Conversation

Notices

1. Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 21:48:46 JST Moon
   > I’m just saying that they [anti-woke comics] are hacks, and it’s an angle. That’s really the big unsaid thing, is that anti-woke is the new hack. You’ve got like-minded people who fill these rooms because they don’t know how to assess funny unless it’s bullying, or unless it’s in totally bad taste. There’s no nuance to it. A lot of people who are not innately that funny become comics, and they can become good comics if they can figure it out. But this is just an excuse to ride the momentum of an audience that’s been built on these premises. For a bunch of freethinkers, they all think the same thing, and it’s like three things that they poke at, and it’s hackneyed. They are the hacks, and they are the groupthink victims. It’s really kind of profound. -- Marc Maron
   
   I have a lot of thoughts about this, trying to think of the main ones.
   • cool_boy_mew and Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks like this.
   • Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 21:48:45 JST Moon

     in reply to
     I don't think I have anything else to say about it other than it's easy and profitable to stand with the side that seems to be winning. But the motivation for Mr. Maron seems to be that he grew out of a style of humor as he got older and more experienced and it coincided with a popular movement and he's convinced himself that everyone needs to make this change. There is a strong hint in his interview that he doesn't actually "get it". He recalls a time that he did a joke about a plane crash (I'm paraphrasing), and a woman in the audience yelled "stop talk about plane crashes!" he asked her if she knew someone who died in a plane crash, and she said yes. So he said "I'm so sorry, I'll switch to cancer jokes". His takeaway was you have to be thoughtful but his actual response indicated I guess he assumed he could switch away from topics that will offend someone forever, that this is reasonable or sustainable. He knows this isn't true because the same thing could happen about cancer, that is in fact why he said it, because it was funny to be offensive.
     cool_boy_mew and Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think: like this.
   • Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 21:48:46 JST Moon

     in reply to
     1. if you are part of the majority and you are calling out the people positioning themselves opposite to it, before getting into the specifics, intuitively which group is more likely to be groupthinking
     2. do you consider this a new thing, do we need to re-evaluate comedians of the past by this criteria, are you just noticing now because it crossed your line, not some societal line
     3. isn't any comedian who takes an angle a hack by this definition
     4. comedians are one of those groups that have a (perhaps self-serving) view of themselves that they perform a valuable social service by opposing prevailing norms. is that still broadly useful today
     
     I am coming at this with an idea of what the dominant ideas in society are, you could argue about that. it could be framed that most people are regressive and comedians are challenging that, and that there is a small number of comedians siding with the majority of the population and reinforcing offensive things to them. I am not inclined to believe that but it could be argued.
     cool_boy_mew likes this.
   • Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think: (thatguyoverthere@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 21:50:13 JST Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think:

     in reply to
     @Moon I will say this. Anti-anything is always group thinky. If you build an ideology around opposing an ideology you're kinda screwed.
   • Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think: (thatguyoverthere@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 21:51:53 JST Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think:

     in reply to

     • Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think:
     @Moon that said comics that make jokes about $current_thing may be easily framed as anti $current_thing while really they're just laughing at the absurd
   • LS (lain@lain.com)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 22:36:21 JST LS

     in reply to
     @Moon there are lots of anti-woke comedians that have ok to good podcasts, but their comedy generally isn't funny to me at all. although the woke comedians aren't generally funny either, so maybe it's the style. I'll just rewatch some mitch hedberg shows.
   • cool_boy_mew (coolboymew@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 22:48:11 JST cool_boy_mew

     in reply to
     @Moon
     
     >But the motivation for Mr. Maron seems to be that he grew out of a style of humor as he got older and more experienced and it coincided with a popular movement and he's convinced himself that everyone needs to make this change
     
     This one really fucking irritate me. The boomers rightfully got shat on with their "got mine, fuck yours" thing going on (which is way, way worse than the current thing, actually) and now they're doing the exact same thing as the boomers
     
     Dude was edgy, he got famous out of it, but dude got old, unfunny and got into the new stick up your ass ideology but instead of an evangelical stick, it's a proverbial "good person" (not really) stick. He got his, fuck everyone else
     Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks likes this.
   • Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 22:51:01 JST Moon

     in reply to

     • LS
     @lain if they really only have a few jokes then fuck em, aalso what thatguyoverthere said, positioning yourself as anti-anything is not a good identity.
     
