a comedian bombs, they go on Joe Rogan and whine about how bad the audience is. They feel like the important people on the podcasts are their friends, while the audiences are an enemy unless they conform to what the important people define as being funny.

      Conservatives have a tendency to prefer hierarchies even when they’re at the bottom of it. To them, the famous person on stage is more important than the audience. Therefore the audience is obligated to laugh at their jokes. If they don’t, there’s something wrong with the audience, not anything wrong with the jokes. Doesn’t matter if the jokes are old, doesn’t matter if culture has changed since the times when those old jokes got laughs.

      You’re a bad person if you don’t consume the content that the important people make. Cancel culture!

      Of course the reality is there is such a thing as creativity, connecting to the audience, understanding cultural norms that you can use them in interesting (and funny ways). But if you’re lacking in talent in these things (or just gotten lazy which is what I feel happened with Chappelle) you can always go the route of “I hate the same things you hate” then all you need to do is make something that resembles the form of something actual creative people make. Conservatives fall in line, laugh on cue, and the uncreative people make money.

      • mindbleach
        31·
        1 year ago

        Hierarchy defines conservatism. It’s tribalism. It’s the default human mindset, where truth is defined by people above you, and if they’re wrong about stuff then they’re the wrong people to have above you. So disagreement is a threat. A leader can’t just be wrong. That’d mean they’re the wrong person, to lead. How dare you challenge them? Look how much money they have. Their penis must be enormous.

        Basically - reality is a team sport, to some people. They have no objective means of evaluating claims. In their worldview, that is not what claims are for. Even their stated ideals are ad-hoc justifications. Nothing matters besides ingroup loyalty.

        Conservatives don’t believe things. Conservatives believe people.

        Notably this is distinct from right versus left. There are left-wing conservatives. Mostly tankies. It’s hard to square a critical philosophy opposed to hierarchy with loyalist posturing for ingroup supremacy, but they have the benefit of not really caring what words mean.

        Conversely, there’s right-wing cranks who are not conservatives. You can spot them with boot-prints on their backsides, once the group radically shifts to some new bullshit. They believed what they were saying. The fools. They’ll argue the new leader isn’t last-year’s-bullshit enough, which marks them as traitors who want him deposed and humiliated and short. It’s too bad that being shunned as a RINO leaves them full of bad arguments for worse ideas.

        The saddest part of this is probably the school-shooting victims with braces. I mean that’s just money down the drain. The saddest part of this that’s not a shock-comedy aside is that conservative humor can be good. Some More News had a video about that modern wasteland of kneejerk contrarian bragging, performative allegiance, and joke-shaped sentences. But they also remind us the Blue Collar Comedy Tour was full of fantastic material. That wasn’t a lifetime ago. People can’t have changed that much. But the figureheads of the figurehead-obsessed went from bad to indefensible - and when those assholes are out, that won’t address the underlying cause.