difference there is that the people hes shooting are in on the acting too. whereas you're being a creep about people you have never met, and never will meet. and what's more are friends someone you aparntly (sic) consider a friend.
just cos you're joking doesn't mean its not rude and disrespectful.
There's been a lot of words expended over the years by critical thinkers and socio-cultural commentators regarding whether humour is justifiable in breaking social taboos and the boundaries of what some people consider to be acceptable taste if it is amusing or entertaining. Chances are you see and hear things in the mainstream media all the time which many millions of people in the world would consider to be very offensive but accept them because most of the time you understand the dichotomy. There's a massive difference between what you and indeed other people consider to be good or bad taste and what I consider to be good or bad taste. For example, personally I believe that 90% of the comedy I consider to be highly amusing, artistic even, is brutally antisocial.
Your stance appears to be that humour should never take the risk and while I completely accept that, I must respectfully disagree with your opinion on this matter. If we were all forced to operate within said parameters, our dialogue would be permanently restricted and the written word would be rather shackled. If I could never ever make any posts which certain people might find offensive, I’d definitely struggle to think of anything I could post here at all. I don’t just mean the elderly or religious fundamentalists either, I mean anybody who struggles to understand specific types of attempted humour.
For example, I remember once Darryl made an off the cuff
parody thread about a forum convention in Antarctica.
Antarctica.
Think of where that is in the world.
Think of a little line of American Apparel clad dorks walking across the tundra.
Having imagined that, I’d have thought it was very difficult to miss the joke. That Darryl had somehow organised a trip to the South Pole on short notice so a bunch of internet geeks could hang out with some penguins is utterly absurd. I think you’d have to have a pretty imprecise judgment of humour to think it was feasible. In that thread I made a
meta-reference to a post in another thread from years ago and you, Phil, took it at
absolute face value, taking it upon yourself to chastise me by name for making it.
In a thread about going to Antarctica.
Penguins, dude.
So if for example, I was asked from now on to only make jokes that you personally could not possibly find offensive, given this knowledge of prior events, I do not think I could do it. Somehow I feel like whatever I say ever, you could probably find a way to miss the joke. That’s not even really your fault because it just means our respective sense of humour is misaligned. I don’t think that’s really a problem unless we’re desperate to make it one. That’s basically up to you because I have absolutely nothing but warm feelings towards you as a person.
Just because I’m aware that you might have missed all the possible inferences I made with my original post, I’ll point out a couple of things I think are quite important. In my original post I deliberately didn’t say anything relating to sex because I wanted people to make any connection they wanted. Part of the humour is that I’m not saying anything concrete. It’s a nonsensical series of binary responses with no explanation. For all you know, I was ranking who I believed could beat me at Poker. You, the viewer, had to do the leg work and decide that it was a sexual reference. That’s the joke.
I’ll admit that I’m usually playing to the crowd a little bit when I post because I am actually friends with lots of folk here and I work on the assumption that they understand when I make a joke that there isn’t an malice involved. Indeed, from personal experience I would argue that it is my fondness for acerbic wit and irreverence that endears me to a lot of my good friends but sadly also repels a proportion of the people who will see it. I apologise because I understand that it isn’t their fault. However, I think that it’s relatively easy to take a couple more moments to think about the delivery, content and context of a post before responding.
seriously how would you like it if you posted a photo wiith a group of your friends and I came and said "wow tommy, you have some fuck ugly friends. I mean urgh" cos thats basically what you're saying to Jodie.
Actually I’d be fine with that. Especially if you worded it in a way which I found amusing or entertaining. If you didn’t, I’d probably not be fussed enough to respond because I’d appreciate that the weight of criticism is determined by the legitimacy of the critic. Everyone’s entitled to their opinion.
tommy really has just been more and more dickish of late)
This is nonsense. I haven’t even been posting much this year. A cursory scan through my recent posts shows nothing of this nature. You are mistaken.
Regardless, thanks for your comments. I'll happily discuss borderline anything of this nature when I have the time.
