The Tyranny of Humour

i think part of what i'm saying is that if you right a novel featuring ironic language there is a structure which clues the reader towards the irony - it's gettable. on a message board where although we're writing we're mostly imitating the style and rhythm of speech, the structures don't allow for making irony obvious - failure to grasp that a post is ironic is generally the poster's fault rather than the readers.

if you write a novel, even

In the sense that all communication is an arbitration for meaning, introducing the notion of dissembling/disingenuousness for "benign" purposes - e.g. sarcasm, irony - can (to me) be funny because it piles meaning on meaning on meaning and complicates the language in a way that values the playful over the actual.

It's not just about that poster's fault, it's about familiarity - with that person or group (and their familiarity with you.)

well yeah i'm not saying it wd be better if people never used irony. i am saying they have no right to get exasperated if somebody fails to recognise it.

(unless they've used a shitload of italics and ;-) winky symbols)

and also that there are places where we have a right to expect there to not be irony - on the labelling of overpriced soft drinks for example

I suppose that's my exasperation in this specific example - that I correctly realised, without any italics or winkies or indeed any visual cues - that someone was attempting humour - and yet they were not willing to allow me the same latitude.

(Sorry, I'll stop moaning and derailing, I'm just trying to sort through some disproportionate hurt here, and figure out why I was so upset by this thing.)

it's not a derail it's a scenic diversion

i would be upset if i felt like people were miscontruing what i said in a judgemental fashion too

I think whenever you try to be funny in a way that's not "you", it's not funny (and when that way includes being a little bit mean, then you've got a potentially combustible situation)

(As someone whose partner's first language isn't English I know whereof I speak here)

The thing is, it is a thing that's very, *very* me, but it's something I recognise as harmful and dangerous, and therefore I try to divert that kind of super-cutting humour into, e.g. song lyrics, because I recognise that humour can be a weapon, and how to use it, and how to *hurt* someone using it. That my caustic side is something I don't like - and I'm not afraid that it's out of character, I'm afraid that it's rather too much *in* character. That I have the potential to be very cruel, and much of my avoiding humour (and thus potentially coming across as humourless) is actually about avoiding cruelty, which I despise, because I have such a potential for it.

(Also, a person who thinks of themselves as caustic, might have been caught out, being out-causticked by the new person.)

Oh OK! Your post where you described the exchange made it sound like you were sort of blindly trying out this "banter" thing and hoping it "worked"

I also suspect your initial shock and hurt at the other person's message to you may have, shall we say, amped up the barb-itude of your rejoinder whether you were aware of it or not..

Well, I was, but I got the tone wrong? I don't know. That's what I'm trying to work out.

I am very very afraid of my capacity for cruelty. That's why I don't do banter, because it's very easy for me to get the tone wrong.

Maybe you're v. empathetic as well? I tend to avoid banter IRL b/c I'm so hyper-aware of how it lands on the recipient that it's kind of a conversational paralytic.

i think that's actually quite a common thing, to try one's hand at that sort of banter and only realise too late you've crashed right over the line (or get paranoid you crossed the line, only to find out no one noticed). i've certainly done it!

The thing is, that most people who crash over the line don't even realise they've done it, and just keep up with the "you can't handle my banter, maaaan" line.

That that terror of ~doing it wrong~ and offending the other person for real is probably a good thing.

i mean, that's why it's a bonding tactic, cuz it's actually a way of reaffirming one's closeness to one's friends - like, if the assumption is that you genuinely care about this person, they'll know you don't "mean it" when you take the piss out of them - they know you don't actually think badly of them. of course this is a massively double-edged thing b/c it's easy to end up in a relationship which is so predicated on this sort of cruel humour that it gets a bit unhealthy and genuinely damaging.

