Don't Beg For Laughs

This is in response to recent events involving a DeviantART user named "CustomSaga" referring to a character-based interview journal on a roleplaying group as, "The sort of thing autistic people come up with." After being banned from the group for his remark, he proceeded to whine on his own journal about the issue, as well as a few other vaguely-substantiated straw men about the goings-on in the group. I called him out on his choice of words, and he proceeded to defend his right to say whatever he wanted and use whatever terminology he wanted as a point of criticism with no reproach whatsoever. He basically felt that his skepticism of the group's project was so compelling in and of itself, he could phrase it in a totally immature, insensitive, and inarticulate manner and it would not paint him as anything less than a civil critic inviting a mature discussion.  

During the torrent of backpedaling and "context mongering," if that's a term, the word "joke" came up toward the tail end of the discussion, used in such a manner as to imply he may well have had no sense of humor or any understanding of how telling jokes is supposed to work. 

The late George Carlin once said, "Even rape can be funny." and, in principle, I agree with that sentiment completely. If my saying that is making your blood boil or getting your head all-a-shakin' over it, I understand completely and don't blame you for it. However, I'd like you to read that sentence again, emphasizing the words "CAN" and "PRINCIPLE." As an artist, I believe that boundaries and rules are made to be pushed, bent, and even broken. This applies to comedy as well. It's not uncommon to see one comedian met with a standing ovation for the same reason another may get booed off stage for telling a similar joke. I've seen one comedian build an entire routine about the sorts of tactics terrorists should be using instead of bombings and hijackings, the audience eating out of his hand the entire time, while another cannot even get past his opening line of, "You know what I love about terrorists?" without the entire house calling for blood. 

Why one routine got cheers while another got jeers can generally be chalked up to luck and timing. Some crowds are a little more forgiving of having their buttons pushed than others, some subjects are best left to simmer a bit before the roasting can begin, and what separates a good comedian from a bad one is how they handle being dealt that bad hand. Stand-Up Comedy was once described by the late Mitch Hedburg as, "the noble profession of convincing a roomful of strangers that you're funny." going on to mention that you can't please everyone all the time. The fact is, barring any open mic night at a local gig, by the time you see a comedian perform on stage, they've gone through their routine dozens, if not hundreds or even thousands, of times before to a variety of crowds in a plethora of venues. During this time, jokes are either refined or dropped altogether. 

Sometimes, you tell a joke, and it doesn't go over well. Either people don't get it, or worse, they don't think it's funny. At this point, any good comedian knows that quite possibly the worst course of action to take is to defend the joke and insist on its brilliance and edginess. Sure, sometimes a quick quip or well-worded jab can bring an audience back from the edge of the Great Booing Chasm, but the general rule of thumb is that if the audience doesn't laugh the first time, it's because you didn't tell the joke right. As such, explaining it, defending it, and insisting on its merits will never win back that lost first laugh. Not only do those people get booed off stage, but their future in the profession is non-existent. 

There was a post on Facebook some time ago that illustrates this perfectly. It was a panel from a comic wherein iconic supersonic crime-fighter The Flash exposits the extent of his exceptional acceleration by describing occurrences that can only be observed in the space of an attosecond. The rest of the post explained exactly what an attosecond is. Informal definition: there are more attoseconds in the time it takes to say the word "attosecond" than there are grains of sand on all the earth's beaches. One of the comments to this post was, "Dude could rape a b---- and she wouldn't even know it!" 

As you might imagine, quite a few people were offended by this remark. I wasn't offended by it personally, per se, but that's not to knock everyone else who called him out on what he said as sexist and insensitive. They'd every right to be offended, though it seemed more people simply didn't find the joke funny. I thought, "Dude went for the low-hanging fruit. Whatever. Swing and a miss." and that could have been the end of it. Some people got mad, some people didn't laugh, a few clever folks satirically pointed out the logistics of such an event occurring (friction, combustion, and all that), and the joke was generally received as being in poor taste. 

Except that wasn't the end of it, because the idiot who laid that egg felt he was entitled to a laugh, and damned if he wasn't going to leave the discussion without changing at least one mind that his joke was the funniest thing in existence. The point is, him apologizing for the joke may have been unnecessary (courteous, but unnecessary), yet defending it and insisting himself beyond criticism for it puts him well beyond what even the sincerest apology would make amends for. I shouldn't have to explain the limitations of freedom of speech any more than I should have to explain how unrealistic and downright naive it is to insist every joke told receive the same equally positive reaction. 

