I get that humor is useful for making hard topics seem easier but some things should be hard. Would you consider dirty jokes an appropriate substitute for a sex ed class? Would drinking away your nervousness be a good way to prepare for a driving test? Serious matters need to be discussed frankly and honestly.
I used to kind of like Oliver sometimes, but then I saw the pattern and it ruined it for me. Every episode is 'Hello joke>subject>mock subject if funny looking, else mock thing next to subject>let’s get serious, bad thing is happening>it’s really bad>but don’t get outraged enough to go do something about it, here’s someone else taking care of it for you>callback to joke earlier>HBO-brand anti-capitalist recuperation catharsis complete. Go back to work.
Kind of a false equivalence, since you’re not educating yourself on memes exclusively (and if you are, god help you lol). Even in your own reference, you can absolutely make dirty jokes after sex ed, especially if it helps you remember the topics. Good jokes will both reinforce the right narrative, make it more approachable, and help people remember what matters on a topic. Still has to be a good joke though, and humor is subjective so hard to gauge.
I mostly draw the line when it targets a vulnerable person or persons (like, let’s not joke about rape), or makes someone in the room uncomfortable out of respect for that person (like a dirty joke in front of grandma). I suppose one could say any joke about the assholes in charge fall under that first category, but they harm vulnerable people, but they themselves are perfect targets.
Almost no one does one thing to the exclusion of all else, so few, if any, people are getting their knowledge purely from memes, but it doesn’t have to be exclusive to have an effect. Someone who drinks a gallon of soda a day isn’t necessarily getting all of their nutritional intake from soda, and, to borrow the phrase, god help them if so, but it is going to have effects on their life. Treating politics as entertainment also has secondary effects. Just like drinking soda can train your tongue to expect that level of sweetness, which can lead to troubling dietary choices, political humor trains you expect a punchline in a discussion about policy, which can lead to bad political choices.
And notice there how you changed what I said to argue against a point I didn’t make. I talked about jokes as a substitute for sex ed. You talked about jokes after sex ed. There is no mandated political ed class after which to make jokes. The shallow coverage on things like Oliver, tiktok, or other comedy shows is often the deepest, or the only, examination of a political subject people actually ingest, maybe supplemented by a few headlines, a shallow newscast, and an article they didn’t finish. They aren’t making memes about the thing they learned during an in-depth intended-to-inform class. They are making memes based on the memes they laughed at because of the vague half-knowledge they got from the media atmosphere.
Jokes have their place. No one would argue for a life completely lacking in humor, but, just like your example of rape, a subject that is extremely serious because of the long lasting and possibly life-destroying effect it can have on people, politics is too serious to be joked about in the public sphere. Joking about it fails to take serious something that can leave someone alive, but utterly unable to live.
I get that humor is useful for making hard topics seem easier but some things should be hard. Would you consider dirty jokes an appropriate substitute for a sex ed class? Would drinking away your nervousness be a good way to prepare for a driving test? Serious matters need to be discussed frankly and honestly.
I used to kind of like Oliver sometimes, but then I saw the pattern and it ruined it for me. Every episode is 'Hello joke>subject>mock subject if funny looking, else mock thing next to subject>let’s get serious, bad thing is happening>it’s really bad>but don’t get outraged enough to go do something about it, here’s someone else taking care of it for you>callback to joke earlier>HBO-brand anti-capitalist recuperation catharsis complete. Go back to work.
Kind of a false equivalence, since you’re not educating yourself on memes exclusively (and if you are, god help you lol). Even in your own reference, you can absolutely make dirty jokes after sex ed, especially if it helps you remember the topics. Good jokes will both reinforce the right narrative, make it more approachable, and help people remember what matters on a topic. Still has to be a good joke though, and humor is subjective so hard to gauge.
I mostly draw the line when it targets a vulnerable person or persons (like, let’s not joke about rape), or makes someone in the room uncomfortable out of respect for that person (like a dirty joke in front of grandma). I suppose one could say any joke about the assholes in charge fall under that first category, but they harm vulnerable people, but they themselves are perfect targets.
Almost no one does one thing to the exclusion of all else, so few, if any, people are getting their knowledge purely from memes, but it doesn’t have to be exclusive to have an effect. Someone who drinks a gallon of soda a day isn’t necessarily getting all of their nutritional intake from soda, and, to borrow the phrase, god help them if so, but it is going to have effects on their life. Treating politics as entertainment also has secondary effects. Just like drinking soda can train your tongue to expect that level of sweetness, which can lead to troubling dietary choices, political humor trains you expect a punchline in a discussion about policy, which can lead to bad political choices.
And notice there how you changed what I said to argue against a point I didn’t make. I talked about jokes as a substitute for sex ed. You talked about jokes after sex ed. There is no mandated political ed class after which to make jokes. The shallow coverage on things like Oliver, tiktok, or other comedy shows is often the deepest, or the only, examination of a political subject people actually ingest, maybe supplemented by a few headlines, a shallow newscast, and an article they didn’t finish. They aren’t making memes about the thing they learned during an in-depth intended-to-inform class. They are making memes based on the memes they laughed at because of the vague half-knowledge they got from the media atmosphere.
Jokes have their place. No one would argue for a life completely lacking in humor, but, just like your example of rape, a subject that is extremely serious because of the long lasting and possibly life-destroying effect it can have on people, politics is too serious to be joked about in the public sphere. Joking about it fails to take serious something that can leave someone alive, but utterly unable to live.