It's Just a Joke

dude goes to doctor says he's depressed says life seems harsh and cruel says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain doctor says treatment is simple youtuber thought slime made video today go and watch that should pick you up dude bursts into tears says but doctor I am thought slime good joke everybody like and subscribe roll on snare drum hello it's me the Joker want to know how I got these scars guess what it was from a knife just kidding it's me thought slime and today I'm gonna talk about jokes and I'm off to a great start because I'm being really funny already jokes I love them you love them boy it's fun to Josh around with pals laughter is probably the best feeling in the world the only pleasure life can give you that doesn't require any sort of sacrifice you can't enjoy food without being hungry you can't enjoy sex without being thirsty you can't enjoy exercise personal development or even child-rearing without putting the work in but laughter laughter is just pure joy for free and a good laugh can really do wonders for you it can turn around a bad day you can make a bad situation bearable it can even bring you together with people I owe pretty much all of my close friendships every relationship I've ever had and most of my professional career to my sense of humor now my jokes certainly aren't to everyone's tastes but they've given me a great deal of blessings in my life and if you don't think I'm funny oh you think it's so easy why don't you get it I used to do stand-up comedy for a living well not for a living I never made a living but I did it for money I did this for many years it used to be my sole creative outlet and there's a certain attitude among stand-up comedians that I always kind of disliked they talked about the importance of what they do what a responsibility they felt personally I find that a little pompous I think a comedians job is to make people laugh I think laughter is enough I think it actually diminishes the importance of comedy to suggest that it must always do something else it must always seek to educate or agitate comedy does not require justify ocation it's worthwhile on its own terms some people though some people couldn't handle the idea that their work was frivolous it needed to be something more they needed to feel like they had an impact some people felt strongly that comedy was something sacred a way to exorcise bad thoughts or contextualized the darkness at the heart of humanity in a way that robbed it of its power so they viewed any attempts at censorship as interference with this holy mission their job their duty was to portray the warts and wrinkles of humanity with as much honesty as they could muster predictably this led to people being competitively dark to reveal harsher and crueler truths and for those things to be true they needed to live that experience they needed to become toxic to revel in their toxicity so that they could excoriate that toxicity on stage show everyone how brave they were I was doing a show out of town once with two other comics for those that don't go to a lot of comedy shows they're usually structured into three acts an emcee who works the crowd gets them excited and then introduces the other two acts the middle who is usually the less skilled or less experienced act that does about 15 to 20 minutes of material and the headliner whose name is on the ticket who usually does about 40 to an hour now I was almost always the middle act I never really graduated from that I occasionally emceed but I wasn't good at it and usually it was only when they couldn't find someone else to fill that spot in time so it was me or nobody since we were out of town the company that I worked for it set us up in a hotel room and the hotel room that they had set up in this city was this enormous apartment at the top of a hotel that all three acts typically shared at the MC that weekend was local so he wasn't staying with us so we were doing three or four shows that weekend and on one of them the headliner had his buddy come on to do a guest spot which is fairly common that night though the buddy and the headliner both bombed miserably while both I and the MC did fine not amazing but fine I don't particularly remember the guest spots act it didn't seem terrible to me as I recall but I remember the headliners act and remember the exact moment the crowd turned against him and content warning because some pretty horrific ableism is about to start now I don't remember the exact bit he did and I wouldn't tell another comics bit online anyway even though it's a disgusting bit that I hate the basic idea was that he was pitching ideas to make the Special Olympics more exciting now me even saying that you can feel something bad is coming and I think a truly skilled comedian could do something very interesting with that tension that dreadful feeling that someone is about to say something terrible and what's more they're gonna make you complicit in whatever they say and you might even laugh at it the punchline was that for the high dive event they could probably get a better dive out of the athlete by tying their teddy bear to a cinder block and dropping it in the pool funny stuff the audience was silent for the rest of his set and that's the worst and most humiliating thing a comedian can experience at least if you get a hostile crowd you can fight back if people boo you you're at least getting a reaction but a completely indifferent crowd you might as well not be there that night the three of us the headline act of the guest spot and me were in the apartment smoking a joint the headline act says that crowd was terrible they hated being made to think he says to me no offense but what you and the MC do anyone can do that anyone can make people laugh see I want to make people think I want to challenge people that crowd tonight they weren't ready for that in his mind the fact that he bombed made him the better comic the fact that the MC and I did not bomb that made us inferior lesser comics because we played it safe so I asked him well with your special olympics joke what were you trying to make people think about what I left unsaid was that I actually thought it was a very tasteless joke one that if anyone were to actually think about it would be completely inert unfunny genuinely horrific but he had thought about it he said to me that he felt like nobody should pity anyone that pity was a dismissive and thoughtless response to people who were different and people who faced different challenges in life he himself had struggled with profound medical issues and felt strongly that the pity he received was condescending unhelpful and made him feel like a smaller person so by making fun of the Special Olympics and by extension the mentally and/or physically disabled people that compete in the Special Olympics he was respecting them in some way he was showing that he didn't pity them and