polar-bear:

Good. I probably don’t need to say this, then. But I will anyway, even at the risk of being a “meddling arrogant douchetard”. I have an impulse control problem.

One lesson learned from The Aristocrats is this: humour is completely subjective. It’s something we should all know instinctively by the time we’re adults. Yet, it never seems to sink in for some. You might find your hillbilly incest joke hilarious, but there are people who will just find it disgusting, and there are times and places where you shouldn’t share such a joke.

The Koreans have a concept in their culture called “nunchi”. Nunchi, in a nutshell, is the ability to gauge whether certain words or behaviours are appropriate or not in a particular situation. As an example, someone who lacks nunchi (nunchi eoptta) would be that guy who who responds to someone tweeting about the death of their mother with a “Your mom” joke.

Everyone has different taste in humour, just as they have different tastes in food, clothing, activities, mates, and almost everything else you can think of. What is beautiful and enjoyable to you probably isn’t to everyone else. I’m overstating the obvious, here, but my point is that life would be INCREDIBLY BORING if everyone enjoyed exactly the same things. The real beauty in the world is how different things appeal to different people, and that there is always something new to discover.

There is no “universal” funny. There are things that MOST people find funny, but often there are cultural misunderstandings (such as the recent Australian KFC/racism uproar) or sensitivities among particular people that may cause them to react with hostility toward the person making the joke. You will never find a joke that pleases 100% of the people 100% of the time. A depressive might have laughed at a joke about depression before they were depressed, but once they are in the situation they may find it completely inappropriate.

As an immediate real-twitter-life example, I can point out the conflict between two of my Twitter friends over rape jokes. Both have been victimized in one form or other by  sexual assault. One chooses to cope with the experience by mocking rape. The other is deeply offended by the entire idea of joking about rape. The fact is, neither of them is wrong. They both have a right to their point of view. Both have a right to their feelings. I find myself conflicted about the whole issue. While I find most kinds of joke about rape to be offensive, there is a context where they can be amusing. Do I condemn one person for making a joke outside of that context that makes me comfortable? Should I chastise the other for infringing on someone else’s right of self-expression? Both? Or do I just ignore the situation altogether and say nothing when they press me about it?

When it comes to my own Twitter stream, I have pretty much an “anything goes” policy. I don’t tweet to a specific audience, and I don’t follow any formulas that I am consciously aware of.  If I thought of it and found it amusing, I’m probably going to tweet it. It doesn’t matter to me if someone thinks it is “dirty” or “offensive”, because what matters is my tolerance for what I am willing to put out there - it’s my stream and no one else’s. There are people who are deeply offended by swearing - does that mean I should never swear? There are people who are remarkably uptight about sex - should I never tweet about that?

My sense of humour leans toward wit and subtlety, but it doesn’t have to be (for lack of a btter word) clean. I enjoy wordplay… and wordplay is much more fun if you are willing to play with any word, no matter the social taboos. I love double entendres. That doesn’t mean I don’t find other things funny, though.

What DON’T I really enjoy? Poop jokes. Jokes about violence or murder or <insertyourbiashere>ism. It isn’t that I am OFFENDED by these things; I’m not uptight about it. I just don’t actually laugh at them most of the time. Occasionally, when someone is really creative, I DO find those kinds of things funny… but it is completely situational. For the most part, though, if it is just crude, brute-force humour, I don’t laugh. I just move on.

That’s the beauty of Twitter. You design your own experience. If you love poop jokes, you can follow everyone who makes poop jokes. If you don’t, you can ignore those people - you can even block them if you find them offensive. If you don’t like people who lack nunchi, you don’t have to pay attention to them. If you enjoy tweets about coffee or memes there is always someone out there who will be able to fulfill your unholy craving. It doesn’t matter if I like what you like. It doesn’t matter if you like what I like.

I will always defend your right to say whatever the hell you want (no matter how repugnant it may be), and to enjoy whatever amuses you. That doesn’t mean I understand WHY you find it so funny, agree with it, or even that I care, it just means you’re entitled to your opinion.

However, I reserve the right to NOT laugh when I don’t find it funny, and to say when I don’t find something amusing. After all, that’s MY opinion, and I have every right to it.

