But your example was exactly what happened in this thread. Someone brought up a terrible story, someone else made a joke about it. How was shifting the action to a lunch room supposed to alter my impression of the situation?
At the risk of incurring your ire, I will timidly venture to add yet another post for clarification. I don’t think people who joke about tragedy are maladjusted, in the same way that I don’t think that the people who comment on the sadness of a tragedy are maladjusted. I was just saying that, if anything, finding a tragedy sad is, if anything, a more “normal” reaction than finding it funny. Of course some tragedies can have a comic element to them - a man breaking his tailbone after sliding on a banana peel could seem funny to people who are familiar with the slapstick convention of banana peels, or a man incurring an injury due to some foolish action (jumping off the roof while holding 10 balloons to see if he can fly), but I just don’t see the humour in the case mentioned in the OP.
This is hard to explain, but making jokes based on a description of a tragic event doesn’t necessarily mean that you find that real tragedy funny. It can be as simple as seeing humour in the juxtaposition of words and concepts. I don’t believe anyone who has made jokes in this thread actually thinks the funny thing is that a woman had her eyes ripped out.
Because I believe that people have come to expect that it is permissible to use coarser language on a message board than you would use in real life, employing expressions that would sound quite different when said out loud in front of a group of co-workers. I have read many insults on this board that I would be quite surprised to hear in “meatspace”. Perhaps I have a sheltered life, but I have never heard one person call another person “you cum-slurping gutter slut” in an acrimonious discussion about politics (something that I saw many years ago at the SDMB in The Pit) - and I have been in many face-to-face political discussions with people that disagreed very strongly. I have never seen someone scream “Fuck You” in someone’s face when talking religion. When I read a post in the Pit about fucking the sockets of a lady whose eyes have been ripped out, I don’t really blink an eye because I’ve learned to expect this at the SDMB, but I would be astounded to hear someone say that “in real life”.
I only post things at the MB that I could imagine myself saying when seeing a person face-to-face. But like I said, maybe I’m old and out of touch.
My example was intended to have people stop and think “would you really say this to a group of strangers in your lunch room at work? If not, why is it permissible to say it on a message board?”
I fully understand that some people would say these things amongst a group of strangers at work. I am betting that many people would not.
Yes, like the concept of an empty eyeball hole must be meant for fucking. Empty hole <= insert penis. Good one, and quite original too I might add! 
P.S. I don’t mean to harp on this one example, it’s just one of many in the thread. My apologies to the person who originally posted it, I’m not trying to pick on you.
exactly.
Okay, fair enough. In your first post, you were agreeing with something Der Trihs said, and I assumed (unwisely, as it turns out) that you were agreeing with his entire sentiment, which included the idea that people joking about the story in the OP were “sick” and “disgusting.”
I don’t think those two reactions are mutually exclusive, though. Most people who joke about tragedy are doing so because it’s an easier and more constructive way of dealing with the the situation than wailing and moaning about it.
The actions of the guy in question are so extreme and over-the-top in their grotesqueness that it’s pretty ridiculous. If it happened in a work of fiction, people would be laughing at it as unbelievably overwrought and melodramatic. And since most of us don’t have any more connection to the victim than we would to a fictional character, it’s easy to carry the attitude over.
Well, the written medium does allow a lot more eloquence than the spoken word normally does. I don’t think I could come up with “cum-slurping gutter slut” on the spur of the moment, plus I have a tendency to stammer when I’m agitated, so I probably couldn’t pull the line off with the elan it requires, so I doubt I’d use that specific phrase in real life. But I don’t advocate ideas or positions on the SDMB that I wouldn’t be willing to advocate in real life, and I tend to assume the same of other posters here, as well.
And I have seen people scream “fuck you” in religious debates in real life. However much I disagree with them philosophically, I have to say it took real balls for those far-right evangelists to show up on campus at San Francisco State. They were not warmly welcomed.
I don’t really regard the SDMB as being filled with strangers, though. I wouldn’t make a comment like that around total strangers because I don’t know what sort of reaction they’d have to that sort of comment. On the SDMB, and in the Pit in particular, I know those sorts of comments are de rigeur, and even encouraged. I know what sort of person would be listening, and even how certain specific individuals would react to that sort of comment.
I don’t think they need to be mutually exclusive. One can be horrified at something and also break out in nervous laughter. But laughing is “easier and more constructive” ? Here’s where we disagree. How is it more constructive? What would be constructive is to be inspired to take action after hearing the story - send her money for medical expenses, decide to donate money to your local women’s shelter, (insert other suitable action here). Easier, maybe - for some people. For many people the “easy” reaction is to say “jesus christ! how terrible!”
I don’t think I would be laughing. Especially if the work of a fiction was a true-crime drama (imagine Law and Order) - the appropriate analogy I think, seeing as how the event in the OP really happened, and did not come from the imagination of a novelist.
I understand that people’s sense of humour can differ from mine. I remember seeing the Coen brothers movie “Fargo”. There is one scene where the kidnapped woman, still blindfolded, is trying to run away from her kidnappers, and bumping into trees, while one of her captors is laughing at her awkwardness. Many people were laughing in the movie theatre. I couldn’t bring myself to find it funny. And I’m not that squeamish I think. In my teenage years, I was quite fond of dead baby jokes. Now I have outgrown them.