You bombed. 

Move on. 

Oh, Not Funny When It's You

So, some time ago, Star Wars Kinect was released for the XBox360, and it was met with what could charitably be described as mixed feelings, with most of the negative feelings strangely centered on a rhythm and dance portion of the game wherein much-beloved characters dance in well-known locales to popular songs made into parodies by a slight tweaking of key lyrics. "Princess in a battle" instead of "genie in a bottle" is one example.
As to why this has many fans outraged, there's no official answer, but if one were to be culled from the general consensus of the gaming community, it's that Star Wars Kinect is an officially licensed Lucasfilm product. In other words, Star Wars fans can make fun of their beloved franchise to their heart's content, but heaven forbid the people behind it have a sense of humor as well.
I could get into the psycho-socio-cultural underpinnings of this phenomenon, but The Escapist's MovieBob already did, and in reading his analysis, I remembered something from my own childhood that perfectly exemplifies the situation.

It was really hard for me to make friends after I moved to New Mexico in 1991. There's a lot of reasons for this I won't go into, but probably the most important one was that my sense of humor didn't gel with everyone else's. I understand that friends take digs at each other, call each other names, and even play mean little tricks on each other. Really, I get it; it's part of the trust, it's something you can do because of the comfort zone. The thing is, where I saw it as being "part" of the whole "friendship" paradigm, some people saw it as "the whole" and that struck me as just downright conceited. I kid you not when I say that I actually lost a really good friend because I told him to stop calling me a certain name because it genuinely bothered me. For years afterward, I thought there was something wrong with me because I just couldn't take a joke, I couldn't separate "laughing with" from "laughing at." Years later, I got a second opinion. The good news is that there wasn't really anything wrong with me, that sometimes people were just jerks. The bad news is that the number of jerks turned out to be higher than I'd thought.
My 7th grade history class had some class clowns in it. Trouble was, it was a de facto role as they weren't very good at it, as most of their jokes relied on me to be their punchline, whether I wanted to be or not. How exactly they made fun of me or laughed at me or generally had fun at my expense varied and changed almost daily. For about two or three days, though, the fixation was on the fact that I was the only boy in the class who wore glasses. Right away, I thought, "they're really desperate for a laugh." Seriously, the last months 7th grade, a year between us and high school, and I felt like I was living out an uninspired episode of Full House.
Anyway, we were all doing some sort of art project that I don't remember any details of, except that we'd have to stop about five minutes before the bell so we could all go wash up in the bathrooms. So, here's the scenario: everyone walks a little faster than me so they can get there first. When I step in, everyone turns away from the sinks and starts flicking their hands at me so water beads on my glasses, carrying on until I literally can't see and have to take them off to wipe them clean, and the process repeats when I put them back on until I get out of the bathroom, my hair wet enough that I can slick it back.

This goes on for two days. I don't get angry. I don't lash out. I don't confront anybody about it. I don't say a word.  I just stand there and seethe quietly to myself, because it's the seventh bloody grade, we're in our early teens, and flicking water at my glasses to where I can't see is the funniest damn thing in the world to these guys. On the third day, I figure that maybe I'm taking this too seriously, that I'm not having fun with the whole thing. So, I decide to give this "laughing with you" idea a shot. Again, everyone walks a little faster than me to get to the bathroom first. Before I step in, though, I take my glasses off and put them in my pocket. I make sure not to squint, because that would just give them something to laugh about. I walk in, knowing what's going to happen next, and I'm smiling. It's not a toothy, ear-to-ear grin, it's more like a Mona Lisa, at the risk of sounding pretentious. The funny thing is, I'd never felt more confident in my life at that moment. The sad thing is, no one else found it funny, made apparent when they turned away from the sinks with hands at the ready.

Awkward silence.

I'd see some turn away from the sink and watch a smile disappear almost like someone flipped a switch. Instead of knowing nods, playful shrugs, or even indifference, I saw, despite the blur, frowns and eye rolls. I hadn't gotten in on the joke, I'd ruined it. I'd ruined it by not ignoring them or getting angry or annoyed or anything like that. I'd ruined it by wanting in on it and playing along. They weren't making fun of me to be friendly or chummy, they were making fun of me because they were that desperate for a laugh. How dare I, apparently.

Maybe I should have grabbed a fire extinguisher before going in instead.