encouraging the audience not to pity them either it struck me that as it does now that this was a post hoc rationalization for a mean-spirited joke but even so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and I said well I've never pitied anyone in the Special Olympics I've always found them very inspiring I don't think it's respectful to insult them and the idea that the audience needs to be taught not to pity them doesn't really make sense to me either because I don't think people really do pity athletes and the Special Olympics and he said to me just the joke the conversation ended after that he judged me as an oversensitive sjw who couldn't be made to meet people on their level and I judged him to be an insensitive prick looking back I'm kind of astonished by that response it's just a joke I mean his whole argument was that he wanted to make people think that it wasn't just a joke it was meant to communicate a sincere message the moment I asked whether that message was true or if it was true if it was worth stating he instantly shut down and told me it was just a joke not to be thought about or analyzed now my point here isn't to put this dude on blast my act wasn't exactly woke at the time either and this was years ago I have no idea whether he still tells that joke or whether he still feels that way also he had a really shitty show that night so it's possible he was just pissed off didn't really mean anything he was saying now the point is to retroactively Lee win an argument by presenting it to my audience that I have carefully cultivated to agree with my position and telling the story in a way that flatters me and makes me look like the reasonable person debating a prejudiced jerk wait cluck know wasn't I mean it's a the real reason is that it's a very clear example of the type of cognitive dissonance I see online a lot the jokes can make important political statements but can't be criticized for making a statement by virtue of the fact that they are jokes joking is a legitimate means of expressing oneself in speaking truth to power and thus must be respected and protected at all costs but also it's meaningless silliness so you can't ever analyze those messages that are definitely important and must be protected I make all sorts of jokes here on my highly political YouTube channel and most of the time I'm trying to communicate my sincere political beliefs through those jokes I actually think it's kind of cowardly to retreat from criticism of one's political position because it was stated in the middle of a joke now don't get me wrong you can facetiously make a point that you disagree with for comic effect and I think it would be ridiculous to criticize someone for that however even in doing that one reveals a certain position a set of assumptions and beliefs that are genuine and not above criticism I'll give you an example of what I mean here's a joke that I could see myself tweeting I don't care if you always agree with what the cops do you should always drink their piss if they ask now obviously I don't believe that it's clearly a joke I actually think it's Act it's a very bad idea to drink coppice but it says something about what I actually believe namely that people who support and apologize for the police are pathetic and we'll go to absurd lengths to comply with even the most unjust demands or impositions if you were to criticize me for saying that I think people should drink cops piss you'd be missing the point you'd be criticizing a joke I don't believe that obviously but if you were to criticize me for trying to make people less sympathetic to the police that would be appropriate criticism because that's exactly what I'm trying to do with the joke also you'd be wrong fuck you piss drinker now say you were to criticize me for trying to make people less sympathetic to the police and I were to say hey it's just a joke it's a goof in a gaffe you can't criticize an idea that was said in a funny way I mean it's a joke but it's very clearly not just a joke hmm ah what's happening to me my eyes welcome to the eyeball zone where I give away eyeballs for free today I want to talk about a YouTube channel called bad empanada but don't let the name fool you he's not bad or empanadas he's a human and good he's an Argentinean history grad who covers the broad range of political historical and sociological topics in an informative and well researched way that's still completely approachable check out his video on Peron ISM an ideology I had never heard of before before he sent me this video linked in the description hey do you want a balls warm delicious eyeballs email me at thought slime editor at gmail.com and you just might find yourself trapped here in the eyeball zone a joke can't exist in a vacuum it relies on shared cultural knowledge a mutual experience the more you can relate to people the more you can get them to relate with you the funnier you will be as a person as a general rule ask yourself what people understand you the most and what people do you laugh with the most I bet that there's a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram very seldomly when people complain about a joke are they complaining about the exaggeration or the punch line of the joke they're complaining about the assumptions that the joke is based on they're saying that the assumptions that make this joke funny to you are hurtful to me and while the joke maker may not believe what they're saying literally they might still genuinely make the assumptions that are actually being criticized and to respond to that with it's just the joke is an exaggeration I don't mean what I'm saying misses the point of that criticism it's a deflection I'll give you an example of what I mean people make a lot of jokes about Trump and Putin being in love with each other now clearly nobody genuinely believes that Trump and Putin are gay lovers they're using it as an insult to wait to demean both men it's an exaggeration of the perceived domination that Putin holds over Trump from his alleged political influence and that's like super homophobic because it's implying that there's something diminishing about being gay that being gay is something to be mocked now you might say that both men are homophobes who are calling them gay is a way to pickup their insecurities but firstly neither of these men are going to read you're very witty tweet or see your political cartoon so I find that justification lacking secondly the mutual understanding you were attempting to call of eight the assumption that the joke rests on is that being gay is somehow farcical something to be mocked or scorned something embarrassing and beneath powerful men now there are degrees of this of course some jokes might catch people in the crossfire in a way that's wildly unpredictable or not really insulting enough to be a problem I make a lot of jokes about how sweaty I get in the summer and that does imply that