That's the thing, though. I never know when other people are doing it to be affectionate, I find it v v difficult. Because I live in a world where people I thought loved me do suddenly just up and change their minds and decide that they hate me the next, and the sort of things that people say in banter, they are the sort of things that "former friends" eventually do come out with one day. The fear that that "banter" is what they have *really* been thinking all along.

God, I'm neurotic, I'm sorry, I shouldn't bring this sort of stuff up.

This has opened a trapdoor I didn't really need to open today.

The thing is, that most people who crash over the line don't even realise they've done it, and just keep up with the "you can't handle my banter, maaaan" line.

i don't think this is actually true if it's kept within close friendships (ime, anyway) - this happens when, as you say, it's a means of reaffirming insiderness vs outsiderness.

in a close friendship it's almost like the point is to test the boundaries. eg, some people i meet up with occasionally, inc two dudes who have been v good friends for years and years - i was catching up, asking one of them why he'd come back to the UK, it turned out he was gonna marry his fiancée...but she dumped him. and his friend was kind of jokingly taking the piss out of that, it was quite weird but seemed quite natural for them.

adrian chiles & roy keane = tyranny of humour vs humour of tyranny

chiles is 'insouciant' 'irreverent' and all that shite, never not facetious

this compulsive funniness is really getting on my nerves lately in the office. it's like EVERYONE is the "joke guy" now. You can't actually complete a coherent thought without a hamfisted, awkwardly dropped laugline from someone.

Hate it when that happens. Also hate it when you hear about some guy long before you meet him, about how hilarious he is and then he turns out to be one of those guys.

Funny is better than not funny, regardless of haters

Yeah but 'funny' != funny.

cf Goodfellas

Funny > Not funny but keeps it to self >>>>> Not funny but trying to be

yeah, that.

this thread gives me nightmares

pat funn

>>>>>>>>>>> being forever serious

i keep meaning to come back to this, feel it more than ever all around the place, don't know if this is the sourness of middle age or if the whole culture is in its end of civ death throes coming out as perpetual frivolity

humour

this is a really good thread NV. i remember it from when i was a lurker. i am of two minds about this: humor is central to how i communicate, but i think that i use it to establish "distance" from people at least as much as i do to "connect" with them. in terms of art, there is plenty of stuff i love that is devoid of humor -- i think the earnestness of "in the aeroplane over the sea" was super risky, bordering on brave, and the films of terrence malick don't seem especially humorous to me -- but my favorite works of art, the ones i feel closest to, are almost invariably funny ones (ulysses, the short stories of gogol, bob dylan's music, even the jazz i like best has a "lightness" to it that corresponds to humor, and my favorite jazz records are mingus ones with crazy, satirical titles.)

i think humor makes people feel safe because it is a way to communicate indirectly, to say things without exposing how one "really" feels, or if one does communicate honestly, it gives them an out. maybe people, in general, don't really want to connect on a truly intimate level?

these are all just loosely sketched thoughts.

thought for sure this thread was revived because of http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=4300963&boardid=77&threadid=67478

i think that link doesn't work, it just takes me to the site homepage

you're absolutely right. moving on

It's a link to 77

xp oh shi

i don't understand

but that's ok

77 is the invite-only board that only those invited can see.

keep meaning to come back to this, feel it more than ever all around the place, don't know if this is the sourness of middle age or if the whole culture is in its end of civ death throes coming out as perpetual frivolity

― we're up all night to get relegated (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, May 1, 2013 5:17 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think also as you get older an increasing amount of humor comes to seem familiar and tired, like there are a limited number of forms and types of jokey comments a person can make, and more and more of them come to seem obvious and cliched with experience.

Damn I didnt know their was a shadow world of the ilx elite

You need Vic Serotonin to give you a tour of the Saudade Event site.

Yeah see I don't understand what any of that is. Feel scared, like maybe this is a cult that lures people in with the promise of impassioned yet fairminded debates about pop music.

Nobody promised fairminded

ilx is really into puns

You need Vic Serotonin to give you a tour of the Saudade Event site.

:)