I'm Getting the Sickness

[toblix]

I have long had a sneaking suspicion being exposed to the internet slowly hollows you out. So, sometimes I do a test to see if I'm still sane. I do this by reading dead baby jokes. I remember the first time I came over them, probably about ten years ago. I was pretty shocked and offended that people would find this funny. Now, I find I don't find it shocking at all. Obviously I've been desensitised by the fukungs, 4chans and IGN.com quote baby rape threads. Logically, this has also happened to everyone else. Doesn't this mean we're all going to hell or something? If each generation finds less and less things disturbing, where does it end?

Anyway, my download of the Nanny Mania 2: Goes to Hollywood demo just finished. See you later.

[Nachimir]

Sick jokes and the internet are something I've thought about a bit.

I don't know if it's about desensitisation so much as a revealing of tastes that were already there. I've always had a sick sense of humour and known plenty of people to swap dead baby jokes before they could access the internet. Just never to the point of HEY LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I'M BEING TRANSGRESSIVE GUYS HAY GUYS LOOK AT ME. Having an audience at a safe distance is pretty new and some people become dicks for it.

The value of sick jokes seems to have gone down since internet access became widespread. Normal social mores don't apply so much to asynchronous communication, not just because of the lack of body language but because we often don't have to deal with the reaction. Being able to find them archived all over the place has deflated their social value among fans.

Finding someone to share a sick joke with used to feel like finding a member of a secret association, which was kind of cool because they were harder to come by. People wouldn't tell them so much because of the social risk, and similar tastes in acquaintances would remain hidden because of those risks. There would be this awkward shuffle of an exchange when telling someone new, i.e. "I heard a really sick joke the other day but don't know if I should tell you". I don't think people can bond so much over them now.

I think there have always been sick jokes and they aren't an indicator of pathologically disturbed personalities. If anything, I find constant consumption of information the internet allows more pathological and every bit as dulling as a TV binge, regardless of how healthy or unhealthy popular opinion holds the content of such a binge to be. It's too easy to sit on the net spouting meconium at all comers, so nowadays I at least try to make what I'm creating and posting anywhere interesting in some way, and think twice about what I'm reading.

[Historical_Society]

Society has essentially become more and more morally stifled. The irony being that we are in age filled with technological advancement, while we enjoy barbarism at through reality shows, youtube, and even video games. I in no way am taking a holier-than-thou stance, for I do indulge myself in the recess of humor.

I feel though that as each generation has passed by it's really stopped being a stand for acceptance and more like I'm going to offend you because I want to. What started essentially like more of a discussion of what's acceptable and what's not, really's become more an idea of hey, now that I can say this, I'm going to rebel for you telling me I couldn't when I was young. With comedians like Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks, they pushed a proverbial envelope in the depths of Bruce listing off every racial epitaph in hoping to diminish the pain behind racial terms when said to a child. With Bill Hicks taking what he did, and then weaving it logically to essentially counter what he felt was wrong with America in the state of freedom of speech, commercialism and politics. Now, comedians basically have taken the groundwork of what made for them, and now use it as a forum of saying, vagina, dead baby, penis penis penis, if you can't accept that then you are a tight ass who needs to open your mind. Comedians like Jimmy Dore I find to be a perfect example. I do find him funny, but it is easy to see in his jokes that it's built of being censored as a child that he just inflicts demeaning insults as an act of rebellion.

Before I became heavily entrenched in video games, I was very into film. I always enjoyed films that pushed the boundaries to the point where it just made you uncomfortable and made you question why. But then I just basically noticed that the envelope being pushed wasn't more of embracing an open-mindness towards situation but an acceptance of just sheer deprevatiy. Watching Kubrick's Lolita, there was a sense of questioning if affection seperated pedophilia from any other relationship. Watching Mitchell's Short Bus, watching a man blow into another man's ass like a french horn really wasn't pushing a boundary in the sense of acceptance of sexuality and affection, it was more of how far can you put sex act to the point that people can barely tell the difference between this and porn.

My last example being a game like GTA, where they essentially took pushing the envelope as far as possibile in the realm of video games. If any company has really just been detrimental I feel to the state of video games being accepted has been Rockstar. Rockstar has no problem pushing the envelope in what can be allowed and also become fun, but they rarely if ever just defend their artistic descisions. Instead they just release footages and allow people to overhype the deviant part of their games, and leave gamers to look as people who fiend over grandma rape simulators. If Rockstar defended their choices the way Geoff Keighley had to defend a benign segnment within Mass Effect, I truly feel there'd be a great understanding and acceptance of video games as a whole.

So to sum up my unnecessary dissertation on how dead baby jokes parrallel our artistic integrity as a whole, dead baby jokes exist because we're not clever enough to create something with depth and humor.

[brkl]

Hey

[brkl]

How many babies do you need to paint a house?

Depends on how fast you throw them.

I don't think humour is going to destroy society, even if it's bad. What it's going to lead to is people just not batting an eyelid when they see or hear some stupid crap and moving on without caring at all.

[syntheticgerbil]

This is all I have to contribute, because I'm 13 and mom won't buy me a new celly.

02gHxu3JtPA

"Enjoy!

Song:Down with the sickness

artist:Disturbed

I DON´T OWN DISTURBED OR ANY OF THEY SONG JUST A FAN MADE

Lyrics-

Can you feel that?

Ah, shit

WAAAAAH!

WAAAAH!

HUH! HUH!

HUH! HUH!

Drowning deep in my sea of loathing

Broken your servant I kneel

(Will you give in to me?)

It seems what's left of my human side

Is slowly changing in me

(Will you give in to me?)

