"Relax, it's just a joke."

[Wyote]

in good faith

One trouble point: it is more difficult online to differentiate when a person is acting in good faith or not
Supporting this infrastructure and bringing awareness to those who are/aren't acting in good faith will build a community which is more tolerant of humor/more understanding of others

 

[Ginny]

Fuck all yall bitches! j/k Love Fam! ❤



duck bitch. don't get cut in half by my death rays of love

Lol, this is hilariously nonsensical

 

[G4RiiM]

Lol, this is hilariously nonsensical

even if it's nonsensical to you I still got love for you

 

[Wyote]

But if you can when you're offended just figure out why, deal with the emotion, move on.

 

[Ren]

Even if someone said or did something wrong to you, you have to understand everyone is doing their best to be happy therefore from their perspective they did what was right.

Maybe you disagree.

Yeah, I disagree. I actually think this idea is not only wrong, but dangerous. I'll explain more later.

 

[Deleted member 16771]

There are a lot of great thoughts here, and some impressive analyses (you know who you are), but I just wanted to pick up on this:

There is a constant battle going on from generation to generation over the soul of our society, and this is certainly reflected in what is considered acceptable humour - it feels almost Darwinian, the way this is played out. But I feel that picking up on the humour is really only dealing with the symptoms of underlying, competing social norms rather than connecting with the heart of these. It is certainly possible to use it as a diagnostic, though any one individual or group could well be unrepresentative.

I think you're right here, John, and what's more I think that it's a natural human instinct to behave in such ways ingrained on the level of Darwinian group selection and even scales of selection above that.

Ingroups and outgroups are constantly forming and reforming driven by selective pressures which at bottom have evolved to ensure the general fitness of the group as a whole. These eusocial mechanisms of group selection determine who is 'fit' and 'capable' enough to add to the capacity of the group's survival, and on the contrary who is 'weak' enough that group fitness might be harmed by their presence. In this case, humour is used as a tool to gauge intelligence as well as the skills required to promote social cohesion, much like its role in individual sexual selection.

What I find fascinating is how this interacts with other mechanisms of social network polarisation, and particular the almost automatic process whereby 'unitary utopias' are split into 'bipolar states' (these are the only two 'balanced' states of social networks, after the work of Fritz Heider and Harary & Cartwright). Almost every idea/opinion/&c. is drawn into the process of polarisation through oppositional mechanisms of value attribution, even the most seemingly irrelevant things, and the process seems to be, on the whole, generally irreversible. It might even be (probably is) another selective mechanism: split, conflict and conquer; split, conflict and conquer, cycling through unitary state > bipolar states > creative destruction > unitary state. In such ways does the group apply selective pressure to itself and increases its general fitness within the overall environment. There aren't many social or eusocial species who don't do this, and of course those that wouldn't would eventually perish to external (extra-species) threats.

The interesting interplay here is that there's a conflict between the lower-level individual and group selective uses of humour and the general state of social-network polarisation today in the West, with this question of 'offensiveness' being held in polar tension between Right and Left. Ten or twenty years ago, 'poltical correctness' was more firmly a feature of the Left, and political incorrectness of the Right (though its been changing hands regularly for God knows how long - it's not a new concept by any means), though it's not as clear today.

The problem (and the conflict between selective mechanisms at different levels of the social structure) is that once you're polarised into the side that's currently associated with 'political correctness', then your lower-level individual/sexual and group selective fitness will start to be harmed. There's a tension there which will probably only be resolved with the marginalisation and elimination of the 'sub-clique' of SJWs from the Left more generally (since tripolar states are 'unbalanced' and hence unstable) - their prominence in the media isn't a sign of their cultural triumph or ascendancy, but quite the opposite. It's a sign of their differentiation from the more general 'Left' clique under which they previously subsisted, and the fact that the mechanisms of bipolarisation are kicking them out of the bipolar structure as a whole. 'SJW's as a phenomenon won't survive the next fifteen years as a serious political force. After that, the situation will revert to the Right being associated with being offended more generally, and the Left resuming its 'irreverence' (until it flips again).

