[deleted]
Edgy humor has a butt to the joke, and/or the joke is made due to someone’s misfortune, at their expense. It’s inherently problematic in the sense that there’s a risk of offense to those who have been victims of similar misfortune. The solution, of course, is to be funny enough that the humor overpowers the offense and/or doesn’t focus the humor on being mean to the victims
[deleted]
Dark humor itself isn’t the issue, however a majority of the people who claim they have “dark humor” are actually just massive bigots who don’t want to be called out so they mask their hate as thinly-veiled “jokes”
[deleted]
Yep. It’s been a thing for a long time now, at least since 2001, but “it’s just a joke” became a way for bigots to disguise their hatred, and was picked up by “edgy” teenagers in places like 4Chan…which would later reveal as they got older that they were actually just bigots themselves all along or the joking had normalized that mentality in them to the point where they started believing it. It’s definitely not just an American thing, but Republicans in the US tend to be extremely sensitive and volatile emotionally (despite calling everybody else “liberal snowflakes” for how easily offended they claim they are) while being very emboldened by the events of the past decade or so to openly spew their hatred and bigotry.
There’s a great stand-up bit about it by James Acaster from 2019 called What’s Wrong? Too Challenging For You!?
[deleted]
It’s not against dark humor. It’s against what you identified: people hiding behind it or qualifying their bigotry as dark humor when they’re really just assholes.
My humor is dark af and I take no offense because this isn’t about that.
[deleted]
