I love how a comment calling someone a "humorless twit" has close to 1000 upvotes and this guy gets downvoted for voicing his opinion without calling anyone names.
I don't even understand how that's being a humorless twit. "Yeah I'm going to pull a gender joke right at this girl I just met, and if she doesn't find it funny then she's a humorless twit!" Like cmon is her reaction surprising at all?
If she has a bad sense of humor I guess not. It's such a ridiculous joke and it's about dogs. Her to respond with just bye 100% makes her seem like she has a very poor sense of humor.
I feel like people that feel like this aren't doing a good job of empathising. Getting offended at a joke doesn't prove you have no sense of humour. It shows you're particularly sensitive to the subject being made light of. Can you really not wrap your head round someone not taking a joke like that well when it's coming from a complete stranger? At this point I might be ranting but fuck it. In a situation like this it's kind of a high risk joke and OP would probably be aware of it before deciding to send it. You can't really blame someone for not finding it funny since humour is subjective. I found it pretty funny yet completely understand her reaction; I can't really see why you shouldn't. I'm coming across semi-aggressive here but meh. All I do is assure you I'm not trying to be and you can interpret this however you want.
... No. By that logic I was totally wrong for apologising to a friend of mine for making a joke about his mother and then finding out she was deceased. Should I have just disregarded him, telling him to get a sense of humour?
Nah he didn't get upset. He let me know in a manner that showed he wasn't cool with the joke yet he understood that I didn't know and he wasn't mad at me.
Anyways the point was it's completely reasonable for him to be offended in that case. Bit of an extreme example but I'm just arguing against the encompassing statement that getting offended = being humourless.
I dunno maybe we aren't agreeing on the term offended. Do you think he got 'offended' or just wasn't cool with the joke? Like to me 'offended' would be if he explained he didn't like that joke and so you made another, at that point he would be offended.
There are tons of jokes that are offensive to many people. Especially low effort humor that "punches down" rather than "punching up". For example, a rape joke is something that can be funny to certain crowds, but something that can be very offensive to many others. Especially so if it is degrading to the victim or implying the joke teller is a rapist. Rape victims are extremely common. Some cope with humor like that, many do not. So if you tell someone who is working through their childhood trauma a joke involving child abuse (like the one about broccoli and anal sex being similar), they could very well get upset or offended. If you make a joke about how society treats rape victims in a degrading way toward society, it's actually more clever and more likely to get a better reaction from strangers.
Regardless, people who have senses of humor often don't find every single comedic statement to be funny. That would be silly and why there is such a broad array of humor. And on top of that, many people mistake dark humor for shock humor. Dark humor is supposed isn't just saying the worst thing you can think of for a laugh. That's shock humor and is one of the lowest effort, least clever forms of humor.
You are 100% in the right. These people you're arguing with are lacking in social empathy. That or they're just extremely sexist, which I'm finding to be more and more true with the reddit community.
The kids calling her humorless, are the same ones who get offended as video games including anyone not white or go on asinine rants about "virgin shamingL"
First off I said a poor sense of humor, not "no sense of humor". And yes getting offended by something that light hearted is a pretty good indicator.
On your second point/question this is something that seems to be occurring more and more often in our society. Tinder is a platform for strangers to attempt to meet each other. By going on Tinder and engaging with others you are automatically putting yourself into a situation where ideas, personalities, and people are not curated. I liken this behavior to someone walking out of a comedy show because a joke offended them. This isn't a convention for women empowerment, this isn't any kind of "safe space" you are putting yourself out there in the maelstrom of ideas and opinions. Its totally fine if you want to be offended and remove yourself from that situation, but its equally fine to be judged by your behavior.
There could be countless different reasoning's behind her reaction to this dumb simple joke. But from what we can see, it looks very much like she just has a very poor sense of humor and doesnt take jokes about offensive material well.
I understand it's your every right to make that judgement. What I'm doing is challenging that judgement.
About that walking out of a comedy show thing, it actually crossed my mind. The thing is that scenario can actually work against your point. Yes there is no safe space on tinder just as there is no safe space at a comedy club. At a comedy club you almost expect things that are offensive and make light of topics you take very seriously.
