Why is it ok to make fun of certain illnesses but not others?

[Skynstein]

Why thank you! I do like my hair color, but it does come with its own stereotypes. I'm more self conscious about my body in general. I like being tall, but my feet are embarrassingly large, like to the point it's hard to find shoes my size.

I've struggled with OCD for years. I may have mentioned it before, but I'll often buy a couple copies of clothes I like. One to wear and one to have as back-up to keep in pristine condition, in case something happens to the first one. I also like wearing solid colors, because patterned clothing just doesn't feel right. It's hard to explain. It's been better in recent years though.

There are lots of shades of blonde, mine is more ash blonde but my beard glows orange in the sun, it's weird like that.

I understand you. I'm a guy but even then it's surprisingly difficult to find shoes my size. I do manage better because men are sort of "expected" to have bigger feet, but it's still not easy as the coolest shoes are not always available at the sizes I need. :(

Yeah, OCD is something different for everyone who has it. In my case, for example, what I feel more strongly is when I'm doing things I like and I can't do them proper because I have obsessive thoughts. Like, when picking a can of Coke at the grocery store, I'll choose the one that's not "evil", so to speak. And when writing to people I must avoid thinking about them dying, or I have to write all over again. I'm coping a lot better with it now, to the point of not caring about the thoughts anymore, but at its strongest it was simply horrible.

(I hope it's ok to deviate from the topic a little) :D

[eclipse]

Eh, I think it provides some perspective, so I'll let it slide. If you guys wanna go into great detail, you can always PM each other.

[Rezzy]

There are lots of shades of blonde, mine is more ash blonde but my beard glows orange in the sun, it's weird like that.

I understand you. I'm a guy but even then it's surprisingly difficult to find shoes my size. I do manage better because men are sort of "expected" to have bigger feet, but it's still not easy as the coolest shoes are not always available at the sizes I need. :(

Yeah, OCD is something different for everyone who has it. In my case, for example, what I feel more strongly is when I'm doing things I like and I can't do them proper because I have obsessive thoughts. Like, when picking a can of Coke at the grocery store, I'll choose the one that's not "evil", so to speak. And when writing to people I must avoid thinking about them dying, or I have to write all over again. I'm coping a lot better with it now, to the point of not caring about the thoughts anymore, but at its strongest it was simply horrible.

(I hope it's ok to deviate from the topic a little) :D

I love a good beard. I wish there were more bearded FE characters, it seems like all we got was Benny in Fates.

Eh, I think it provides some perspective, so I'll let it slide. If you guys wanna go into great detail, you can always PM each other.

Would a dedicated OCD/Mental Illness Thread be appropriate? It's kind of a touchy subject, but talking about it can often be helpful.

[eclipse]

Would a dedicated OCD/Mental Illness Thread be appropriate? It's kind of a touchy subject, but talking about it can often be helpful.

I'd do something for mental illness in general, if you really want to make a topic. Stick it in Serious Discussion, so that you don't wind up with trolls who think that it's funny to fake an illness (or worse).

[Original Alear]

I just saw the story about Will Ferrell making a movie making fun of Ronald Reagan having Alzheimer's and it made me furious. As I have said in a few threads I am Type One Diabetic and I hate it when people make fun of Diabetes because they have no idea what it is and what causes it especially Type one, I am never going to watch Big Bang Theory ever again because the character Penny said that only people who are fat wear Insulin pumps when I wear one because it is the only thing that lets me live a normal life Not because I am fat (which I am not). I feel like any illness should never be made fun of because unless you have it or take care of someone that has said illness you have no idea what it is like to go through what the people that live with it every day have to live with. What do you think? is really ok to make fun of someone who has an illness that can't be cured? I know people would never make fun of someone with cancer, but why are other illnesses fair game when they can't be cured either?

I've barely watched the Big Bang Theory. But, from what I have seen, many of the jokes characters tell are as much making fun of the characters themselves and their idiocy as what they're making a comment about. This is pretty common in humor. I can't say for sure, but it's possible that the joke is more about Penny than about diabetic people. But, I could easily be wrong. I didn't see the episode.

Some humor is about getting under people's skin, and being offended. I personally don't have a problem with that, in fact, I'm on board with it. I wouldn't go as far as to say humor about illnesses shouldn't be used. In fact, I think it's sometimes good to be able to laugh at your illness. I know I do. But people are different, as are illnesses, and I understand there might not be much that's funny about diabetes.

