Dark Humor

[Kerriki]

This has been bothering me for quite some time now.

I will never understand how so many immature people can find humor in subjects such as rape, terrorism, suicide, and now, ebola. These things aren't to be taken lightly and if the situation of these dark subjects gets any worse on FH I might just start blocking the people who joke around about them.

Lately, my dad has been talking to me and my younger brothers about ebola and how serious it is and that it's a very unpleasant thing to have to worry about. Of course, my little brothers are immature sometimes, but even they knew that ebola is certainly not something to joke around about.

There are even some immature freshmen at my school who joke around about terrorism and even my friends joke around about rape sometimes. Usually I simply not say anything against them, and will keep a straight face and walk away. I mean, seriously? The immaturity level of some I people I know both in real life and on the internet really bugs me.

Glad you brought this up Sura, I hope some people who take these subjects as an excuse for humor will read this thread and be more pleasant the next time they talk to someone.

[Morqque]

//Guilty

However, I tend to keep it away from FeralHeart and the public, as I've found such jokes on sites such
as Facebook and 4chan(weallknow4chan..)

But Ebola in fact is a very devastating diese(cantspell) indeed.
and I hope a solution can be found to it<3

[LordSuragaha]

Thank you all for your feedback on this topic. Each of you has brought up good points and I'm glad to see that the majority seem to agree about the severity of this issue.

There is one thing mentioned here a few times that I'd like to talk about though and that's the idea of making humor out of a particular topic to comfort yourself from the true feelings that it evokes in you. While I can understand doing this kind of thing in certain mild situations I fail to see a just reason in it when it comes to such hard hitting subjects like disease, rape, suicide, and terrorism. If people are afraid or bothered by these subjects why bring them up at all or make an excuse to bring them up in a "humorous" way? Has humanity really gotten this naive and insensitive to others? Why with so many other solutions like talking things out etc do some pick "dark humor" to comfort themself? To me it just seems selfish. This is a large public community with individuals coming from a wide range of countries and backgrounds and it's obvious to see that not everyone will be pleased with this kind of humor. In fact highly doubt that the well being of the majority is considered each time someone decides to crack a joke about one of these topics. Every time someone considers doing this they take the risk of offending or hurting someone for their own personal and selfish comfort.

On the flip side if we took the time to maturely discuss, support, and comfort each other what harm is there in that? None. For this reason I see no justification for humor in these kinds of situations. Humor is just a selfish, cold, and insensitive approach to confronting these issues. Humor in these circumstances often does worse than help. I strongly believe that humanity is not so simple minded and that we can come up with better solutions for comforting each other in rough times than making a mockery out of these issues. This kind of humor is what makes recent generations take everything in the world so lightly. The fact that we can't maturely come to grips with these dark but serious circumstances says a lot about our species and the direction we're going in in society.

Humor does not solve problems. Humor does not allow us to face our emotions and learn to cope with them  but rather it throws out a temporarily mask to cover what's really going on in this world and within each individual. To make this world and its people a better place we need to learn better approaches to these kinds of topics because humor does nothing to prevent these issues in the first place. Humor with these topics makes the world take the severity of the issues for granted and within a game with so many young and impressionable minds I don't think this is the kind of message we want to send out to the world.  While we should seek ways to comfort each other we should also accept the fact that these dark things exist in our world and we should respect these topics enough so as not to joke about them or take them lightly. With respect comes true understanding and eventually change. If we want the world to change and we want to start living in a world with less of these issues we first need to change the way we think and act upon these challenges.

So next time you decide upon humor when discussing such serious topics perhaps consider what I and so many others have suggested here.

[peete]

Okay, I kind of understand where you all are getting at, but in my mind I'm thinking of something totally different. It probably goes against what some of the others have said here.
I don't know, like I understand dark humor has a lot of controversial stuff in it, but to me it's not as bad as you all say it is.
Kids at my school joke about things like STDs, Ebola, obesity ect., but in reality, I'm sure they know for a fact that it's a serious thing. And it's not like they go around the school telling their jokes to everyone. They just keep it to themselves because they know it might hurt some other peoples feelings. Now I know some of you are thinking, "well, if they know it hurts others feelings, then they wouldn't joke about it at all!". True, but it's kind of the same thing with swearing. Some people don't like it, and others do it all the time. The people who do it all the time swear with their friends and people they know are comfortable with it. The people who don't like swearing never hear it, and if they do they just ignore it, and both groups are satisfied. I don't understand what the problem is. Same with drugs. There's a boy at my school who has had a hard time quitting weed, and he jokes about it all the time. It's just his way of coping. You can't tell him that drugs aren't funny, I mean of course he knows that! If that's his way of coping and it makes him more comfortable with what he's going through, I don't see a problem. The people who still think otherwise just leave it alone.

