The slow death of comedy and humour.

[Rev]

8 hours ago, David said:

You have to be careful though as too many voices can confuse the stance. Saying that, allow me to introduce the latest moderator, @DarkFruitsRam7 who either pulled off the greatest of con job on me last night, or actually is a perfect fit adding more youth to what is mostly a 30+ mod room.

Thank god this is in a comedy thread, I'd have been triggered otherwise!

[i-Ram]

8 hours ago, David said:

The key is, not to be your true self online. 

My humour is without boundaries, I may think some things are just wrong at times, but not sure anything could offend me as such and I have no interest in being offended on others behalf.

The rules on this forum are not a reflection of myself either, they are an understanding of what advertisers will not tolerate and just as importantly, what will allow a community to flourish.

Some will question us on that, and admittedly we do get it wrong from time to time, it's human moderation, better than bots but far from flawless.

On here, it's almost part of the role to try and be offended on behalf others, if I didn't we would have a forum akin to a Millwall one.

Then you have to factor in the other moderators levels of what they find offensive, tried to strike a balance and why I chased @angieram for so long, I wanted that female view as the moderators room had calendars up of topless models.

You have to be careful though as too many voices can confuse the stance. Saying that, allow me to introduce the latest moderator, @DarkFruitsRam7 who either pulled off the greatest of con job on me last night, or actually is a perfect fit adding more youth to what is mostly a 30+ mod room.

BBC, Sky Sports, Twitter, Facebook all these platforms are no different, even Spotify have a battle on their hands with their employees trying to cancel Joe Rogan.

So I think what I'm saying after taking that detour is, be aware of how the world is today, if you have dark humour that's not a bad thing, but to survive online it's best to keep that locked away and saved for down the pub where your friendships have been built and personalities established.

I really thought that I might have had a bank in the Leppings Lane end bogs before @DarkFruitsRam7 got a moderators gig. It’s a funny old world.

Note: Even when I do a nice joke about Gypsies it gets taken down. Wtf is going on? I’ll tell you. The increasingly quicker death of comedy.

[Day]

37 minutes ago, i-Ram said:

Note: Even when I do a nice joke about Gypsies it gets taken down. Wtf is going on? I’ll tell you. The increasingly quicker death of comedy.

Not sure which joke you are referring to, but in the terms of use we ask people to contact moderators privately if they want to know why a post was removed.

Feel free to PM with a rough time and location as to where it was posted and I will take a look.

[Mucker1884]

8 hours ago, i-Ram said:

Note: Even when I do a nice joke about Gypsies it gets taken down. Wtf is going on?

I wish they wouldn't tinker with these things!

Anyone would think they are fans of Roma... or Rovers... or Wanderers!  

 

etc... etc...

[i-Ram]

8 hours ago, David said:

Not sure which joke you are referring to, but in the terms of use we ask people to contact moderators privately if they want to know why a post was removed.

Feel free to PM with a rough time and location as to where it was posted and I will take a look.

Don’t worry my apprentice sparky. You make sure today you don’t put the red wire in the green hole. It, and other posts, were removed, and therefore restoring one without the others is of limited value. What is comedy without context after all?

[Chester40]

On 09/02/2022 at 17:17, Mihangel said:

 

Controversial opinion but I laugh much more at Jimmy Carr than Stewart Lee.

I have watched Stewart a lot and find him simultaneously clever, amusing, thought-provoking and irritating smug and really tiresome.

Jimmy Carr is hit and miss but will give me a huge belly laugh that Stewart never does. Sometimes he will also subvert ideas but with a one-liner rather than 10minutes of repetition.  

As an eg he made a joke about scouts that was borderline incredibly offensive but I still felt it was just playing on the old riff that scout masters are 'dodgy', but by making himself the subject of the joke its clearly not true and he's exposing the myth. 

However,  he definitely crossed a line where I didn't laugh at all, with his jokes about rape. Its just not something I can laugh at. He joked about cancer and I can see there is a time you have to laugh at death,  there is a dark humour needed.  I think maybe the distinction is that we can laugh at good old fashioned bad luck,  but evil people really doing evil stuff not unless it's ancient history?

I don't know.... but I still think it's worth unpicking rather than just cancelling. 

[Mihangel]

2 hours ago, Chester40 said:

Controversial opinion but I laugh much more at Jimmy Carr than Stewart Lee.

I have watched Stewart a lot and find him simultaneously clever, amusing, thought-provoking and irritating smug and really tiresome.

Jimmy Carr is hit and miss but will give me a huge belly laugh that Stewart never does. Sometimes he will also subvert ideas but with a one-liner rather than 10minutes of repetition.  