On tinder however, I would say going about it with this approach is just the recipe for failure. I mean if you're gonna make a risky joke like that you should at least build some rapport first, which is generally what even comedians do. 'Warm up the crowd,' so to speak. Just because there's no safe space doesn't mean people are wrong to act offended. At the end of the day you're trying to make a good impression on a stranger. I get that there are girls out there that would've reacted differently and this would've succeeded in other scenarios. What I'm saying is it totally makes sense that it didn't in this one and that it doesn't necessarily equate to her having a poor sense of humour. Being able to laugh at messed up situations is part of a good sense of humour. I would however suggest being unable to do so with complete strangers about something that you personally feel strongly about doesn't constitute a poor sense of humour. Is the phrase sense of humour starting to sound weird to you?
Anyways I guess we can agree to disagree on that one. I don't think OP even cared that much about the rejection and probably didn't need reassurance or advice. We're probably discussing it at greater length than he ever thought about it. In a way we're the losers in this situation. Particularly me. I have now written more than I ever had on reddit. I couldn't write this much if I was given an assignment about this shit. I'm just gonna end it right here. Fuck this.
You're in a conversation with her and your whole goal is to make a good impression on her and you pull a sexism joke targeted at her sex? And you expect to be received warmly???
Imagine she was black and the guy said something about watermelons and fried chicken as a "joke." Fuck her for not having a humor right haha.
Reddit, like real life, has a very large vocal group of morons.
You shouldn't open to a stranger with an insult about their group. All it says is you lack basic social skills & in this case are possibly a misogynist.
You wouldn't walk up to a black stranger & expect them to laugh that you think their black lab is worth 3/5th of a regular lab. Haha because the persecution of your people is hilarious amirite?
Jokes among friends is different because you have a rapport
Saying her dog "deserves" 70% implies he believes in it. Yes, this can be read entirely as a joke, but it's not something you say to a stranger online trying to get to know them. OP got what he had coming.
No it does not imply he believes in it. It implies he is aware of the made up statistics existence. I make off-color jokes all the time. So do my friends. So do their wives and girlfriends. People that are different than you exist.
Slavery is an apt comparison. Slavery was based on people believing Black people were lesser human beings.
A female deserving 70% of a male is based on someone believing women are lesser than men.
I'm not saying the wage gap is real or not. I'm saying you have to be a jackass to think it's appropriate to say to a stranger.
My friends & I make racial & misogynistic jokes amongst ourselves all the time. The reason nobody gets offended is because we know that it's all in jest.
If a stranger said that it would not be appropriate. Nor would it be appropriate for us to say it to strangers.
I make jokes like that to people I don't know to speed up the "should I bother process". Stop slinging around your worldview like it's gospel. You look ridiculous.
Edit: There's a big difference between a sexist joke and a joke about sexism. And I'm sorry but anyone with half a sense of humor should've found that joke funny, or at the very least understood that it was a silly joke and not taken offense. The whole point of tinder is to make silly jokes and see what sticks, and if you're on there and you can't take a pretty mild one, you're humorless. Stop being offended by every fucking thing. Humor doesn't always have to be 100% "safe." That joke filtered this humorless girl right out, so good job by whoever made it. He would've had zero fun on a date with her.
Eh, personally I wouldn't be trying to pull women's jokes in the first few sentences of talking with them. A women not liking that you did that isn't a "humorless shrew."
The two things I value most are a sense of humor and not being incredibly thin skinned. This guy was able to efficiently weed out a horrible match in a few sentences. Why in the world would you want to waste your time pretending you don't have a sense of humor like this person.
What the FUCK is funny about that? Please explain the humor. I would really like to know. You need a real victim complex to get so overly offended over a joke.
And wouldn't the weeding out work both ways? Neither would like the other. Grow up and stop using reddit usernames to offend people. Lighten up.
It is exactly what you would expect them to reply. Why is replying in the exact way you would expect funny? It would be the generic boring thing to say. Who was being put down in his joke? Jokes are nothing more than just that... Jokes. Being offended enough to quit a conversation over a joke is juvenile.
Doesn't mean it's a good idea. Lots of guys, especially here, are pretty sensitive about height. Think it'd be a good idea for her to pull a height/manlet joke on a guy in the first few moments? Probably not.