[Captain Karnage]

as someone with Asperger's, I've just learned how to grow a thick skin

because the sh*t I had to put up with as a kid has made me into the kind of person who can handle any kind of joke or instult thrown my way

[-Cynthia-]

As a general statement, I'd say that joking about less severe illnesses is more socially acceptable than joking about severe ones (herpes vs. AIDS for instance). Lots of counterexamples though of course.

Edited May 3, 2016 by -Cynthia-

[Shin]

Personally I think making fun of an illness is far better than assuming anyone with a mental illness is a stark raving crazy axe murderer.

I have a feeling that a lot of people in this thread wouldn't take well to the Scottish comedian, Frankie Boyle. A heads up for anyone who feels the need to research him, his jokes are pretty offensive, especially if one's thin-skinned.

Whilst people are fully entitled to feel how they like about these jokes, I'd recommend strongly putting them into context. An outright attack on someone with a medical condition is pretty unacceptable, but the purpose of most comedy is to get people to laugh than necessarily ridicule those affected. It's not fantastically dissimilar to American jokes about British people, and god, there are a lot of those.

[Moblin Major General]

It's not fantastically dissimilar to American jokes about British people, and god, there are a lot of those.

The difference is with that and the inverse is that there's an understanding between both cultures that allows that, unlike with healthy vs unhealthy people. If you don't understand it, and by understand I mean to actually experience it firsthand or see someone close to you experience it, you don't really have a right to poke fun at it, no matter how innocent it may seem.

[Shin]

The difference is with that and the inverse is that there's an understanding between both cultures that allows that, unlike with healthy vs unhealthy people. If you don't understand it, and by understand I mean to actually experience it firsthand or see someone close to you experience it, you don't really have a right to poke fun at it, no matter how innocent it may seem.

I'd disagree, considering that more than a few Americans believe that our Queen has total control over the country... as well as lizards ruling their own but I digress. That policy also is a massive blanket statement, and can't really determine who has the "right" to say certain things. Like I said before, there's jokes and routines that obviously take things too far, but with a little social comprehension, a lot of the more minor things aren't malicious.

Experience doesn't really give anyone any additional rights to make fun of stuff, otherwise I'd have a whole host of things I'd be entitled to mock.

[InsaneNoire]

I actually have aspergers and I've grown pretty immune to autistic jokes. Most of them (from what I've seen) are directed towards people who are making a fool of themselves on the internet (Chris chan for example) and blame their autism for making them act that way. I wasn't bullied or joked about in any way, mainly because no one knew. I'm really not that offended by offensive jokes and don't think it's an awful thing to make them. Just use common sense and be careful who you're making these jokes around.

I would say either it's okay to joke about all of them or none of them. Same with which kind of people can make certain jokes but others can't.

[Crazycolorz5]

I have 3 points.

1) Ultimately it comes down to what our culture values and cares about.

2) I feel like a part of it comes down the prevalence and seriousness of a disease. Namely, Heart Disease, Cancer, Alzheimer's, Accidents, Suicides, COPD(usually as the result of smoking or pollution), and disease of the nephrite are the leading causes of death (not in order). I don't think, in general, it's acceptable to make much light of any of these conditions.

3) It could be your own perception; selection bias in particular. There may be actually only very few instances of jokes about certain conditions, but you /notice/ those few instances because they anger you. So it may not be as widespread of a mindset as you think it to be.

[Rapier]

The "know your audience" argument is interesting but problematic because of this: Imagine someone is a stand-up comedian and a couple who's just lost their baby is watching the performance, when the commedian cracks up a "joke" about dead babies. Because the stand-up commedian wouldn't know about that, would he be guilty of doing his job and addressing a public that usually likes his jokes? If he were to change his joke, how can we be sure that the next one wouldn't unintentionally say about something that is someone else's issue?

I think we should consider first and foremost the intent behind the speech and give the speaker a pass if they were just kidding, since it eliminates guilt. When jokes are done for a particular and/or small group (say, friends, work colleagues, people we deal with on a daily basis that we know better about), I think the "know your audience" method is good and efficient, but when jokes are done for a broader group (as the stand-up comedian's case), it is almost impossible to reach no person who has that particular issue and feels triggered about it, and restraining your joke so that a few in a broad group of people don't feel triggered is an unpratical hinder to humor, whose nature IS to distort reality and make something funny out of that "uncanny" caricature.

