Anguirus wrote:You can't have it both ways. Either the article has to be funny/absurd, or it has to take itself seriously and be solidly written. This made an attempt at both and largely failed. Sorry.
This is really a very common attack that people make on satirical or insulting comedy, and I've never found it the least bit useful as criticism. In fact I would call your response here self-important wankery. There's only one self-important wanker here, and he's me. Honestly, acting as if you alone decide whether or not an article "failed", and declaring that something can't be half-serious, half-funny. What fucking school did you learn that line of bullshit at?
'Cause I learned my funny
on the street, son.
Then you're supposed to say,
"Was that the street in front of your Mother's house? Because I don't remember seeing you there. When I was fucking your mother, I mean."
Anyway, this is exactly what happened when Colbert did the Press Correspondents' Dinner, all the jerkoff newsboys derided him for being unfunny, as if jiveass "reporters" like them were worth two shits. Humor's advantage is that when you offend people they still can't get in your face, because that makes
them the asshole--you were just telling a joke. Humor's disadvantage is that it opens up an easy, zero-effort avenue of attack, which is to loudly proclaim that the joke wasn't even really funny; humor being highly subjective, this is an unfalsifiable argument and one can walk away, face saved.
I'm going to go way out on a limb and guess that one of the items on the list
offended you in some way, thus rendering you deaf to the humor. Going by your previous post, I'm guessing it was the Asimov entry.
So I'm going to give you written confirmation of how funny this SA.com front page article actually was, because you don't know what you're talking about and I do (if you want to dispute this, look below).
I say it nets a 4/10. For reference-minded types, the first time I saw the Charlie Murphy True Hollywood Stories sketch on Chappelle's Show, it was a 9/10; every fratboy-
cum-retard who shouted "I'm Rick James, bitch!" thereafter scored a 0/10. Later on I got more and more tired of the sketch, and it fell down the list. But for one, brief moment, that sketch was a king.
This article wasn't hilarious. I don't think it every managed to make me laugh out loud. The video attached to the Doctor Who entry did, but that was the original show's doing, not the writers. The whole thing is mostly in the tradition of the VH1, Family-Guy type joke which dominates the internet and works as follows:
"Hey guys, remember (pop culture reference)? That was sure silly in some way."
The writer here is kind enough to work it out for us in writing, so it doesn't depend entirely on shared nostalgia, so he is bumped up a few points. It's not that original, and while I never really laughed I was still smiling at most of the entries. 4/10. Mildly amusing, funnier a man getting hit in the head by something but less funny than if he was hit in the groin. One thing that they definitely missed was the delicious irony inherent in the abuse of the word "Orwellian." Read his essay "Politics and the English Language" for details. I find it totally hilarious that his own name has become one of the shibboleths of Anglophone political culture, when the degradation of the language for political purposes was one of the things that most distressed him. The Bard has nothing on Orwell for irony.
As for why I'm right about this, and you're not, I'm just better than you. Don't question it. Better men than you have tried to question it, only to find that they weren't better than
me, just better than you. For a partial list of people who are better than you, click the "Memberlist" button at the upper-right of the BBS.
)
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Books... 7,8...