Looking at my own reflection

When suddenly it changes

Violently it changes (oh no)

There is no turning back now

You've woken up the demon in me

Get up, come on get down with the sickness

Open up your hate, and let it flow into me

Get up, come on get down with the sickness

You mother get up come on get down with the sickness

You fucker get up come on get down with the sickness

Madness is the gift, that has been given to me

I can see inside you, the sickness is rising

Don't try to deny what you feel

(Will you give in to me?)

It seems that all that was good has died

And is decaying in me

(Will you give in to me?)

It seems you're having some trouble

In dealing with these changes

Living with these changes (oh no)

The world is a scary place

Now that you've woken up the demon in me

(And when I dream)x3

No mommy, don't do it again

Don't do it again

I'll be a good boy

I'll be a good boy, I promise

No mommy don't hit me

Why did you have to hit me like that, mommy?

Don't do it, you're hurting me

Why did you have to be such a bitch

Why don't you,

Why don't you just fuck off and die

Why can't you just fuck off and die

Why can't you just leave here and die

Never stick your hand in my face again bitch

FUCK YOU

I don't need this shit

You stupid sadistic abusive fucking whore

How would you like to see how it feels mommy

Here it comes, get ready to die"

Hey, by the way, did you guys know that this youtube user in fact doesn't own Disturbed, the band?

[DanJW]

So to sum up my unnecessary dissertation on how dead baby jokes parrallel our artistic integrity as a whole, dead baby jokes exist because we're not clever enough to create something with depth and humor.

Except that we are clever enough - we can and do create things with depth and humour. That stuff and the tasteless stuff are not mutually exclusive; they can and do exist within the same culture.

[Nachimir]

Just because something is sick, that does not mean it isn't clever. Some of the best, most well written comedy is black humour and social horror.

Gerbil: Yes, to an extent, but there's way more to it than disenfranchised teens trying to shock. People aged 30+ liking black humour isn't necessarily regressive or immature.

[Historical_Society]

Except that we are clever enough - we can and do create things with depth and humour. That stuff and the tasteless stuff are not mutually exclusive; they can and do exist within the same culture.

I agree with you that they are not mutually exclusive. But if you could look at the trend of how humor and other forms of creativity, "Jackass" humor has become more prevelant compared to the depth of say George Carlin. I guess a minisicule example would be. The IGN.COM thread. People like GDf and GrouchoClub attempted to have some unique jokes, whereas after a while it just became a sea of x + rape + y + in a hole = funny. Dead baby jokes to me essentially are the equivilant of that, a sign of a lack of creativity. No offense to any one that posted on that thread.

I deeply apologize to the person that started the thread. The discussion on desentization has been completely derailed by me.

[Jake]

Goatse was the telling one for me (and probably many people who have been on the internet since at least 2003 or so). While it's still vile (especially after not seeing it for a long while, as I experienced when I had to look at the receiver jpeg again for the first time when working on goty.cx ), the fact that a photo of a dude pulling open his gaping anus became something that everyone laughed at and referenced repeatedly, and that even many of my non-diehard-Internet friends had seen in college... It made me oth happy and sad at the same time, I guess, and I don't know what conclusion to draw from that. It's weird to be at least partially desensitized to an image like that.

[OssK]

I think you all know this anecdote: when people saw the first movie ever made by the Lumiere brothers, which represented a train runing at full speed towards the camera, they all crouched under their seats in fear that it will crush them, all in all, we are the global image society, we see crazy fucking shit happening all the time on youtube, it debases the actually sensational, but does it affect our life outside the screen ?

On the short term and for now I would answer no. Violent video games don't make people violent and seing people having their heads crushed and blown in every possible way in videos movies pictures games didn't suffice to restrain me from vomiting my guts off when I saw a guy split in two by a truck in the middle of the streets of Paris, just like that, a few feet apart were his chest and his legs most horrible thing of my life, seeing that on TV ? wouldn't break a sweat and would probably laugh my ass off cutting a guy in two with a chainsaw in any video game. I would not know why, I just see it: people around me play like hell and are not violent, and not immune to the horror of seeing blood spilled of the macadam.

On the black humor note, you'd think hearing you that without the internet, there was no black humor, but hey, Desproges, french comedian wrote this sketch, out of the war.

ahJFsjjipTc

[gdf]

A lot of sick jokes are, well, fucking hilarious.

I felt a little bad cracking all those Maddie McCann ones, but hey, we got some great laughs.

[Ben X]

I do this by reading dead baby jokes. I remember the first time I came over them, probably about ten years ago.

You did what?!

[toblix]

You did what?!

Hey, isn't that bit of a stretch? Okay, maybe I should've said "came across".

[James]

I prefer dead jokes about sick babies.

[Roderick]

Well done, BBX. Well done!

[Scrobbs]

Suitably chastised.

[Nachimir]

It's weird to be at least partially desensitized to an image like that.

When is and isn't sensitisation useful? And why?

Not simple questions and I'm not sure I have any answers, but it's related to discussion of the word rape in the IGN thread.

[Historical_Society]

When is and isn't sensitisation useful? And why?

Not simple questions and I'm not sure I have any answers, but it's related to discussion of the word rape in the IGN thread.

I would say it's useful in the sense of getting the point across. I've had discussions where people skip around the subject. To give an example, a person who hits or attacks someone and says they did it but they were only kidding or they loved the person and they'd never do anything bad to the person. Sensitisation becomes useful by claiming the act at hand, abuse. The person would claim they were only kidding, until they're confronted with what it actually is they're doing.

The usage of the word rape in the thread was used repeatedly to the point it started to lose it's meaning and became a modifier for humor. I'll admit I laughed while reading the thread, but it was rather ridiculous how rape was overused. Which ties in seemlessly which how this started, the rape jokes and dead baby jokes have somewhat removed us from the fact a tragic event is why we're laughing.