thorfinn: <user name="seedy_girl"> and <user name="thorfinn"> (Default)
thorfinn ([personal profile] thorfinn) wrote in [personal profile] terriko 2011-02-07 01:21 am (UTC)

Re: Right principle, wong analogy (maybe)

Worse yet - something can be both funny *and* offensive...

And the context matters a huge amount. If a close friend of mine makes "funny asian jokes" with me, we already have a shared context of respect, and those jokes can be funny but not offensive, even if the friend isn't asian. If some random person off the street makes exactly the same funny jokes, I'll likely give them a pretty filthy look and assume they're a racist poo-head trying to be offensive (and odds will that be I'm right).

The jokes might even still be hilariously funny in both contexts - but they're offensive in the non-friend context, and not-offensive in the friend context.

Not funny doesn't mean not-offensive either... Funny and Offensive are mostly orthogonal.

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