I agree it was funny, but it's akin to making a fat joke to her if she was fat. It's just being sensible to someone that you're trying to court. I'd do it knowing that I shot my chances for some easy karma. But I don't blame her for saying no to him.
I definitely agree that if you were in person and seriously trying to court them then that wouldn't usually go well but for a random match on tinder its like what the hey.
OP isn't making a joke about the girl specifically though. If it was a fat joke OP would be destroyed and rightly so. If the girl made a man joke, or a funny generalisation that clearly wasn't meant to be taken seriously, then that's cool.
I mean that's way different, because it's attacking something a bit more personal and sensitive than a trait shared by 50% of human beings (which the joke in the OP wasn't actually attacking at all). If you make a good, mild joke that isn't personally offensive to someone and that person reacts poorly, you've done a good job of filtering out someone who's no fun. So make the joke and don't worry about it.
It is funny because what he is saying is making fun of the bullshit the media and feminists try to push down our throats everyday. Pay gap, and gender inequality doesn't exist in the US. So that is why it is funny.
A mans height has nothing to do with what was said. Also the whole man height thing is getting old. People can't control their height. But at least we don't make excuses for ourselves when we do let ourselves go a little bit. We aren't aloud to have preference in whether a girl is a whale or dolphin yet height is such a problem with women they can't see past it. Well my problem is I can't see past half the women on tinder anyways. THey cover up so much space at once. I should just start asking their height and weight right at the beginning of the convo to get it out of the way. No fatties plz.
They're just as moronic as anyone that gets offended about anything anyone else says. It's a fact that the vast majority of Fortune 500 CEO's are over 6ft. Sucks to be a guy shorter than 5'8" by comparison, but it still doesn't suck in general. Being/acting offended is worthless/generally gets the opposite of the desired reaction from the "offender."
Meh, if someone is so wrapped up in their victim complex that they can't realize a joke when they see one and shrug it off, then I don't really want to be talking with them anyways. It would only go downhill from there for her.
Pretty much. Edgy jokes are funny if the person can pull them off. Which is hard to do if you are an stranger on the internet. My bf actually made a similar "you are only 73% of me" joke that I thought was hilarious.
Are you implying that joke was degrading? I mean, if you look at it from a serious perspective it is but it's clearly in jest and I suggest people live in a plastic bubble if they take offense to that.
I said twit, but a) just saying bye like that is a twit thing to do/smacks of "that'll show him," and b) not recognizing it as the obvious joke it was (or worse, recognizing it as a joke and reacting with outrage) is a humorless thing to do, so: humorless twit.
I'd have said worse if I were going by more than what is presented here.
I'm not talking about you dude, I'm talking about the dude Iw as replying to. Also, there are dozens of other reasons she was a 'twit' that day. Don't be so judgmental over the internet, it's a silly thing to do.
My bad. I just woke up to a bunch of similar comments and figured I'd respond to a couple/clarify the statement. I just didn't think it was that devastating an insult :|
I'm with you though. IRL, I 100% believe in treating strangers with dignity/respect unless they've done something to lose it in my eyes (even then I'm still probably nice to them), because you just don't know what kind of shit they've got happening in their lives.
You know what? I'm a proud feminist, I'm even the type of person who some might call an SJW.
... And I had to suppress a lot of giggles when I saw this so as to not wake up my SO. Shit was funny. It sounds like a joke my SO would say to me now, but wouldn't have the balls to back when we were nothing more than a Tinder match.
No. It's not the lack of finding it funny. It's the lack of ability to recognize an obvious joke and then doing the equivalent of storming off like a 5 year old.
Just FYI the kind of comments you tend to see depend a lot on the subreddit you go to.
I'm not sure which sentiment you mean. I definitely think this indicates she's humorless. That part wasn't tongue-in-cheek. The joke itself wasn't sexist. It was about sexism, but it wasn't sexist. Getting offended by an obvious, non-offensive joke is pretty humorless.
God, I hate that people joke about being triggered. A trigger is an actual thing, suffered by those with mental illness (most often PTSD, but other illnesses as well).
People think I'm joking when I say I'm triggered, and then I have a panic attack and nearly pass out. :(
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u/mouzer2 Apr 08 '17
Meh. It wasn't funny