 

[Ren]

Yeah, I disagree. I actually think this idea is not only wrong, but dangerous. I'll explain more later.

@slant

I agree that in certain cases people wrong us unintentionally, having actually meant well. I also agree that depending on the situation, it might be more beneficial to move on and redirect our energies elsewhere. But there are also limitless numbers of cases where the wrong perpetrated was intentional and not at all guided by an idea of “doing the right thing”. People are unfortunately capable of doing terrible things to others, and in those cases it is absolutely vital not to legitimize the actions of the wrongdoer. Otherwise it is an open door to all kinds of unnameable abuse and cruelty.

I don’t think you disagree with this. Once again it all depends on the nature of the act. And it is true that in order to get to the nature of the act we sometimes have to regain control of our emotions first.

 

[Deleted member 16771]

Fascinating question. This is just some thinking out loud ....

Humour has all sorts of uses. It can release tension and defuse a difficult situation, it can explain something in a flash that otherwise would take a lot of words, it entertains and warms the soul.
It can be a vicious weapon in the hands of bullies who are using it to establish dominance socially, or it can be a way of signalling submission to a threat - so avoiding a more significant conflict. This is displaced violence using humour as display rather than verbal or physical contact.
It can be used by small social sets as a way of differentiating their identity from other groups - the forum has it's own style for example
It can be used by society as a whole to reinforce some of the memes (in the original Dawkins sense) that are its foundations.

But who decides what is inappropriate - who makes the rules? These have definitely changed because when I was young the world was full of Englishman, Irishman and Scotsman jokes, or bishop and actress jokes and they weren't inappropriate then, but at least some of them are now. TV series that were though to be innocent and hilariously funny then are now thought to be unacceptable. Was there a flaw in the attitudes of society then - and if there was, who says? And what are the flaws in our modern society that we can't see now, but will be seen as inappropriate 50 years from now? Are we actually becoming better people, or are we simply replacing a genital cultural attitude with an anal one? Society is becoming much more puritanical than it was a couple of generations ago - it’s like a replay of the early Victorian era with its reaction to Regency moral laxity, and like then is over-shooting in the other direction.

There is a constant battle going on from generation to generation over the soul of our society, and this is certainly reflected in what is considered acceptable humour - it feels almost Darwinian, the way this is played out. But I feel that picking up on the humour is really only dealing with the symptoms of underlying, competing social norms rather than connecting with the heart of these. It is certainly possible to use it as a diagnostic, though any one individual or group could well be unrepresentative.

Just on this point, I'm currently interested again in the evolutionary model (in my work) - it's partly why I talk about what I do in the video I made for my new blog - and particularly the development of 'cultural evolution' as a field; a field which uses the evolutionary model as an integrative framework for the social sciences and the humanities (personally, though, you know that I'm building something which I think is more fundamental and appropriate to do this: an aetiological framework). Alex Mesoudi has made it his life's work to push this view, and I think you might be interested to read about how things have advanced since The Selfish Gene (which is to say that memetics - or the more general epidemiological model of idea transmission advanced by Alvin Goldman and those guys under the label of 'memetics' - gets a lot of things wrong about cultural evolution). I'll attach an article.

 

[slant]

@slant

I agree that in certain cases people wrong us unintentionally, having actually meant well. I also agree that depending on the situation, it might be more beneficial to move on and redirect our energies elsewhere. But there are also limitless numbers of cases where the wrong perpetrated was intentional and not at all guided by an idea of “doing the right thing”. People are unfortunately capable of doing terrible things to others, and in those cases it is absolutely vital not to legitimize the actions of the wrongdoer. Otherwise it is an open door to all kinds of unnameable abuse and cruelty.

I don’t think you disagree with this. Once again it all depends on the nature of the act. And it is true that in order to get to the nature of the act we sometimes have to regain control of our emotions first.

Even in the worst situations when we have acted and done what we could do about the situation it's most beneficial to let it go.

For example, I was raped, and because it was a date rape the attitude in Utah is that the prosecutor won't take those cases because it's considered a "he said she said" situation which likely wouldn't win.

