[QUOTE=Little Plastic Ninja]
I think there’s some kind of disconnect.
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.
[/QUOTE]
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.”
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.