Alright, Listen Up · 11:40am Jun 13th, 2016
Apparently once wasn't enough. I need to emphasize it a second time.
If you think "I can't get any lower" from my little parody chapter of the Orlando attack less than 36 hours ago, or that it's wrong and tasteless, then perhaps your horizons aren't as broad as I thought.
Because, if you think my content is tasteless and low, then you clearly haven't seen the tweets that are praising this attack because "50 perverts died". Maybe you haven't seen how many more people are getting behind Trump's "ban all muslims from the US" rhetoric. Maybe you haven't noticed the anti-muslim rednecks and gun-free-zone ninnies come out of the woodwork yet again, trying oh-so hard to put a political spin on this tragedy.
Put bluntly, maybe you don't know what "low" really is, and you need to get off your goddamn high horse and get a fucking reality check.
Bravo.
Though I have to question the name (Whorelando? Really?)
4019292 In my head, it fit better than Horselando.
I also considered Horselando Calrissian.
4019295
Alright, that's clever.
You implied that more people backing trump is a bad thing.
Trump's gonna make Australia great again.
Choo choo, all abord the kms train! Final destination, the Godless abyss that is death!
As far as I care you're welcome to parody events like that, there is tons of good irreverent comedy, but at least be funny?
err... so, In essence, you're saying that since there are bigger assholes, nobody gets to tell you that you are one?
That is not how things work.
4019332 Oh no, I am one, no one needs to tell me something that obvious.
I'm just getting the impression that they've not seen anything worse.
4019335
There's always worse. No exceptions.
So, tasteless and low, but there's much deeper and darker waters to be had.
4019338 Bingo.
4019325 Can we just not back either of the morons in the main parties and try something else? Either way we lose, but we might be able to lose with dignity with neither Trump nor Hilary.
Nothing is really off limits when it comes to humor. I'm cool with it.
"People got mad at me for writing something I knew people would get mad at me for writing so now I'm gonna throw a fit."
Sorry, but you've lost a fave on Letters. Lost it when you announced the intent to write this chapter, actually; confirmed it with this blog post.
You have the right to write whatever you want to write. People have the right to be offended when you write offensive parodies and satires of things people have strong feelings about. If you're going to continue to write this kind of thing, you have to take the negative comments and criticism in stride.
That's my final advice to you. Take it or leave it as you will.
I knew the politicians would pounce on this the moment I heard that the shooter had supposedly pledged to ISIS. And I was right. To see Trump happily patting himself on the back for being "right" within twenty-four hours of this tragedy makes me fucking sick.
4019439 To each their own.
My goal has long been to attract readers who either laugh at nearly anything, or who get offended and don't flip out.
But the problem is frequently people, especially politically correct ones, LOOK for things to be offended by.
But no more keystrokes. I wish they were more like you, people who leave without making a fuss.
See ya.
I haven't read Letters in a while, though I still get alerts for it. And frankly I never much cared for the chapters taking on real-life events. It isn't a matter of if I agree with your viewpoints or not, I just don't care for politics to get involved in my absurd offensive humor fic.
That said, yes, this was too soon. You want to help people laugh to get over the tragedy, but dood, it happened just yesterday. You don't go around cracking jokes about a national tragedy the day after. George Carlin, who made his career on pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable and funny, changed several jokes in his November 2001 routine after 9/11; he acknowledged that jokes about death and people dying would have been in bad taste after the attacks. South Park likewise chose their jokes carefully and focused more on the War on Terror than the attacks themselves.
For you to rush out a chapter about the tragedy is bad. But the chapter itself is offensive. "they're gay, who gives a fuck if they're infertile." That's simply not funny. The rest of the chapter is likewise not funny, just a news report on the attack with the names changed to horse or sex puns. People have died, the bodies are not even cold, and you are making jokes. I'm not going to get into depth on the rape chapter immediately preceding this, but know that my views on it are identical.
Comedy is subjective, but all good comedians know that there are lines you do not cross, and if you do cross them, it better be damn funny to make it work. You have crossed them, and you did not make it work.
