Honestly, it’s a fun(ish) graffiti site. A small handful of people decided to take a couple of minutes out of their daily drudgery to screw around with it a little and post their results. Some of it was fairly tasteful, some of it not so much. No need to read deep psychological meaning into any of it. By Monday, everyone will have forgotten about it.
No big deal.
And personally, I thought my treatment of William Christopher was nothing short of brilliant. OK, maybe far short of brilliant. Certainly not tasteless, though.
No its not, the thing was not intended in that manner at all, this is a lame attempt at post justification.
Unfunny, and insipid, childish, that made for most of the images, and no doubt there is a way that someone could actually use this and produce something with a little humour, but this is beyond most of the contributors.
I suppose Straightdopers ain’t as smart as they think they are, pretentious - probably.
As for that image being overused, well, I guess thats an excuse to poor tatste then isnt it, find an image, as horrific as you like, show it enough times and become desensitised, way to go humanity.
Once you have stripped that image of context, well why not exploit it, lets put it on t-shirts, maybe we can have a ‘Americas got starvation talent’ competition, surely theres a franchise possibility here.
Its not outrage here, just a glumness at the show of mediocrity, not only in the thread linked, but the dull attempts at wit here in this thread too, so dull edged that you couldn’t cut a blancmonge in two with it.
I disagree, I think that underneath it all it’s not black humor that drives that, but a need to stop being desensitized to such images and ideas that drives that kind of thing on the internet.
You should see the goatse I did with the heart coming out. Change your life man.
Really, casdave? It wasn’t outrage you were trying to convey in posts 5 & 10? Because if that’s just you “being glum”, I’d hate to see what a drama queen you are when you do get outraged.
I, personally, didn’t find that particular image a knee-slapper, but I also don’t tend to gnash my teeth and complain that humanity’s going to shit over something obviously meant as a (rather tasteless) joke.
Making jokes about a horrible thing does not mean that you find the horrible thing funny. Generally it’s a way to make a horrible thing sting less.
Say, for example, this:
“How many feminists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?” “That’s not funny!”
If I find this funny, am I also a victim of the patriarchy?
I’m willing to bet most of the Dope – and probably the person who manipulated that photo in particular – knows the story of that picture. And I’m pretty sure we all think it’s horribly tragic. I think you don’t get why people might find the manipulation funny, and I don’t think anyone is going to be able to explain why it’s funny any more than I can explain why a pun is funny.
Also, if I took offense at everything I had a right to be offended by, I’d never stop being offended.
One thing does come to mind, though, Hilarity N. Suze. Did you click on any of the other links in that thread? Did you think them less Pit-worthy? Did you think you were going to find purely inoffensive things in that link? Did you think that this was less offensive? Or this, which came before it? For that matter, the very first picture in that thread is pretty bad. Is it less bad? Why or why not? Please show your work.
I knew full well the tragic story of the photo and its photographer.
Thing is, the thread is titled Add tacky bling to inappropriate pictures. It’s an inappropriate picture, and there’s tacky bling added to it.
I knew I’d be pitted. Still, it would really be more deserving if I posted some mundane photo that looked like it was created by the college hotties, gangsta’ wannabes and unicorns-n’-faeries crowd that normally find artistic merit in blingy images. In a thread where Dopers asked to post inappropriate images, something like this or this would be threadshitting.
It seemed like a particularly pointless and insipid way to waste time. Worse than watching daytime television, even.
I do understand the use of black humor to blunt tragedy. The stuff you linked to is not black, and it’s not humor.
For instance, if someone had photoshopped the first image you put up and put on a caption, that–depending on the wit of the caption–might count as black humor. When you send someone to a site that offers up some ready-made images and some ready-made animated gifs to drag and drop onto it…well, that’s electronic decoupage.
Just for example, following 9/11 there was a thread where Dopers were invited to post their theories of what The Onion would say about 9/11. Definite black humor. (The only one I remember from that thread was “Bush says day will live in imfany” but there were some other good ones.) And there were some that were insipid and had no edge, but someone else might have found them funny. I’m sure the person who posted them thought so.
In the subject thread, even some of the posters admitted it. “This is lame but here goes.”