As an eg he made a joke about scouts that was borderline incredibly offensive but I still felt it was just playing on the old riff that scout masters are 'dodgy', but by making himself the subject of the joke its clearly not true and he's exposing the myth. 

However,  he definitely crossed a line where I didn't laugh at all, with his jokes about rape. Its just not something I can laugh at. He joked about cancer and I can see there is a time you have to laugh at death,  there is a dark humour needed.  I think maybe the distinction is that we can laugh at good old fashioned bad luck,  but evil people really doing evil stuff not unless it's ancient history?

I don't know.... but I still think it's worth unpicking rather than just cancelling. 

I don't think it's controversial, I think you'd probably be in a large majority on this site! I should note that I'm a massive Stewart Lee fan, can do little wrong IMO so my opinions are likely to reflect this...

I've got time for Jimmy Carr, makes me laugh but I, like you, can recognise that he's overstepped the mark. Even his friend David Baddiel has pulled him on it. That's the thing that, in these binary times, people struggle with - There are lines between what is funny and what's offensive, they're are blurred, subject to interpretation, sometimes difficult to articulate but they are there.

I entirely agree that things are worth discussing rather than 'cancelling' but 'cancel culture' and 'wokism' are inventions of the right. I don't believe there is some huge groundswell of demand that Jimmy Carr is 'cancelled', more an outrage at his joke. He, like everyone else that chooses to offend, has it within his wherewithal to close the issue by admitting he got it wrong, not doing it again. So often people back themselves into a corner by failing to admit that maybe they have flaws, they don't get everything right, see Johnson, B as a shining example. I don't agree with the aforementioned Baddiel on everything but look at his response to allegations of hypocrisy "Btw, to add to the complexity, some papers have picked up on the fact that apparently on a chat show in 2004, I used the word p*k*y to describe my own appearance. I'm sorry: I shouldn't have used that term. We are all learning and changing all the time. Sorry again." He's not been cancelled, we move on.

[SSD]

Most comedians nowadays are so poor. I end up watching comedians from 20+ years ago on YouTube. The jokes were clever, much better timing. We either have to resort to left wing bias bashing of people in power, which you can telegraph a mile away, or constant swearing with no substance to the joke. 

Mock the week is an abomination. I used to enjoy watching it years ago when they'd have a variety of comedians on, it made the show flow and the contrast in styles made it entertaining. Now it's the same style of dull comedy, utter dross.

 

[Tyler Durden]

5 hours ago, Chester40 said:

Controversial opinion but I laugh much more at Jimmy Carr than Stewart Lee.

I have watched Stewart a lot and find him simultaneously clever, amusing, thought-provoking and irritating smug and really tiresome.

Jimmy Carr is hit and miss but will give me a huge belly laugh that Stewart never does. Sometimes he will also subvert ideas but with a one-liner rather than 10minutes of repetition.  

As an eg he made a joke about scouts that was borderline incredibly offensive but I still felt it was just playing on the old riff that scout masters are 'dodgy', but by making himself the subject of the joke its clearly not true and he's exposing the myth. 

However,  he definitely crossed a line where I didn't laugh at all, with his jokes about rape. Its just not something I can laugh at. He joked about cancer and I can see there is a time you have to laugh at death,  there is a dark humour needed.  I think maybe the distinction is that we can laugh at good old fashioned bad luck,  but evil people really doing evil stuff not unless it's ancient history?

I don't know.... but I still think it's worth unpicking rather than just cancelling. 

This is the funniest Stewart Lee sketch I've seen when he's reading Internet comments about him back to the audience. Comments are highly abusive but majority of them totally hit the mark. 

 

[PistoldPete]

1 hour ago, Tyler Durden said:

This is the funniest Stewart Lee sketch I've seen when he's reading Internet comments about him back to the audience. Comments are highly abusive but majority of them totally hit the mark. 

 

Brilliant. His critics are way funnier than he is.

[Chester40]

23 hours ago, Mihangel said:

He, like everyone else that chooses to offend, has it within his wherewithal to close the issue by admitting he got it wrong, not doing it again. So often people back themselves into a corner by failing to admit that maybe they have flaws, they don't get everything right, see Johnson, B as a shining example. I don't agree with the aforementioned Baddiel on everything but look at his response to allegations of hypocrisy "Btw, to add to the complexity, some papers have picked up on the fact that apparently on a chat show in 2004, I used the word p*k*y to describe my own appearance. I'm sorry: I shouldn't have used that term. We are all learning and changing all the time. Sorry again." He's not been cancelled, we move on.

In theory that all seems reasonable. 

The issue is that its much easier to stand firm and argue from a strong 'I won't apologise ' (as per Boris).