While I don't agree with you putting out the chapter, i do agree with this post.
Take from that what you will.
4019500
Alright then, let's do this. You tell us what exactly is the appropriate amount of time to pass, after an incident where we're reminded yet again that the world is full of people that have no qualms with murdering us for no reason other than the fact that we're different from them, before it's no longer considered "too soon" to respond with sarcasm, sardonicism, wit, and other dark humor? Are we talking a week? Two months? Six months? A year? Never? How long do we as a society have to wait before it's considered acceptable to lay on the comedy and mock the fact that we've one again been ass raped?
Because really that's all we're doing, making jokes as a defense mechanism to the fact that the world is an unkind and insensitive place that doesn't coddle the weak.
If you really want to take issue, focus on the politicians who don't even wait for the bodies to grow cold, before dancing in blood and exploiting the lives of the victims in support of their latest and greatest piece of legislation in response to a fucking ambush.
See, here's how I see it.
I don't doubt that you recognize the tragedy of what happened in Orlando, that you're sympathetic to those who were directly affected. Humor is a way for some to break down the emotion and shock into something they can better understand and deal with. I also don't believe that your intention was to attack or upset people. Lastly, I don't hold with the "too soon" mentality because it's entirely subjective from person to person.
But if you want to use humor about a situation such as this, you need to really put in effort into making the humor work. Suppose I decided to parody my cousin's murder while hitchhiking. It would be low-effort to simply take his situation and put cartoon ponies in everyone's place. If I came up with my own humorous narrative, dialogue, etc. but kept the central themes, the event I wanted to discuss, then I've done my own bit of commentary and sympathy without looking like an insensitive jerk. I haven't read the chapter myself, but I've read Letters for a while and sometimes you had the tendency to do the former thing.
tl;dr I don't think you had malicious intent, but laziness can make it seem like you did.
I think I get why, though. My theory is that it's not parodying the event that people take offense to, it's how and when it's being parodied that people take issue with. Maybe waiting a bit would've helped a bit, or maybe doing something different could've also aided it. Pointing out the stupidity of a person's actions is great, but people might not take people's death being construed as mere infertility the same way (for example, South Park once likened the Ebola scare to people's fear of gluten, except they take the exaggerated rumors of gluten as an "actual" consequence of consuming it). Maybe going more into how people react to the situation like you mentioned in this blog (maybe some mention of politicians using this event as an excuse for spell control, or Mooslim bans, or whatever else) could've also helped.
I liked the chapter, but I'm not always the best at judging quality. I dunno, just a theory of mine.
4019604
Eh, I laughed at the chapter.
Im not sure if i get it... soo you came out of the woodworks and used these blogs to put a conflictive spin over this tragedy?
Comedians almost always end up making fun of tragedies sooner or later. For a lot of people, myself included, its a coping mechanism. If someone is too close to a situation or too hurt by it to be able to joke about it, that's understandable too; they're more than welcome to avoid things like this if the wound is just too fresh. It's not like your mailing copies of your satire to the victims' homes or anything.
4019599
According to South Park appropriate amount of time is 22.3 years.
4019599 I have a dark sense of humor and even I found this in very poor taste. I don't know when it's the right to start making jokes about a tragedy, but it certainly isn't the day afterwards, that's for sure. As was mentioned before, even George Carlin and South Park didn't cross this line. It didn't help that the jokes weren't even that funny, just a bunch of sex jokes that old very, very, quickly. If you're going to satire something this early, at least try to be clever with it. And again, this is coming from a guy who loved Deadpool.
4021481
Well that explains that one joke of Ellie's in The Last of Us.
4028213
Meanwhile we've got politicians exploiting the dead and injured to support their positions. It's kind of hard to expect the people to refrain from stuff like this, when our elected leaders outright refuse to even wait for a final body count before launching an all out assault on their favorite talking points.
Let's just face facts here, America is tasteless by nature.
4028393 I would argue against the idea that Americans are tasteless by nature, but that's just me. I'm personally more upset by hashtag activists who think tweeting #prayfororlando is going to do anything.