[433] Not My Cup Of Tea

I think I was made to accidentally defend "being a horrible person."

It's worth noting that I don't consider myself a horrible person, but for those unfamiliar it's easy to take things I say and draw all sorts of conclusions. That's fine. In my mind, you either get the joke or you don't. And that's the main and large distinction I don't think I spoke eloquently enough about.

Let's take a light situation. While watching Ex Machina, a friend of mine couldn't recall what the Asian character's name was. I responded, "I dunno, Tokyo? I just call 'em all Tokyo." I find comments like this generally hilarious. I'm as easily amused by "base" humor of someone like Daniel Tosh as I am the sharp wit of granny on Downton Abbey. Unbeknownst to me, comments like that make my friend uncomfortable.

According to him, and I don't think he's lying, he's expressed that it's made him uncomfortable before. I, well aware of my capacity to forget and ignore subtext, looked as if I was being deliberately disregarding of his feelings. Instead of stressing and emphasizing the joking or unrelenting satire I try to exhibit in my personality, I tried to unpack what making comments like that mean to me in how people do or don't respond. The difference in whether or not I remember how you feel, and remember to alter my behavior, is one of direct explicit conversation. An uncomfortable chuckle with a "hey, that's not funny man" or even light soliloquy about how "those kinds of jokes aren't my thing" will not do the trick.

I understand words can be powerful. In my explanation, I don't want you to think I don't believe people get hurt or uncomfortable. It is also overwhelmingly not my goal for people to end up that way. That said, in general, I don't really give a shit until I'm presented with a reason to. That is, say I make a joke about battered-women. You recoil from a recent experience and explain why that doesn't jive with your sensibilities. I do not feel obligated to keep making the joke "because you really should just lighten up and get it." My goal isn't to hurt people, it's to find ways to laugh at the perpetual shit show as I conceive of the world.

It was explained to me that I don't have to "go out of my way" to say things that are "more than likely going to hurt someone." I have two problems with this. First, I don't go out of my way. Saying racist or sexist things is easy, that's why ignorant people default to those sentiments. Second, I'm not persuaded that what I say, or how I say it, is necessarily likely, let alone often, hurting people. I get that people uncomfortably laugh when they don't like confrontation or are gauging the room. I don't get how I would remain having friends, of all stripes, if they genuinely thought I was racist, sexist, or homophobic.

At worst, a situation I create is a misunderstanding and at the extreme end perhaps tears. At the same time, I've made people cry just by asking them questions about their lives. I have a healthy skepticism for the value and implications of what certain feelings and reactions are speaking to. Are you crying because I'm another horrible example of a person in the world you have to contend with? Unlikely.

Now this is borderline "But, I'm a really good person, so I can get away with that kind of thing!" No. Nor am I somehow more justified in saying "nigger" because my girlfriend is black, my best friend from childhood too, and I rolled with the black kids in school. What I will persistently lay claim to is humor. There is a wild and dramatic difference between awkwardly claiming street cred to justify haphazardly spewing shit, and cracking a joke that plays on a "sensitive" theme. It's why you can laugh at the best comedians' jokes about rape or race, and bite through your tongue at an amateur who thinks he's going to shoot straight for "edgy."

I've not only, very roughly, provoked conversations, but also without shame dragged people into an awareness about something they're likely often going to only uncomfortably laugh at, at least initially, or otherwise generally ignore. This doesn't bother me. Nor does it bother me to be perceived incorrectly or for someone to not find my type of humor funny. I get it, people are feelers and dramatically more sensitive than me.

What I don't like is the idea that I'm giving license. Jokes are designed to undermine power. It's anyone's guess what ideas you may consider powerful. You can laugh at slavery when Louie C.K. does it. The fact that slavery still exists and you only care as much as you do about any tragedy you didn't create and probably can't fix, does not in turn endorse Foxconn. When I say "I call them all Tokyo" it's supposed to be because it's so laughably depressing that there are people who genuinely feel and talk that way.

If I get cut off 13 out of 15 times by girls on cell phones and get into a habit of saying "god dammit, I bet you it's another bitch on a cellphone" each time it happens...well at that point it's not even a joke yet. Living in a college town will do nothing to persuade you against stereotypes of women with cell phones or Asians driving. I'm sure there's a statistical argument that goes here...but still, the time it's a guy on a phone driving a minivan and I still call him a bitch on a cellphone, now a layered joke realm can emerge. It's your fault if you want to sexualize "bitch" and think I'm demonizing women. If I was a woman concerned about our image, I'd get off my fucking phone while cutting people off so often they can normalize a "bitch on a cellphone" sentiment. (See, that made me laugh.)

Here I feel anger about my "complicit endorsement of (pick-your)ism" terribly misplaced and unfairly stated. What's weird to me is people taking up the "righteous" position against the joker, or, extremely easy target who's gone out of his way to risk how he's perceived. Moreover when it's amongst friends. Further, how am I to be bothered to account for people who might be listening in on my conversation in public?

People making jokes, especially persistently, are coping, not endorsing. And people attacking them are lying to themselves, not protecting. It's 1 in 100 times someone feels compelled to speak against how I phrase or joke about something. And even when they do, rarely did I catch them with the wrong joke as they just returned from therapy attempting to deal with that very issue. When they do, the burden shifts to me to "continue being an asshole" or say "my bad, I'll censor myself around you."

Of course you can be indignant for someone else. But at the same time, I consider it your responsibility to discern the difference between a joke and an attack or genuine belief. It's not my job nor desire to hold your hand through all the reasons you can feel okay about laughing at me. And I am not readily shamed or guilt ridden by statements like "you know you're hurting people!" I don't. I never know when I'm hurting people, especially when most of them are mostly laughing most of the time. Much as I never knew people were about to cry because I explained my perspective on life or asked them a question about their ex from a few years ago.

I think people need to get better at mitigating their feelings. I, for better or worse, can be a reflection point from which to examine yours. Maybe you didn't ask, okay, anymore than I ask for all the real fallout from the real problems of what I choose to joke about. So, let's hold each other and fend off the demons with our vigorously wagged fingers? Nah, I'll keep joking and promise not to chase you down and start shaking the laughs out of you.

Ideally, I want to live in a world where we take away a lot of the power of words. I don't want people to explode at me in a way they won't explode toward something that matters. My jokes aren't shooting black kids, kicking gay people out of my parties, or expecting my girlfriend to cook for me, or else. That's what horrible people are doing. Horrible people who it's hard to cope with on top of all the other depressing and disgusting things you're made to be aware of as a thinking individual.

I can apologize for a misunderstanding or that you feel hurt, but I never will for the joke. I'm open to discussing where your feelings are coming from and how they may be dealt with, but I won't pretend my heart swells with yours. I save it for things I regard as mattering more.