Once you apologise you open yourself up to demands about how you are going to repair the damage, maybe you need to go on some awareness training etc, it's also an admittance of guilt that means his employer has to say how they mean to punish him. Saying its about free speech is a simpler argument as he knows an apology will generally just open a can of worms.

If he says 'the joke about rape/sex/death was out of order and I apologise ' somebody will immediately say 'oh so joking about weight/disability/age is totally OK then?

He admits one joke was wrong but then is saying he thinks its fine to ridicule people with mental health problems or whatever and so the criticism just intensifies....which does then bring us back to the main theme of the argument, that comedy is slowly being strangled to death.

[SillyBilly]

21 hours ago, SouthStandDan said:

 

Mock the week is an abomination. I used to enjoy watching it years ago when they'd have a variety of comedians on, it made the show flow and the contrast in styles made it entertaining. Now it's the same style of dull comedy, utter dross.

 

How long has that been going? Think that was the last one I could watch and feels like a good 7+ years since its been watchable, but may just be my mind exaggerating comedy's demise. 

Comedy at some point or other, particularly on the BBC, started being represented by a disproportional share of lefty type comedians, where the perfect gag was something to do with a Tory. Funny in isolation (I used to enjoy the variety of comedians on shows like Mock the Week), an hour of it from 80% of the panellists and you start feeling like it is a lecture or a sermon. This appears to have permeated right the way through the BBC where it increasingly stopped being interested in about half the country (or a even slightly majority in the case of Brexit if I dare go there). Hence why a once fantastic institution loved by the whole of Britain will die. I now couldn't care if it gets canned as I simply haven't watched its content in years. I visit BBC news website by habit but increasingly I read behind paywalls anyway because of how poor journalism has become in general so no great loss if that went. Seems I am not the only one either. I've not even had a TV licence for 4 years.

[Stive Pesley]

On 13/02/2022 at 08:41, Chester40 said:

which does then bring us back to the main theme of the argument, that comedy is slowly being strangled to death.

My take on the last 8 pages is that most agree that it isn't being strangled to death - it's just that as social media and global media platforms increase the reach of a joke, then the whole "know your audience" element becomes much more difficult to contain

https://www.ents24.com/uk/tour-dates/roy-chubby-brown

Chubby Brown sure has a lot of gigs lined up - his humour isn't being strangled to death - yes from time to time people try to stir up some outrage about his poor, deliberately offensive humour, but it doesn't stop him working and it doesn't remove his audience. He doesn't have to apologise - as the link says "stay away if easily offended" - that kind of sums it up. He knows his audience and he can say what he wants

Your comments on apologies are straw man territory.

To quote the late great Mike D of the Beastie Boys when challenged about the fact he wrote misogynistic raps in his younger days, but later championed women's rights "I'd rather be a hypocrite than that same guy forever"

 

 

 

[Anon]

On 12/02/2022 at 08:33, Mihangel said:

I don't think it's controversial, I think you'd probably be in a large majority on this site! I should note that I'm a massive Stewart Lee fan, can do little wrong IMO so my opinions are likely to reflect this...

I've got time for Jimmy Carr, makes me laugh but I, like you, can recognise that he's overstepped the mark. Even his friend David Baddiel has pulled him on it. That's the thing that, in these binary times, people struggle with - There are lines between what is funny and what's offensive, they're are blurred, subject to interpretation, sometimes difficult to articulate but they are there.

I entirely agree that things are worth discussing rather than 'cancelling' but 'cancel culture' and 'wokism' are inventions of the right. I don't believe there is some huge groundswell of demand that Jimmy Carr is 'cancelled', more an outrage at his joke. He, like everyone else that chooses to offend, has it within his wherewithal to close the issue by admitting he got it wrong, not doing it again. So often people back themselves into a corner by failing to admit that maybe they have flaws, they don't get everything right, see Johnson, B as a shining example. I don't agree with the aforementioned Baddiel on everything but look at his response to allegations of hypocrisy "Btw, to add to the complexity, some papers have picked up on the fact that apparently on a chat show in 2004, I used the word p*k*y to describe my own appearance. I'm sorry: I shouldn't have used that term. We are all learning and changing all the time. Sorry again." He's not been cancelled, we move on.

Those pesky right wingers have somehow made it look like Hope Not Hate are actively putting pressure on Netflix to cancel or censor Jimmy Carr. They also managed to trick a Labour MP into asking for the special to be removed. They can't keep getting away with it!

