"Too much WOKE these days. You can't even make a joke anymore!"
Conservative comedians don't tell or laugh at jokes, they punch down and rehash stereotypes and laugh at the hypothetical "libcuck" who they imagine to be very angry about it.
Conservative comedian: "I was out eating at Chick-fil-A and I saw this guy walking with clothes I disagree with. I can't even call him a derogatory name anymore! Ignoring that guy's freedom, these woke idiots are infringing on my freedom! But I know you people are cool so I'll say it here in this space that's safe, but we don't use that word here."
I enjoy heckling some of my more bigoted coworkers with benign dad jokes on whatever topic their hateful 'humor' gets at. Wanna hate on trans peeps? I'm gonna hit em with the "I don't get it..?" and put them in the awkward position of breaking down their joke while tip-toeing around the bits that guarantee a trip to HR.
Then it's "Ah... gotcha. Ooh! I got one too! How do transgender samurai kill enemy units?! ...they 'slash' them!" *finger guns and big cheesey grin* "Did you hear about the boy who came out to his parents as transgender? ...they looked up and said 'you're no son of mine!'"
The awkwardness just cranks higher and higher when you hit em with punch lines that aren't hateful lol; and shines the spotlight on yes you fucking can tell jokes about this stuff, just not ones that make you sound like a god damned Nazi.
You touched on one of my favorite tactics - I pretend to be very clueless and very politically low-info - while they are terminally online and expecting everyone to cop to their culture war BS shorthand, I ask them to explain what they mean and ask what are they talking about.
Takes the wind right out of their sails.
They hope that you'll act like a "triggered" liberal and give them the dopamine hit they want by shrieking or howling or whatever it is that they want, maybe followed by some gamed-out "debate" that follows a track that they want to go down so they can work in some "zinger" think-piece like "the Democrat Party doesn't even know what a woman even is" (like I just saw Dan Crenshaw do on Maher's show), or that you give them the Faux Nooz nod and the wink, maybe a "I getchooo bro! finger guns" and the high five.
They get neither. Trying to explain a joke of any kind utterly ruins it, especially if it's one of their punching down kind. The hard part is me not laughing right in their face when I see the look of disappointment on their face. The easy part is keeping my cool and not letting them try to annoy me, while doing the "just asking questions" routine that they themselves love in other instances - I've been doing this kind of thing my whole life. I can do a poker face like no one's business. It was a life skill I needed early in life just for basic survival. But trying to keep from laughing at their predictable response (oh so predictable) is a lot harder.
Unfortunately, I see lots of liberals, moderates, etc....fall for the bait.
I watched it a while ago, but from what I remember it's partly that conservatives are not very creative. It's an old bit but it's true that lots and lots of mainstream conservative pundits tried to make it as writers in Hollywood, or at least as comedians before failing and turning to right-wing grift and money.
Another point is that political comedy, by its nature, has to express an political opinion, or else it's not "political" comedy. The left wing can do this easily as a lot of left wing problems tend to punch up to the rich or to corporations. On the other hand, the political opinion a lot of conservative comics find "funny" is the fact that they hate women and minorities.
Unfortunately for them, the country is a little too WOKE to do black face anymore so they have to try to obscure that opinion with weird contrived bits. Bits so contrived that they end up having to spell out the joke at the end about how the funny part was that they hate women and minorities. (There are clips of this in the video). That's a double whammy of bad comedy because it's already a shitty premise and it breaks many rules of comedy such as punching down and explaining the joke.
Just watched it, what it basically boils down to is that nowadays most "comedy" from US conservatives isn't meant to be funny, it's meant to "own the libs." So instead of coming up with witty, valid criticism of Democrats, they do whatever they can to try to get a rise out of them, which leads to a bunch of nonsense that is more concerned with making a political point and upsetting people than it is with actually being funny or even true.
Cowardice is not wasting 1.5 hours what friendly commenters just summarized in a couple of sentences?
Thank you Google for providing us with your shitty platform that incentivizes people to create bloated content wasting countless hours of people's lifetimes in search for some crumbs of information that could be written down as a couple of words and be searchable.
absolutely Galaxy brain take, longform video essays are incentivized by Google?? somebody tell mr beast, he's not gonna believe this
Not sure what you're implying. That the incentive is obvious? Well, then why post shitty video content instead of writing a short reply?
Or are you saying it's not true and somehow the guy making dozens of millions off YouTube (so he's paid by Google) is your counter-example?
the average length of a Mr. Beast video is 16 minutes long. Video Essayists on YouTube are famously commonly demonetized and almost if not all are reliant on alternative monetization methods (read: patreon, nebula, etc) to be able to stay afloat. your take is very silly and patently false.
OK, now I got your point. But that's not what I meant.
My criticism aims at the "misuse" of the video format. I'm always annoyed when I want to look something up and instead of a written sentence I get pointed to a 10 min video.
Mr Beast's content is very visual entertainment, like TV - that's the kind of content we had on YouTube from the very beginning and video makes total sense.