Ideas or positions, sure. The language? Not so much. (this does not apply to you, but to the general tone in the pit) However, now that you are familiar with the clever expression “cum-slurping gutter slut”, do you see yourself using it in real life? You can rehearse it ahead of time so that it rolls smoothly off your tongue.
Were those debates, or were those people attempting to preach in the middle of a group of hecklers? Two different things.
I saw my error after I posted, but it was too late to edit. In my workplace comparison, please change the word “strangers” to “co-workers”. If you prefer, change the setting to a bar during happy hour with your co-workers, or a book club discussion where you know most of the people, or some other setting. Would you make the comment there?
Encouraged by whom? In any case, the fact that many people seem to think that these sorts of comments are de rigueur in this forum is one of the reasons I rarely post in here. I think having civil discussions trumps screaming insults at each other any day of the week.
Well, hang on a second. “Jesus Christ, how terrible!” doesn’t put money in the bank account of a women’s shelter, either. Neither reaction helps the victim in any way. I think laughter is a more constructive, healthier reaction for the person reading about a horrible event. And laughing at tragedy doesn’t preclude helping prevent or recover from tragedy, either. The darkest, most disturbed humor tends to come from those most intimatly involved in making bad things come out right, in my experience.
No, I wouldn’t expect you to laugh, as it’s pretty clear you don’t appreciate dark humor. Which is fine, it’s hardly a requirement. But a lot of people do laugh at dark humor, and it’s those people I’m talking about.
Yes, but the point I was trying to make was that if they had come from the imagination of a novelist, they’d be ridiculously over the top. It’s like something from a Tarantino movie. Kill Bill had a lot of scenes of similarly ludicrous violence, usually played for laughs. The giant blood-drenched swordfight at the end of the first movie is funny because it was so far out there. Just because the story in the OP isn’t fiction, doesn’t mean one can’t have the same reaction to the similarly far out violence inherent in it.
Sure, the language is going to be different, but that’s because we’re dealing with entirely different mediums. The written word really doesn’t bear much similarity to the way we talk, when you get right down to it.
Well, I don’t belong to a book club or hang out in bars, so I can’t really say. It would depend on what sort of people frequented either those locations. If I were in a book club with a bunch of people like you, I probably wouldn’t, because I’d know I was surrounded by people who didn’t like that sort of humor, and what’s the point of telling a joke you know no one’s going to laugh at? On the other hand, if I were at a bar with folks like Omegaman or stpauler (to pick two posters at random who have made jokes about the OP), then yeah, sure.
At work, I’d definitly make that sort of joke. But I work in the videogame industry, which attracts a different sort of demographic than most other office jobs. I don’t know what it’s like to work in a bank, say, or other more “straight laced” enviroments, so I can’t speak to that.
All the other people around here who make the same sorts of jokes, of course. I believe it took three pages of skullfucking jokes before anyone registered their disapproval. I’d say the atmosphere in here definitly encourages irreverent, dark humor, and rewards those who are good at it with public approval.
I think having to pick one over the other is terribly limiting. As they say, variety is the spice of life, you cum-slurping gutter slut.
So… I’m not the only here who thinks this is funny? Phew!
“Sometimes you gotta laugh to keep from throwing up.” -attributed to Billie Holiday
You’ve got it exactly backwards. When comparing the empathetic response to the humour response, I am not claiming that one method is more constructive than the other, you are. I said that what would be constructive would be taking action concering what you have read (e.g. donating time or money.) What you are saying is that cracking jokes around the water cooler is constructive, expressing pity for the victim or anger at the criminel is not. I disagree. Neiter is “constructive”. Both might help a person feel better about what the horrific event that they’ve read about, but one method is not better than the other.
In my experience, many of the people involved in these issues take them seriously, not as a subject for jokes.
Obviously not! See the OP. Things like this can and do happen.
I enjoyed Kill Bill and the action in there, but because I thought it was thrilling and exciting, not especially humorous. Again something in which we differ.
So you mean that people have a tendency to use profanity and insults in writing, but not verbally? I usually notice the reverse - that people clean up their language more in writing. (Though, as I’ve said before, I notice that people take a different approach on message boards, where they are afforded a certain degree of “anonymity”).
I chose those as an example of a place where you know some people well and some people only slightly - similarly to the message board. I believe it’s a good analogy.
If you think shouting obscenities helps you live a more well-rounded life, then that’s the path you choose to take. In my case, I think I can pursue self-actualization and attain Nirvana without that in my life.
Go ahead and laugh if you must! What gets me is the smug self-congratulatory attitude of the people who think “I’m laughing about it and you’re feeling bad / angry about it, that makes me better than you.”
“Offended” is the wrong word. “Annoyed” is more apt.
Why not both?
Even though I wasn’t one of those who made fun of the victim, I find it quite logical. Doing so emphasizes the absurdity of these kinds of threads. And by disrupting the stream of “I’m outraged too” posts, hopefully it will discourage people from starting RO threads in the future. Disruption is an effective tool for the protester. We are one step closer to our dream of a world without RO threads.
Are you outraged?
Damn you, Arnold Winkleried. Damn you for derailing one of the funniest threads I’ve ever read on the SDMB!
Wow, that’s actually what I was trying to say before I got derailed into joking too.
I can’t see into other people’s minds to tell exactly what they’re thinking, and when I guess, I sometimes get it wrong.