That is the reality. It doesn't really matter if that was right or wrong; I cannot force the prosecutor to file charges. Secondly, I reported it so the police now have a record to create a case if he continues to do this.

Some wounds are deeper so they take longer to move on from. But you must move on. You can't hold on to those things.

And it really isn't healthy to villainize people who do wrong. This person who did that to me may be dangerous because of his behavior, but it doesn't make him inferior to me or some inhuman entity. People are people and the fact with trauma is that it is a chain reaction; someone learns abuse so they reenact it,

We have a choice in our actions and if we chose to play out our trauma there's consequences.

But as part of taking accountability for ourselves, we take accountability for our reaction to our trauma and hurt. Including how we react to those who hurt us whether it is right or wrong.

Many people react to hurt by wanting to cause hurt back and label it as "Justice". There is a difference between necessary intervention and what we do just to make ourselves feel better.

 

[Wyote]

There are a lot of great thoughts here, and some impressive analyses (you know who you are), but I just wanted to pick up on this:


I think you're right here, John, and what's more I think that it's a natural human instinct to behave in such ways ingrained on the level of Darwinian group selection and even scales of selection above that.

Ingroups and outgroups are constantly forming and reforming driven by selective pressures which at bottom have evolved to ensure the general fitness of the group as a whole. These eusocial mechanisms of group selection determine who is 'fit' and 'capable' enough to add to the capacity of the group's survival, and on the contrary who is 'weak' enough that group fitness might be harmed by their presence. In this case, humour is used as a tool to gauge intelligence as well as the skills required to promote social cohesion, much like its role in individual sexual selection.

What I find fascinating is how this interacts with other mechanisms of social network polarisation, and particular the almost automatic process whereby 'unitary utopias' are split into 'bipolar states' (these are the only two 'balanced' states of social networks, after the work of Fritz Heider and Harary & Cartwright). Almost every idea/opinion/&c. is drawn into the process of polarisation through oppositional mechanisms of value attribution, even the most seemingly irrelevant things, and the process seems to be, on the whole, generally irreversible. It might even be (probably is) another selective mechanism: split, conflict and conquer; split, conflict and conquer, cycling through unitary state > bipolar states > creative destruction > unitary state. In such ways does the group apply selective pressure to itself and increases its general fitness within the overall environment. There aren't many social or eusocial species who don't do this, and of course those that wouldn't would eventually perish to external (extra-species) threats.

The interesting interplay here is that there's a conflict between the lower-level individual and group selective uses of humour and the general state of social-network polarisation today in the West, with this question of 'offensiveness' being held in polar tension between Right and Left. Ten or twenty years ago, 'poltical correctness' was more firmly a feature of the Left, and political incorrectness of the Right (though its been changing hands regularly for God knows how long - it's not a new concept by any means), though it's not as clear today.

The problem (and the conflict between selective mechanisms at different levels of the social structure) is that once you're polarised into the side that's currently associated with 'political correctness', then your lower-level individual/sexual and group selective fitness will start to be harmed. There's a tension there which will probably only be resolved with the marginalisation and elimination of the 'sub-clique' of SJWs from the Left more generally (since tripolar states are 'unbalanced' and hence unstable) - their prominence in the media isn't a sign of their cultural triumph or ascendancy, but quite the opposite. It's a sign of their differentiation from the more general 'Left' clique under which they previously subsisted, and the fact that the mechanisms of bipolarisation are kicking them out of the bipolar structure as a whole. 'SJW's as a phenomenon won't survive the next fifteen years as a serious political force. After that, the situation will revert to the Right being associated with being offended more generally, and the Left resuming its 'irreverence' (until it flips again).

TL;DR - Be Alt Right, make INFJs funny again

 

[acd]

How bout people stop telling people how they should feel or respond? Just because it wouldn't bother you or you think you can take a joke doesn't mean it should not bother someone else. But good for you I guess. You can't dictate how someone should or will respond to their own trauma either. All anyone can do is not be a jackass and know your audience. If you screw up and hurt someone accept that YOU screwed up and apologize and then stop it. Don't try to make it into the other party is too sensitive. And I guess I'm talking about making edgy jokes TO or maybe around someone who might take offense. Joke like that with close friends who get it. But it's stupid to do it around anyone who can take it wrong.