I was watching a YouTube video of someone playing a Barbie Horse game, and she was making jokes about cats being trampled by horses and whatnot. Someone in the comments got offended because ironically enough, her cat got killed after being trampled, and told the gamer it wasn't funny and that she should say sorry. The gamer replied back saying that she wasn't going to apologize because in reality, she had no way of knowing about the commenter's cat (She did apologize for the commenter's loss though). She also lost her cat, and she saying that she also lost her cat and joking about it was just her way of dealing with it at the time.

I probably went a bit off topic with this one, but the point I'm trying to get out is that a joke is a joke. You can't stop people from doing it. And just because someone makes a dark humor joke doesn't mean they're being selfish or trying to hurt others feelings. Freshman at my school joke about rape. Do you just assume that they don't know anything about rape, and how serious it is? We talk about things like this at school all the time in assemblies, class, or just with other teachers. They care more about educating us about serious topics rather than getting teenagers to stop, because they know it's just not possible.

I understand, topics like Ebola and suicide are serious, and no one should ever have to go through such a thing. But in my opinion, just because someone makes an offensive or dark joke, doesn't necessarily mean that they are a terrible person or are uneducated about it. (I understand if no one else feels the same way, but that's just how I see the situation :/ )

[wolfdog01]

I was scared to say something but DevilBurgers said it for me.

Yeah, I think a lot of people know that things such as suicide, rape, ebola, etc. are serious topics but making jokes about it does help some people go through with it. And I have a lot of drama in my family so I think I do have some rights to joke about them. Even at school, my teacher jokes about Ebola so we don't see it as something that will put us into a panic and have us stressed out 24/7 so we couldn't focus. Now do I say this stuff to everyone? No, only the people that I feel can handle it,  I love all kinds of humor and dark humor is something that really gets me laughing. I love a good joke or two about pedos, drugs, and the like, it is something I enjoy. And when a person gets all mean and walks away from it, I wonder why. Because to me, I don't see what the big deal is. Yes I know how serious these topics are, I am 16 and almost in the middle of my high school life. The main reason why I won't joke about such things is if a friend or person I am talking to has had a bad experience with such things, then I understand. But, as DevilBurgers said, a joke is a joke and I don't like cussing, yet all of my friends cuss like sailors, even I have a few times, do I get mad at them? No I ignore it.
If I sounded offensive I am sorry, I just had to get this off my chest

[Anathema]

I was scared to say something but DevilBurgers said it for me.

Yeah, I think a lot of people know that things such as suicide, rape, ebola, etc. are serious topics but making jokes about it does help some people go through with it. And I have a lot of drama in my family so I think I do have some rights to joke about them. Even at school, my teacher jokes about Ebola so we don't see it as something that will put us into a panic and have us stressed out 24/7 so we couldn't focus. Now do I say this stuff to everyone? No, only the people that I feel can handle it,  I love all kinds of humor and dark humor is something that really gets me laughing. I love a good joke or two about pedos, drugs, and the like, it is something I enjoy. And when a person gets all mean and walks away from it, I wonder why. Because to me, I don't see what the big deal is. Yes I know how serious these topics are, I am 16 and almost in the middle of my high school life. The main reason why I won't joke about such things is if a friend or person I am talking to has had a bad experience with such things, then I understand. But, as DevilBurgers said, a joke is a joke and I don't like cussing, yet all of my friends cuss like sailors, even I have a few times, do I get mad at them? No I ignore it.
If I sounded offensive I am sorry, I just had to get this off my chest

I think the main point here is that if you've got friends that can deal with the subject, then that's fine; you can keep it between them and yourself - just don't go spewing it in public like lots of FH users do. Subjects like terrorism, rape, suicide, ebola, are really heavy and dark subjects that either directly or indirectly affect a lot, and I mean a lot of people, and people get upset when they hear about it. Some people joke about stuff to relieve themselves, but as Suragaha said, it's somewhat insensitive to others and selfish, and that's not how everyone deals with it; some folks just really don't want to hear about the stuff. You wouldn't crack a joke with such heavy subjects around people you didn't know, because it could quite easily offend them; but many FH users say these things in public chat regardless of who is listening, and I'm pretty sure that's what this is about. To me these jokes, while some might regard them as relieving, is just making light of a dark subject and subsequently making it seem less way less bad than it actually is. It's unnecessarily bringing these subjects back into the spotlight when some people want to just forget about them - or worse, it's bringing them into the spotlight in the wrong way. Why make insensitive jests out of something that so deeply affects many people?