[Loki Laufeyson]

The concept of Punching Down is oft seen as deplorable for a lot of reasons. The privileged basically mocking the lesser, comedy or otherwise, it rubs people the wrong way and opens the doors to a great deal of discrimination. In comedy, theres Punching Up which is considered more acceptable (especially these days) because its the opposite. The everyman mocking the fat cat/privileged. If a person is mocking the mentally ill, its Punching Down. And society is finally trying to pay serious attention to mental illness, so seeing movies/comedians mocking suck is seen in highly poor taste. Gods forbid one asks another to be a decent human being, right?

In the example Shin gives, thats what i like to refer to as Punching Sideways, where people mock each other when they are on equal footing. This is also seen in black comedians that deliberately mock internalized racism and the like. This is why if a white comedian who mocks black people is seen as obscenely racist, but its not when a black comedian does it.

Another thing to remember is humor is highly subjective. I find the majority of comedy to be very unfunny (im a fan of bathos humor) for a lot of these reasons. If there is general outcry about a joke or movie or whatever, its probably a sign the collective does not find it hilarious or harmless. (i know many people, myself included, who detest the Big Bang Theory because of its mocking of things like Asperger's and ADD.) Will Ferrel pulled out of that film, btw.

[Rapier]

The concept of Punching Down is oft seen as deplorable for a lot of reasons. The privileged basically mocking the lesser, comedy or otherwise, it rubs people the wrong way and opens the doors to a great deal of discrimination. In comedy, theres Punching Up which is considered more acceptable (especially these days) because its the opposite. The everyman mocking the fat cat/privileged. If a person is mocking the mentally ill, its Punching Down. And society is finally trying to pay serious attention to mental illness, so seeing movies/comedians mocking suck is seen in highly poor taste. Gods forbid one asks another to be a decent human being, right?

In the example Shin gives, thats what i like to refer to as Punching Sideways, where people mock each other when they are on equal footing. This is also seen in black comedians that deliberately mock internalized racism and the like. This is why if a white comedian who mocks black people is seen as obscenely racist, but its not when a black comedian does it.

This kind of reasoning is flawed (not saying that you argued for it, which you did not). If it is ok to mock some people in basis of their gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, religion and other attributes, but it is not ok to criticize other attributes, then there is an arbitrary sexism/racism/classism/religious intolerance in play, regardless if it is a minoric group backlashing against a privileged group. The validity of an argument is independent of those defending it, and there is no reason to believe that some people are right to be sexist/racist/etc. because they're a minority or possess [x] trait.

[Yari]

I personally think that making fun of illnesses is a bit tasteless. You can do it but I think that making fun of something that affects a person's life without knowing how it affects them is rude and many times comes off as ignorant and mean. But it depends on the joke. You can make a good joke about an illness that doesn't come off as ignorant or mean (but most I've heard are mostly ignorant and mean so good luck with that) but don't have your sense of humor being based around those types of jokes. If you mostly make jokes about illnesses mental or otherwise or rape or racism or sexcism etc you have a bad sense of humor.

[Tryhard]

I personally think that making fun of illnesses is a bit tasteless. You can do it but I think that making fun of something that affects a person's life without knowing how it affects them is rude and many times comes off as ignorant and mean. But it depends on the joke. You can make a good joke about an illness that doesn't come off as ignorant or mean (but most I've heard are mostly ignorant and mean so good luck with that) but don't have your sense of humor being based around those types of jokes. If you mostly make jokes about illnesses mental or otherwise or rape or racism or sexcism etc you have a bad sense of humor.

It doesn't necessarily mean that the joke is directed with malice. I'm talking about the ones who aren't actually sexist, racist etc. and like to joke about it for comedic effect. Generally, it isn't something just anyone can joke about with tact, so I just avoid it mostly. Most people trying to make a joke at the expense of a race or gender fall flat in such simplicity and just generally not being funny, but this is for the ones that are not just trying to force humour.

There's a reason why a lot of black humour comedians make jokes about everything and more, though. Humour isn't solely a happy thing and can show the absurdity of a human issue that is difficult to deal with and understand and put it in a way that people might forget it has its conception from human suffering and is quite dark and morbid. Humour like that is not downplaying or making light of that fact. The jokes you hear may sound ignorant, but they are for a reason - they are ignoring or exaggerating parts of a situation for a comedic effect.

Like Shin said earlier, there are comedians with most of their jokes based around these, like George Carlin or Frankie Boyle, who many people do find funny. Jokes about various things including illnesses like Down Syndrome.