 

[Ginny]

TL;DR - Be Alt Right, make INFJs funny again

Personally, I found rebellious mindsets have most potential to be funny. It's the only thing so far with any permanence. Politics be damned, as it always has been

 

[John K]

There are a lot of great thoughts here, and some impressive analyses (you know who you are), but I just wanted to pick up on this:


I think you're right here, John, and what's more I think that it's a natural human instinct to behave in such ways ingrained on the level of Darwinian group selection and even scales of selection above that.

Ingroups and outgroups are constantly forming and reforming driven by selective pressures which at bottom have evolved to ensure the general fitness of the group as a whole. These eusocial mechanisms of group selection determine who is 'fit' and 'capable' enough to add to the capacity of the group's survival, and on the contrary who is 'weak' enough that group fitness might be harmed by their presence. In this case, humour is used as a tool to gauge intelligence as well as the skills required to promote social cohesion, much like its role in individual sexual selection.

What I find fascinating is how this interacts with other mechanisms of social network polarisation, and particular the almost automatic process whereby 'unitary utopias' are split into 'bipolar states' (these are the only two 'balanced' states of social networks, after the work of Fritz Heider and Harary & Cartwright). Almost every idea/opinion/&c. is drawn into the process of polarisation through oppositional mechanisms of value attribution, even the most seemingly irrelevant things, and the process seems to be, on the whole, generally irreversible. It might even be (probably is) another selective mechanism: split, conflict and conquer; split, conflict and conquer, cycling through unitary state > bipolar states > creative destruction > unitary state. In such ways does the group apply selective pressure to itself and increases its general fitness within the overall environment. There aren't many social or eusocial species who don't do this, and of course those that wouldn't would eventually perish to external (extra-species) threats.

The interesting interplay here is that there's a conflict between the lower-level individual and group selective uses of humour and the general state of social-network polarisation today in the West, with this question of 'offensiveness' being held in polar tension between Right and Left. Ten or twenty years ago, 'poltical correctness' was more firmly a feature of the Left, and political incorrectness of the Right (though its been changing hands regularly for God knows how long - it's not a new concept by any means), though it's not as clear today.

The problem (and the conflict between selective mechanisms at different levels of the social structure) is that once you're polarised into the side that's currently associated with 'political correctness', then your lower-level individual/sexual and group selective fitness will start to be harmed. There's a tension there which will probably only be resolved with the marginalisation and elimination of the 'sub-clique' of SJWs from the Left more generally (since tripolar states are 'unbalanced' and hence unstable) - their prominence in the media isn't a sign of their cultural triumph or ascendancy, but quite the opposite. It's a sign of their differentiation from the more general 'Left' clique under which they previously subsisted, and the fact that the mechanisms of bipolarisation are kicking them out of the bipolar structure as a whole. 'SJW's as a phenomenon won't survive the next fifteen years as a serious political force. After that, the situation will revert to the Right being associated with being offended more generally, and the Left resuming its 'irreverence' (until it flips again).

Just on this point, I'm currently interested again in the evolutionary model (in my work) - it's partly why I talk about what I do in the video I made for my new blog - and particularly the development of 'cultural evolution' as a field; a field which uses the evolutionary model as an integrative framework for the social sciences and the humanities (personally, though, you know that I'm building something which I think is more fundamental and appropriate to do this: an aetiological framework). Alex Mesoudi has made it his life's work to push this view, and I think you might be interested to read about how things have advanced since The Selfish Gene (which is to say that memetics - or the more general epidemiological model of idea transmission advanced by Alvin Goldman and those guys under the label of 'memetics') - gets a lot of things wrong about cultural evolution. I'll attach an article.

Fascinating and profound Hos. While your analysis runs outside my competence to really reply from a similar depth of knowledge of the field, my gut tells me that this is very much what structures the changes to the components of our cultures - and of course as a side effect, it determines how different parts of our communities evaluate the acceptability of the way humour is used.