I'm just going to put this out there that I myself am a victim of sexual assault, and I make it very clear to people I know not to use the word 'rape' when in my presence; yet a few still do. Why? I don't know. Maybe they think it's not a serious problem; maybe they just don't think; maybe they're just like "LOL but rape is a term for when you get pwned in a game, lol right?"; maybe they don't really care or think that by joking about the stuff, I'll feel better about what happened - but I don't. Every time I hear about it, I feel worse. Yeah, joke about this stuff with your friends so long as they're okay with it - but don't put it where everyone can see it, don't crack jokes when others have made it explicitly clear not to talk about it. That's exactly the problem in FeralHeart. People run around and say stuff in local about getting raped, or about terrorism, or about ebola - they say it in local (and previously in general) where absolutely anyone and everyone can see it without giving a single damn about how other people might feel about it. It's wrong, and FH users and internet users in general need to stop being so jejune and grow the heck up. People need to realise that words have a huge impact that can really affect a person's mental health negatively. Before saying this stuff in public, people should just think for a split second. That's all it takes: half a second of thinking.

[SteampunkWolfdog]

^

With friends and/or family you know well: fine, have a bit of dark humour to your heart's content.
In public with strangers: no no, just don't.

Example: I'd happily have a little giggle at some of my step-dad's bad dark humour jokes with my best friends and family members. I would not even dare make a joke about rape or terrorism on the bus from town; I'd probably get beaten up by the old people xD.

[S. Italy/Romano]

The thing here is that we're not alone/with our friends or people who we know are comfortable with this humour. It's quite risky to crack one of these in front of a crowd because not everyone can relate or find it funny. FH is a group of people, and so it is best to either joke around in whisper or group, with people you are certain will enjoy it. I'm sure if a surgeon cracked a joke like this, the entire crowd would recoil.

The second thing that I was going to mention as well is that this humour is CRUCIAL to doctors.
90% admitted to using dark humour while operating on patients and with their colleagues. Why?
Because it gets their mind off the stressful situation and helps to release the nervous energy from perhaps the previous operation which went wrong.

They cannot use a knock knock banana joke during this time because it's not humorous in the current situation, however, the humour that is effective in dealing with a life and death operation is indeed gallows humour.

I for one, would rather be the next patient of a doctor that had a good laugh at the expense of the previous patient than one that spent an hour mulling over the operation and will probably do a poor job with my ailment because he's thinking about the previous incident.

However, the doctors do not joke in front of patients about their problems or etcetera.

Another important point is that when we log into FeralHeart, we are probably not under the tremendous stress that surgeons and doctors are, unless you're operating and playing FH in which case... just no.

I'm not saying that everyone isn't under stress, I'm saying you have access to other ways of getting this stress out, while if you were operating on someone in an ER, you really have only a quick wit and humour to help you.

[Whisperingwaves]

This has been itching at me as well. If your going to joke about something, please find something that is actually funny, not death...or well, disease.

As Ferah said, you can die from Ebola, there's no other way to say this, I don't find it funny...no I find it actually quite frightening. There has been I think two or three cases of Ebola in the US already, one person died from it, but yeah, it's not mature to joke about or think it's funny...Ebola is serious.
Yes humor is good, but to a limit. Yeah you can have a giggle or two about things and be mature about it, but if it's something as serious as this, I'd say not to do it...

Doctors are trying to find a cure to Ebola, which we have great progress, but, before you joke about it, think of all the people in Africa dying from it....

Sorry if this seemed a bit rude.

~ Whisper

[Skan]

I'd just like to say that the majority of the people making these jokes have never had these things happen to them or their loved ones, which causes a certain level of detachment from, and even the romanticism of the true nature of death, sickness, terrorism, war, ect. (And of course there's a percent of people who're just trying to make light of a situation to alleviate fear. It's a very effective survival mechanism).

People who have never had to deal with someone close to them being sick or dying are much more likely to make insensitive jokes about death. The concepts of sickness, death, and ect are just that: concepts. For them, these concepts are things that happen to other people in faraway lands that have no real impact on their daily lives, and therefore they don't bother to try to understand the impact these events have had on the people who've experienced such losses and tragedy.

Not trying to defend these idio...people, just trying to give insight on their possible thought process...or lack thereof.