there's something wrong with being sweaty and is that fair to people with glandular disorders that make them sweaty all the time at the end of the day there's a certain amount of personal discretion that has to be taken into account and that can be a problem because it means that what is and what is not an acceptable joke is to some degree open to personal interpretation and that leaves wiggle room for bad actors to argue that their jokes aren't harmful enough to warrant criticism one of the common things that people cite is the idea of punching up versus punching down to punch up is to make fun of someone more powerful than you someone of higher status to punch down is to do the opposite to make fun of someone with less status than you now I think this one really only applies to jokes with negative elements you don't really have to clear most knock-knock jokes by this standard it's just a handy way to tell whether or not you're abusing privilege to tell a joke that people might be uncomfortable with but might be unable to tell you why maybe they're expected to play along or if they did speak up people would just dismiss their criticism as being too sensitive if I made a racist joke on YouTube most people would rightly call that out as unacceptable and when I say most people I mean most people in my audience not YouTube writ large they'd be cool with it they like racist jokes but you get my point now if I made a racist joke privately in a group of my white friends and one person of color there's a powerful social disincentive on that person of color to speak up and say they don't like the joke they're risking alienating themselves making me defensive and who knows whether or not the other people present will even understand their complaint let alone agree with them and I might then come to think the joke isn't offensive because hey Dave left now I personally would not consciously make a prejudiced however I might unconsciously make a prejudice joke I did quite recently in fact I made a lazy joke about the Irish spelling of the name Owen and I didn't know it was the Irish spelling so my intent certainly wasn't to make fun of Irish people but I still contributed to prejudice against the Irish and to mean to the language that they've been fighting for generations to protect my intent is irrelevant I didn't mean to do harm but I did harm and I never would have known I did harm if people who were hurt by the joke had not spoken up and held me accountable for it and the result of that is I've learned a lesson and I'll never again make fun of a foreign sounding name and assume it's fine because the person I'm making fun of his white that's why it's important that we can create a culture where people feel as though they can speak up when jokes insult them because people won't always know when they're making an insulting joke they won't always know when they're making a joke that contributes to a larger pattern of prejudice they won't know when they're normalizing prejudice and making things worse for people who are already struggling a lot of comedians are very concerned about censorship they don't want their jokes censored they need to be able to make fun of anything and I agree with that I think people should be able to make fun of anyone or anything whether or not it's a good idea to make fun of everything is another matter entirely despite their revulsion towards censorship comedians often contribute to a different kind of censorship their jokes must never be silenced that's a slippery slope towards authoritarianism but criticism of their jokes however can and should be silenced these oversensitive snowflakes are just afraid to be challenged they need to suck it up but I don't think you get to have it both ways if you're gonna ask people to be less sensitive and take a joke maybe you need to be a little less sensitive and accept criticisms of that joke humor is subjective everybody laughs at different things the only way to tell whether or not you're successful the only way to know whether or not you're funny is by whether or not people laugh at and enjoy your jokes there are no extenuating circumstances that make a joke funny if people aren't laughing and if your goal isn't to get easy laughs but to challenge people and make them think you have to be brave enough to do that too so if people are pissed off at your joke it might be a joke but it's not just a joke knock knock who's there it's me Fox climb hello and thank you for watching another one of my videos please press the like button and also the subscribe button unless you've already clicked the subscribe button in which case doing so would unsubscribe you so please don't do that I want you to subscribe not to unsubscribe I hope I hope that's clear also you can jingle-jangle that little bell and that'll tell you when I upload new videos and also it'll tell you when I'm live-streaming which I do every Thursday night at 8 o'clock Eastern Standard Time take a look over at my patreon at patreon.com slash thought slime you can see a bunch of names and cartoons those are all people that gave me money for this stuff also there's a Kofi link in the description for one-time donations if that's more your bag baby you for the record every joke I don't like his racist and everyone's a Nazi and I'm the only cool person in the world and we should censor everybody it's always good to do sense to do it to do a censorship on people so I'm gonna I'm gonna censor everyone that's my genuine opinion take it away you

Channel: Thought Slime

Views: 133,959

Rating: 4.9059172 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: ILugwjdQQsI

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/mugwort23]

For those who don't know 'Top Gear' was a TV show on the BBC which was incredibly popular due to it's focus on cars, hi-jinks and normalising the prejudices of its middle-aged, male viewership. They were known to use the 'It was just a joke' defence to justify some of the shite they came out with and this allowed Stewart Lee to use them to make much the same point ThoughtSlime has in his excellent video, but in the form of a 15 minute bit. Enjoy.

[u/j-grad]

one small thing, bad empanada is not argentienan, he's australian.

it's funny, i've seen his name in a list of "POC breadtubers", and he's a white australian. there just becose he cover themes of world history and politics, i guess

[u/Ymir_from_Saturn]

Agree with everything Thoughtslime says here. Nothing too groundbreaking for people on this sub I’d imagine, but there are definitely lots of people who need to hear this

[u/capshock]

If they nod and agree, it's a statement. If someone gets offended, clearly it's just a joke.

[u/criscothediscoman]

Joe Biden might be interested in The Eyeball Zone.

[u/Xalimata]

This shit is so basic even the Bible calls it out as bullshit. Its amazing to me that it even needs to be said at all. Good video.

[u/Ryuutorak]

lol