As I said quite a long time ago now, I'm really intrigued by the idea that your own work is contributing to the possibility of a real equivalent of Asimov's psychohistory - the possibility of analysing, and even predicting the way human societies evolve quantitatively using mathematical modelling based on defined and formalised social laws akin to those in hard science.

 

[Wyote]

Personally, I found rebellious mindsets have most potential to be funny. It's the only thing so far with any permanence. Politics be damned, as it always has been

It's easier to be a rebel than it is to own up to wrongdoings, so people travel that path more often to avoid accountability.
But you're right tho.
Be a rebel, in good faith.

 

[Ginny]

It's easier to be a rebel than it is to own up to wrongdoings, so people travel that path more often to avoid accountability.
But you're right tho.
Be a rebel, in good faith.

It depends how far you take it. You can be a rebel to your rebelliousness and defy the system within its own rights. It's the Loki way

 

[Korg]

Is there ever a time when someone truly is too sensitive and telling them to develop a thicker skin is good and necessary advice?

Looking at this from another side, the unfortunate reality is that we live in a world populated and run by humans. And humans are selfish, violent, envious, duplicitous, power seeking, irrational and possessed by their own insane beliefs -- and as such, there's an undercurrent of that in our institutions and almost any social situation we encounter. We've learned to be civilized and crush it down until it becomes a shadow self, but it is absolutely there and drives us more often than we care to admit. When you have individuals who are so sensitive to anything with the slightest tone of aggression or teasing that they become immobilized, I can't fathom how they'll ever be successful in a career, mate selection, LTR's or really even building any kind of stable life at all which is often fraught with the brutal realities of human nature. Frankly, they often don't (IME) which is why I mentioned a loose correlation between those who are most vocal about how they've been aggressed upon and those who have isolated, unhappy lives (and are often vocal about that, too).

At some point, it has to stop being about the rest of the world changing and more about that person getting help or at least attempting to meet in a newly defined middle. It doesn't mean their feelings are invalidated, it means they need to develop an ability to cope with unpleasantness as a life skill, fair or not. I don't know where that threshold is, but I am sure it exists.

 

[slant]

[

How bout people stop telling people how they should feel or respond? Just because it wouldn't bother you or you think you can take a joke doesn't mean it should not bother someone else. But good for you I guess. You can't dictate how someone should or will respond to their own trauma or maybe status. All anyone can do is not be a jackass and know your audience. If you screw up and hurt someone accept that YOU screwed up and apologize and then stop it. Don't try to make it into the other party is too sensitive. And I guess I'm talking about making edgy jokes TO or maybe around someone who might take offense. Joke like that with close friends who get it. But it's stupid to do it around anyone who can take it wrong.

These two sentences are direct contradictions of each other.

Are you trying to control other people's behavior or not?

People are all responsible for their own feelings and emotions and how they choose to act or not act upon them.

If you are upset by a joke: that is your choice.

Likewise is someone does not apologize for their joke as they do not believe it was offensive, that was their choice.

The problem isn't the getting offended, the problem is thinking you can control others actions.

It is true that I find it more helpful to let things go. That is my belief as an individual. If you don't like that you have the right to dislike it. You have the right to dislike a joke I tell, just as I have the right to tell it.

If you do not want me to tell you not to be hurt, then you likewise cannot tell me to apologise for a joke which made you hurt. That is my choice.

 

[acd]

[

These two sentences are direct contradictions of each other.

Are you trying to control other people's behavior or not?

People are all responsible for their own feelings and emotions and how they choose to act or not act upon them.

If you are upset by a joke: that is your choice.

Likewise is someone does not apologize for their joke as they do not believe it was offensive, that was their choice.

The problem isn't the getting offended, the problem is thinking you can control others actions.

It is true that I find it more helpful to let things go. That is my belief as an individual. If you don't like that you have the right to dislike it. You have the right to dislike a joke I tell, just as I have the right to tell it.

If you do not want me to tell you not to be hurt, then you likewise cannot tell me to apologise for a joke which made you hurt. That is my choice.