     I'm watching Tim Dillon podcasts (heard him on Joe Rogan actually) and he could be characterized as anti-woke but not really, he actively also shits on some of Rogan's other guests. He nearly caused a psychological rift in one of the Weinstein brothers by asking him what he's ever actually done, and he had a whole section on his podcast about Substack trying to court him to come over and was laughing about how a good chunk of their business really is courting racists and how they didn't want to pay him anything, just come over "to support his friends"
     LS likes this.
   • Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 22:55:57 JST Moon

     in reply to

     • cool_boy_mew
     @coolboymew he was never a shock comic but he's good friends with like, sarah silverman who definitely did it and pulled up the ladder, so yeah.
     cool_boy_mew likes this.
   • cool_boy_mew (coolboymew@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 22:57:57 JST cool_boy_mew

     in reply to
     @Moon I dunno, the example you told me was kind of edgy. Not shock edgy, but yeah
   • Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 22:59:48 JST Moon

     in reply to

     • cool_boy_mew
     @coolboymew I disagree with a a little bit because i think almost every comedian in history has relied on being a little offensive, I think it's an almost necessary component of really good humor.
     cool_boy_mew likes this.
   • cool_boy_mew (coolboymew@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 23:00:04 JST cool_boy_mew

     in reply to
     @Moon Well, that makes the whole current thing even worse then, as it's really the whole crew pulling up the ladder here
   • Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 23:00:51 JST Moon

     in reply to

     • cool_boy_mew
     @coolboymew Sarah Silverman who straight up just did real, minstrel-show blackface for no other reason than it was offensive, and said she looked like Queen Latifa lol.
     cool_boy_mew likes this.
   • iced quinnsmas :blobcatsanta: (icedquinn@blob.cat)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 23:00:59 JST iced quinnsmas :blobcatsanta:

     in reply to

     • cool_boy_mew
     @Moon @coolboymew comedy is tragedy plus time, so, its inevitably making light of someone having suffered at some point.
     cool_boy_mew likes this.
   • Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks (washedoutgundampilot@poa.st)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 23:01:55 JST Woggy's Zeonic Frolicks

     in reply to

     @Moon Always hated maron just a tad more than my baseline hate for standup comedians (since they’re basically wolrdly imitations of pastors), but this kind of thing just really shows how he’s always been the smartest guy sipping swill at the beatnik bookstore downtown. More mental horsepower than the average hippie, but still not enough to actually model anything but his own mind in place of everyone wh isn’t him

   • Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 23:03:16 JST Moon

     in reply to

     • cool_boy_mew
     @coolboymew in her defense she admitted it was wrong at exactly the moment (after she had criticized others) that it was returned to public attention, after which she was roundly supported by her friends and not run out of the profession like others.
     cool_boy_mew likes this.
   • Leyonhjelm :ek2_ribbon: (leyonhjelm@social.lovingexpressions.net)'s status on Thursday, 09-Feb-2023 23:25:59 JST Leyonhjelm :ek2_ribbon:

     in reply to

     • cool_boy_mew
     @Moon
     
     The core of comedy is expectation violation, whether it's transgressive, whether it exposes dissonance, or whether it just goes in an unexpected direction. The approaches can vary but it can be a clean joke from Mitch Hedberg about an ant farm or an offensive song fromTom Lehrer singing about beating slaves and getting archaic diseases in the old South.
     
     @coolboymew
     cool_boy_mew likes this.