People made jokes in 3000 BC that we might not find remotely funny nowadays, and they don't even have to be "edgy". They could just be based in a context that's completely inane to us now. It was a different time. Different hardships. Different jokes!
Exactly. Lots of people find Shakespeare boring, and to some extent I can agree. I nearly fell asleep during a performance of Macbeth, for instance, and that was when I was part of a group of SCA people doing front-of-house work in medieval costume (ticket taking, ushering, handing out programs, etc.; the compensation was that we were allowed to see the play for free).
But other Shakespeare plays? Some of them are hilarious, and I remember starting to read one of the Roman ones (don't recall offhand if it was Julius Caesar or Antony and Cleopatra), and started giggling over the humorous exchanges some of the characters had in a couple of scenes.
The reason a lot of people don't get Shakespearean humor is because if you only read the play it's hard to imagine the action that goes with it. These plays were meant to be seen, not read, and for the most part the intended audience was common people, who would not have an academic sense of humor. That's why some of it falls flat to modern audiences. Different world, different social norms, different humor.
Most teens and young adults today have done more social activism than the older generations have done in their lifetimes, and are facing a dire future that we'll be too dead to worry about. But because they don't like jokes about minorities, they're sheltered and morons? Sure. I think there's another demographic here facing mental weakness.
ORLY?
So women marching, getting arrested, force-fed, and beaten just for wanting the same voting rights as men is somehow less than what the average teenage girl or 20-something woman does now? Most of them don't seem to give a damn for their voting rights, and couldn't care less about it. They use pathetic excuses as the reason for not voting, and then they whine and complain when the government doesn't do what they want. Well, they had their chance to make their wishes known at the polling station, and it's not true that voting is pointless. The federal election of 1993 is proof of that - where just a few votes in several ridings made all the difference as to whether the Official Opposition was the right-wing party (Canadian Alliance, that later hijacked the Progressive Conservatives to give us the Conservative Party of Canada - that hybrid thing run by Stephen Harper during the Dark Decade) or the Bloc Quebecois (imagine that - for a short while, Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition was a pack of Quebec separatists, dedicated to pulling the country apart).
If even a dozen people had stayed home on voting day in some of those ridings, it would have completely changed which party became the Opposition. And that does matter.
I'm not saying that current issues don't matter. Clearly they do. But don't you sit there and say that older generations didn't do anything. I'll admit that my own efforts in joining a peace march in the early '80s was mostly symbolic, as was the further efforts of that group. But there is a plaque in City Hall Park that commemorates our efforts. My own later efforts focus on rights for the disabled, as I've run across so much casual dismissal in recent years - thoughtless crap that shows that governments just don't consider how their policies affect us. Being told that "oh, we never considered that" or "oh, that funding isn't available" when it's a matter of access or equal treatment is not funny.
I only got to vote in the provincial election last year because on a rare good day for going out, I made it to the Returning Office and informed them that I would not leave until they let me cast a ballot (they didn't know what to do with a disabled person who wanted to vote there and the reason wasn't that I would be out of town on voting day). Trying to spin excuses at me didn't work - back when I did have the energy for a full day's work (it's at least 14 hours, with a couple of bathroom breaks), I was a Deputy Returning Officer and knew my rights and what procedure they were supposed to follow.
So tell me - how many of these teenagers and young adults are advocating for disabled voters' rights? There are people in Canada who are surprised that we
have the right to vote.
I am the target demographic for these edgy comedians and dark jokes. But I also realize it's a niche category of comedy, and a population that's starting to care more about punching down on marginalized or helpless groups will naturally be more resistant to humour that punches down.
If you mean the disabled demographic, we couldn't be further from agreement. I get enough offensive crap thrown at me, and thoughtless treatment, that I really don't need it to be normalized in some obnoxious comedian's "humor".
I should not need to tell people not to move my walker without my permission. Yet I do. If I do give them permission, I should not need to tell them to treat it with care - it's what makes all the difference as to whether I can safely leave the apartment - yet I do. This latter situation is why there are now security cameras in the disabled transit buses here. One of the drivers treated my walker roughly, broke the basket part of it, and then got verbally abusive to me when I protested. When I got home I called the transit supervisor, told them what happened, and then pointed out behavior like that was not likely to be limited to just me - how many other passengers had he treated with rough handling of their mobility devices and verbal abuse? It's a fact that many people are afraid to speak up, for fear of being banned from this service. The supervisor thanked me for reporting this, they would discuss it - and I was later informed that cameras would be installed in the buses. And thank goodness for that.
The speakers on campus stuff. Some of it's a publicity stunt. Like Ben Shapiro at Berkley, I mean come on. People like that want to be canceled. They're looking for the most liberal colleges specifically hoping to get protested so they can appear to be edgey. Ann Coulter went and tried to do the same thing a month later and she just looked desperate. Ben's spoken at plenty of colleges so has Ann and a lot of other "canceled" speakers.
I remember the fuss Ann Coulter made when she wanted to make a speech on a campus in one of the Canadian universities. She was informed that part of her intended speech constituted hate speech, which is illegal here, and she would have to alter her speech.
Next thing, she's ranting and whining about how she's American and has freedom of speech and should be able to say whatever she wants.
Not in foreign countries, she doesn't.
