Wake-up thoughts on wording. It’s slow to process. Not news.
It’s generally not cool to mock someone for their trauma. Exceptions might exist for individuals you know well, who are not still suffering from it.
This is the very essense of where “punch up. Don’t punch down.” comes from. So, a comic can get away with mocking themselves, their buddies with permission, and rich assholes.
Examples: You don’t make dead baby jokes around people who lost a child. You don’t make rape jokes around a group of rape survivors.
As soon as they mock people whose grandparents lost their whole family to war crimes, it gets dicey, especially if they mock the group for the loss, or stereotypes about the loss, or jokingly blame them for that loss.
There’s not a threshold for affected percent. It’s about whether the audience empathizes.
For instance, 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men admit to having been raped in the US. More than this have been assaulted, but many keep it inside because society blames victims. So, everyone knows at least one person who’s directly affected.
A celebrity would probably not be tolerated if they made a lot of jokes demeaning sexual assault victims. It’s raw. People are not “over it” because it’s ongoing.
Kids murdered in school shootings, also mostly off limits. You can demean the shooters, maybe, but not the survivors and parents. It’s just bad form, and insensitive.
Some examples of acceptable consequences:
Self-Yeet declaring “deathcon” against jews, and spreading old-style hateful “they own everything” messages. “Well, it makes sense he’d lose contracts, followers, etc.”
Schadenfreude over Musk digging his own hole with Twitter? “Great! He deserves it!” People organizing to cancel their Twitter accounts by the hudreds of thousands? “That’s their right.”
Bliss over the Kentucky student getting kicked out of school and her influencer jobs because of racist tirades while drunk? “Totally on board. She was a little snot anyway.”
But there is a line in the sand. One exception carved out.
We have a group where 66% of the members are sexually assaulted. 82% planned suicide, and 40% tried at least once. 44% suffer PTSD. The bullying NEVER ended. The murder rate against this group quadrupled during the previous presidency, as did violent rhetoric against the group.
You’d think that demeaning this group, might be slightly off limits.
You’d be wrong.
Strong support from all classes and other minorities. “Don’t you dare boycott paying your money to this comic. His group has an 8.7% PTSD rate, so HE KNOWS.”
Doubling down on it, and having other friends come support poking at people with gender dysphoria, or whose internal perception does not match their external presentation at birth?
Outrage is not allowed. No boycotting allowed. No cancelling memberships allowed. “How dare you try to cancel my beloved Chappell.” “Those people need to grow a spine.”
The list of when you invoke protected speech status, vs when you nod and say “consequences will get you”, is what defines the bias. A group 7x more vulnerable not getting the same protections you invoke for your favorite group is a sizeable prejudice.