Edited May 20, 2016 by Tryhard

[henrymidfields]

I can see that making fun of certain illnesses such as diabetic, leukemia etc would be very unwise. But what about say making jokes about a flu or the common cold, or some other temporary-and-common illnesses? Personally, I would be really surprised if anyone had a problem with flu/cold jokes - they are basically two things that I'm sure everyone had *at least* once in their life, if not more, and they are not that deadly/disabling in the bigger scheme of things.

Edited May 21, 2016 by henrymidfields

[eclipse]

I can see that making fun of certain illnesses such as diabetic, leukemia etc would be very unwise. But what about say making jokes about a flu or the common cold, or some other temporary-and-common illnesses? Personally, I would be really surprised if anyone had a problem with flu/cold jokes - they are basically two things that I'm sure everyone had *at least* once in their life, if not more, and they are not that deadly/disabling in the bigger scheme of things.

I can MAYBE see someone being uber-sensitive about the flu if they lost someone to one of the more virulent strains, but I don't think that's overly common. I know people joke about cold symptoms while they have it ("currently trying to cough up my organs, not coming into work").

[Lantairu]

I was diagnosed with ADHD in the third grade and until recently really struggled with it in school. So it always really annoyed me when people would say "Oh I have ADHD" when they weren't diagnosed with it and clearly don't. That's what annoys me, when people self-diagnose themselves with medical conditions they don't have just so they can make an excuse or get attention.

[DeadLuckChris]

Dont take it to the heart

[claire]

i personally dont make fun of illnesses

i think the reason people dont joke about cancer and stuff is because its like....society's go-to disease for tragic stories?? idk how to explain it

now i know that people do make fun of autism and similar illnesses, but i think they do because it doesnt cause death and that way they wouldnt feel bad if something bad were to happen :) (the fake "nice" persona that many people tend to carry: its that type of person that like...brutally makes fun of someone but then five seconds later reads a story about a kid with cancer meeting a superhero and pretends to care lol), + sometimes people with illnesses like that come off as "weird" which people love to make fun of so theres that too

as for the diabetes thing it sounds like they're making fun of obesity itself and not diabetes, but yes i agree its tasteless.

[thepeaguy]

People are free to be cruel on the internet as it's a bastion of free speech. Trolls get off from making fun of other people's shortcomings because it's a twisted game to them. My advice for people on the autistic spectrum is to learn the source and ignore these comments. You'll never meet these people in your personal lives, and it's a waste to ruminate over them.

I'm not trying to cause disrespect because I'm on the spectrum in my 30s. I know exactly what it's like to be betrayed and bullied. I'm just saying that these people online are disturbed or are decent people with a dark sense of humour. As long as they don't directly affect you, try not to worry about them.

(There's a lot of autistics who like the Fire Emblem series. I'm curious as to why we do now. Haha.)

[InsaneNoire]

I was diagnosed with ADHD in the third grade and until recently really struggled with it in school. So it always really annoyed me when people would say "Oh I have ADHD" when they weren't diagnosed with it and clearly don't. That's what annoys me, when people self-diagnose themselves with medical conditions they don't have just so they can make an excuse or get attention.

People who self diagnose piss me off to no end, especially those who diagnose themselves with autism or Asperger's. You're not a professional. You cannot give yourself an accurate diagnosis. And yeah, I think a lot of people do it to get attention and/or special treatment.

[Original Alear]

I was diagnosed with ADHD in the third grade and until recently really struggled with it in school. So it always really annoyed me when people would say "Oh I have ADHD" when they weren't diagnosed with it and clearly don't. That's what annoys me, when people self-diagnose themselves with medical conditions they don't have just so they can make an excuse or get attention.

How do you know they weren't diagnosed? I was diagnosed and then undiagnosed with ADD when I was in high school, and I've had professionals occasionally wonder if I might be (seems I've got something else). I'm not sure how easy it is to judge someone based on their usage of a phrase. I sometimes use the phrase "sorry I'm a bit ADD" sometimes when I overlook something. It's not to make an excuse or get attention, it's more like a habitual explanation (about as much thought goes into it as saying "excuse me" at those times).

I'm pretty ignorant about the condition myself, and I'm not even educated on the distinction between ADD and ADHD, but you seem pretty quick to make an assumption about someone else.

Edited June 13, 2016 by Togami Byakuga