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/jimmy-carr-netflix-holocaust-nadia-whittome-b2007967.html

Edited February 14, 2022 by Anon

[TimRam]

On 12/02/2022 at 11:24, SouthStandDan said:

Most comedians nowadays are so poor. I end up watching comedians from 20+ years ago on YouTube. The jokes were clever, much better timing. We either have to resort to left wing bias bashing of people in power, which you can telegraph a mile away, or constant swearing with no substance to the joke. 

Mock the week is an abomination. I used to enjoy watching it years ago when they'd have a variety of comedians on, it made the show flow and the contrast in styles made it entertaining. Now it's the same style of dull comedy, utter dross.

 

I agree about Mock the Week and same goes for Have I got News For You...not watched that in ages. Would I Lie to You is probably the funniest of panel shows on at the moment.

[Mucker1884]

35 minutes ago, Stive Pesley said:

"I'd rather be a hypocrite than that same guy forever"

Ooh!  I like that!

#getoutofjailcard

[TuffLuff]

Just gonna throw my two penneth in to this, but I will go with the premise of that I am a bit of a comedy/stand up nerd (although the amount of shows/festivals I go to have dwindled, partly due to covid but there’s other reasons too), so I’ve seen a lot of different stand ups doing different things and what works and what doesn’t.

Basically I think anything can be made fun of, many would argue it’s actually important for us to laugh at the darker side of life. Where more famous comedians can get it wrong is not understanding what their status is and it’s relationship to it’s target. Ricky Gervais, Jimmy Carr, David Chappelle and even Stewart Lee get this wrong from time to time, not all the time but just every once in a while it catches up with them. They think everyone is on board with what they think their status is, and most of the time a room of paying punters will lap up whatever it is they are saying anyway, so don’t realise that they can be construed as ‘high status’ punching down on a ‘low target’. That can be anything from Ricky Gervais doing Derek, Jimmy Carr’s Romany Traveller bit, Lee on other comedians or Chappelle on trans people. High status on a low target isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but then high status needs to show a vulnerability to make it acceptable and, Gervais and Carr especially, don’t show any vulnerability. Compare Carr to Jerry Sadowitz, they both do shows where ‘everyone is a target’, Sadowitz is a lot worse than Carr in that aspect, but he gives himself ‘low status’. Sadowitz says every offensive thing going, but is always seen to be punching up from the gutter. Not that it’s particularly my humour to be honest and has its own troubles as again, not everyone gets the joke with the performer and laughs at the targets. 

Anyway, those bigger comedians believe the audience get the joke how they get the joke, but because people don’t then it shows the joke might not full proof and essentially they’ve been a bit lazy. 

Just to say as well, I fully agree that stand up/comics should be allowed free speech, but bearing witness to what a ‘free thinking’ nights actually is, I just want to point out that you tend to get a very highly educated white guy telling a room of white guys jokes about Diane Abbot’s appearance. Im generalising ofcourse and a joke about Diane Abbot isn’t wrong, but getting back to status and target, you are just reaffirming a negative trope on a group that are going to agree with you. I’m not sure that’s just harmless and ok in the long term. Again it’s working out high status, low status etc

Stand up comedy at the best challenges you and what you thought on a subject. When it’s reaffirming your worst thoughts then it’s absolutely bloody dreadful and to bring it back to Carr I genuinely think he was trying to actually make you realise the horrors of the holocaust. The problem is some laugh with you, some are going to laugh at the gypsies and everyone else will be annoyed at you. How he perceived status and target was wrong. 

…have I killed the frog yet?

 

Edited February 14, 2022 by TuffLuff

[Stive Pesley]

3 hours ago, TuffLuff said:

to bring it back to Carr I genuinely think he was trying to actually make you realise the horrors of the holocaust.

i sincerely hope that the joke was supposed to be that deep - to make people reflect on why it's still OK to hate on / laugh at gypsies even though they were also victims of the holocaust. It certainly didn't get taken that way but it does raise a good point - reflecting back on us the attitudes that drove the holocaust in the first place. 

 

 

 

 

[CollyerDCFC]

47 minutes ago, Stive Pesley said:

i sincerely hope that the joke was supposed to be that deep - to make people reflect on why it's still OK to hate on / laugh at gypsies even though they were also victims of the holocaust. It certainly didn't get taken that way but it does raise a good point - reflecting back on us the attitudes that drove the holocaust in the first place. 

 

 

 

 

I'm not a big Carr fan personally, the one liner thing is just not for me. But, if you ever see him in interview or in his book he wrote on comedy, it does convince me that he is the sort of person when would think deeply about the wider point of a joke or the 'why' of a joke.

[Seaside Ram]

I saw Gary Delaney last week , brilliant . Best stand up I’ve seen in years. Plenty of OTT material. 

Second only to the GOAT , Bernard Manning .