For providing information video isn't always a good choice (the only exception in my opinion is craftsmanship but even then text with photos is better). Those essayists may not be able to live off it but they do get money for each view which they wouldn't if they wrote a paper or blog post. So they are incentivized to make videos instead of using the superior format and write it down (scientific papers are never videos). And to get those juicy clicks they make their stupid shocked face thumbnails even for the most serious, dry content.
Pessimism is easy and makes you feel smarter than everyone without having to try anything yourself. It's kind of a win-win for your ego I guess.
Yeah, they're a bit of an acquired taste for sure. I still kinda cringe through most of their recurring bits and wait until they're over, but the pieces are well researched if you can power through about 3 minutes of cringe lol
I love Warmbo and I'm not afraid to say it. But I appreciate Muppets being added to basically anything lol
I'll admit, the Warmbo character has grown on me, lol. The episode where he "streamed" his reaction to the episode sent me.
I've watched and gotten a lot out of these videos in general. I usually skip the opening comedy bits, which are mostly them swinging incredibly hard and not even hitting the ball. Does result in a too-occasional home run. But even those usually aren't in the opening.
Anyway, these may be worth going back to. Gold mines with piles of dog poop at the entrance. Or at least silver mines.
Holy fuck, it's basically my entire high school experience, rolled into one guy. I need to punch him in the face. Repeatedly. Sorry, guy.
So, if you got far enough into this, the bad joke he is criticizing is actually about happy endings and not about two masseuses, right?
The root of it is that such "comedians" are expecting the audience to laugh at other people's "folly," when the "folly" is no such thing. The message ends up being "I'm a backwards hateful fuck, join me!"
The issue of gender neutral public bathrooms opens up a whole can of worms that cant easily be resolved. Like, is the weird wall-mounted vending machine going to dispens condoms and pheramone wipes, or perfume and period care products? Literally insurmountable conundrums.
Conservatives genuinely delight in the harm of the innocent. You can see this in their humor. Their jokes almost always punch down or involve someone being insulted or victimized. This was true before Trump and is still true now. The difference is they are much more bold about it now.
Hack comedians: “they are personally attacking my ability to be attention-grabbing edgy by feeding on controversy” or just repeat someone else’s confetti joke.
Legitimate comedians: “this actual thing happened to me as a child. It’s not great but here’s some observations I tried to lighten it up with”
I was scared to watch at first, because I love his stand up and didn't want my opinion ruined. Glad I was wrong, lol
His "tater salad" bit is one of my all time favorites.
James Acaster on Ricky Gervais' Trans Jokes
Apparently Joe Rogan did a special recently and spent some time making transphobic jokes. Although, he "does" say it's okay to be trans or something but then makes transphobic jokes. He even does a "did you assume my gender?" joke in the year 2024. Definitely bleeding edge there Joe.
I think there can be good conservative jokes or whatever jokes to be honest. It just takes a lot more work. I think a lot of comedians are getting scared the zeitgeist is changing and they don't know how to adapt their work. However, you're comedians, figure it out.
Cody's showdy had an episode about conservative comedy and specifically made a point to say conservative comedy is possible and was a thing until recently all these hacks forgot what to do. He even gave several examples. My favorite was one from a brexiteer if you can believe it.
Your title is irritating because it's exactly how conservatives talk. We can add adjectives to the list of words they don't understand how to use, right beside pronouns.
One of my long term friends was always into comedy. I think it ended up being a pipeline for his eventual turn into the right.
It depends on the comedy.
There's solid comedy out there. Then there's a bunch of bros doing podcasts calling it "comedy" and punching down.
My grandpa went peacefully in his sleep. Unlike the other 40 people on the bus
(we’re recycling old jokes, right? RIGHT??)
Hillbillies still make good jokes. They just can't be consumed by you bleeping bleeps without an internal investigation. We keep those jokes on the DL. On the internet I used to be able to literally do anything. Now its some virtue signal fest. Enjoy being bitches, spread it wide😗
Huh. My poor, white, Appalachian relatives are split 50/50 between being bigoted shit-heads and some of the most open minded, kind, generous people you'd ever meet. The later are somehow capable of telling hilarious jokes and stories without punching down.
Turns out "being an asshole" isn't a culture.
These people think jokes aren't jokes. They seem to think it needs to be some political statement.
Did they ever make good jokes?
For the record, I used to live among the hillbillies. Surrounded by the yokelest of the rubes. A lot of their "comedy" and "jokes" and "pranks" seemed to be comprised of (actually) hurting people and animals. The rest of it was about verbally abusing others they considered "less than". Most of their jokes were filled with ethnic slurs and mostly about some ethnic group.
To be honest, other hillbillies thought all this was high comedy; a real knee slapper. Psychopathy was often rewarded by others with psychopathy. But anyone with brain cells and some normally-firing synapses connecting those brain cells found their behavior utterly exhausting and tiresome.
Again, I lived it. I'm trying to think of one funny person that stayed in the area. The ones that aspired to something else and were actually funny - all moved the fuck away, if they could.