No. I'm talking about taking ownership of screwing up and not making all these statements (not just you specifically) about how being offended means the other person is somehow stunted. If you don't care that you offended someone then fine. But I think all these tldr posts about the other person needing to take a joke to promote personal growth are silly. And they are exactly what OP is about.

If you can take a joke then that's great if that's how you deal with it. But some people aren't on that level yet. And them not being on that level doesn't nullify that they were hurt. And I'm not talking about people getting offended by a comedian or something like that. I'm thinking along the lines of someone just saying something shitty and not in context. I'm thinking along the lines of telling racist or sexist jokes at work or in some other inappropriate place. It's just stupid and immature. Is it really worth losing a job or respect to tell a zinger? I'm also not saying certain types of jokes should never be made. I said if you have to make those types of jokes just know your audience. Otherwise don't expect that it's going to be accepted.

 

[dragulagu]

So last night I noticed something in my storm of commentaries, I saw the room (forum) literally go empty itself and at that moment I knew I went too far by forcing my own view fuelled by my own emotional state projecting to others. I became the internet bully.

I want to explain a bit on the behaviour; the intention is never to harm, but always to touch on boundaries. It is invasive and it can hurt. But it’s with holding in mind that the person I direct my words to is able to handle this. And that can fail hard. That’s the danger of that approach. And when a person is hurt that’s something I have to take on me.

However, what should be understood is that there are ground rules on the behaviour on this forum (officially or unofficially) to which it acts as a director in that regard.

I talked with a member about this as well before, explaining that how I experience this forum as a setting with individuals while she, and I assume many INFJ’s do as well, experiences the forum as a platform for individuals to discuss topics and themselves together. Her point of view here is correct. This is primarily a place for INFJ’s and alike to vent out and have a sense of safety in this virtual space. Me pushing boundaries is against the essence of it.

The point though is that it is difficult to sense an emotion in this forum or any online platform, you can only deduce an expression of emotions from what is given by the words typed by a member, how these are presented within a context and how your present image of that person / person’s situation is. Some people are more skilled in deducing these than others, like myself.

When this shoots the wrong way, it is the fault of the person crossing these emotions, but it is also the responsibility of the person receiving it, as hard as it is, to push against it.
Having said that, it is better to take on a safer route when someone is in an emotional vulnerable state.

So, I’m absolutely at fault here for pushing limits where it isn’t necessary, being too insensitive towards the person I direct it to.

And, I apologise as one of the jokers and promise (and am strongly emphasising on that) not to actively jump into the boundary-push mode again without having the proper consent of the person I jump into. You can always ask for an explanation on something I said / do on this forum, confront me on it. I don’t mind. I’m serious on that. I much rather have that directly than someone cropping up negative emotions because of something I said or did. Makes me feel like shit as well.

Anyway, that's a perspective that I'm sharing here. Not part of the discussion.

Glad this thread was started. Kudos.

 

[slant]

No. I'm talking about taking ownership of screwing up and not making all these statements (not just you specifically) about how being offended means the other person is somehow stunted. If you don't care that you offended someone then fine. But I think all these tldr posts about the other person needing to take a joke to promote personal growth are silly. And they are exactly what OP is about.

If you can take a joke then that's great if that's how you deal with it. But some people aren't on that level yet. And them not being on that level doesn't nullify that they were hurt. And I'm not talking about people getting offended by a comedian or something like that. I'm thinking along the lines of someone just saying something shitty and not in context. I'm thinking along the lines of telling racist or sexist jokes at work or in some other inappropriate place. It's just stupid and immature. Is it really worth losing a job or respect to tell a zinger? I'm also not saying certain types of jokes should never be made. I said if you have to make those types of jokes just know your audience. Otherwise don't expect that it's going to be accepted.

I mostly agree with you, I think.

I just get nervous around these types of conversations because I do believe that attempting to protect people from "bad ideas" can result in censorship and when bad ideas are censored they don't go away, they just go underground. But there's definitely a difference between telling someone you don't agree with the message of their joke vs telling them they cannot say it at all.