I’d’ve thought this was obvious… I’m not even sure why I bothered to write it.

Thank you for your eloquent post. FWIW, I’d rather be a “meddling arrogant douchetard” than afraid to speak up for fear of losing stars or followers.

It’s been three days since I announced being out of the Twitter jokes for stars game. And today I fell off the wagon. I starred. Then I tweeted. But even was that wasn’t enough for me. Oh no. I had to check Favstar to see if my tweet had garnered any stars. So now I’m both happy because it has, and pissed at myself for not being able to ignore the siren song of Twitter.

Maybe I’ll self-flagellate by going Christmas shopping.

This past Friday, I went to the cardiologist for a stress test. In addition to the usually monitoring, they also injected with me with thallium (a radioactive substance) so a gamma wave camera could do some 3d imaging on the arteries around my heart to see if I have any serious blockages.

All was fine until the Dr. started to explain the way the camera works to me in way more detail than any patient could conceivably have an interest. He was clearly talking more to impress than to convey useful information. Still, I was cool with that. Cool until his recitation came to an end, and he said “There will be a test at the end” and fucking PATTED ME ON THE LEG. I smiled and replied “I hope you pass, Sport” and patted his leg in return.

Damn. The look on his face was almost worth the price of my health insurance.

Fucking with doctors may be my new substitute for Twitter.

To put it succinctly: I’ll no longer be writing 140 character quips for stars, followers, RTs, #FFs or any other cyber-trophies. That also means I’ll be distancing myself from the followers I’ve been cultivating for the last 8 weeks—unfollowing, not starring, and tweeting rarely (if at all) myself.

Now that you know how I’m about to change my Twitter usage, please DM me if you’d like to stay in touch on a personal basis. I’ll be sure not to unfollow you.

The thing I feel most sheepish about is that this is the second time in a year I have created a Twitter id, whored out funny for stars (and stars for funny), and quit. I was formerly @TanuTuva and was participating when Favrd was still a thing, and Favstar was in its early days. When my Favrd experience first began, I jumped in whole-heartedly, and had a blast. It was fun to learn ways to make people laugh in 140 characters. Even now when I recognize many of the tricks of creating a good tweet, new twists on the formulas delight me.

I quickly recognized as @TanuTuva that your status at Favrd was directly related to the number of stars each of your tweets received and your number of followers. The only way to call attention to yourself as a new person was by starring people from the leaderboards. How else was someone to know I existed? I could have put out thousands of hilarious tweets, but without a star to my name—in fact, without THREE stars to my name—I would be invisible. So as a newbie, you star stuff. Since there just isn’t that much rip-roaring funny material each day, you end up starring even marginally funny tweets. Eventually you attract attentention, find people who like your humor enough to star your tweets and follow you. Some of them even behave as if they are your friends.

To me, this is the real poison of Favrd/Favstar. When your initial introduction to another person is a star—a star that may or may not have strings attached—you don’t trust the person behind the avatar. And you can’t have meaningful relationships with people you don’t trust.

Neither Favrd or Favstar felt like a community to me. The experience is more like performing on stage for a paid audience. While it’s true that one of the paid audience members may have been genuinely entertained by my act, it would be damned tough for them to convince me.

Which leaves me where I started. Out. For the second time.

Egad, I’ve started a freaking Tumblr account. Blame it on the great star controversy of the last 24 hours. It left me with too much to say for a 140 character tweet. Apologies in advance for grammar, punctuation, lack of clarity, etc. A writer I am not.

So to start with… Favstar has not “ruined” funny (see @londes thought-provoking Tumblr entry How @Favstar is Ruining Funny). All grading/rating systems can be gamed to some degree, and systems that rate intangibles like humor, art, music… These will be the most easily manipulated. Can anyone say Metacritic? Rotten Tomatoes? Your English teacher? Do you trust that your favorite movie critic or book reviewers are unbiased? If you do, well, good on you. You’re a trusting soul and undoubtedly more pleasant to be around than me.

The people on the top of the Favstar leaderboard get there by a combination of talent, hard work, and luck. The category of “hard work” includes, but isn’t limited to, gaming behavior. Reciprocal starring. Following, listing, and otherwise cultivating people with a favorable stars to starred ratio. Creating secondary personas or friends to star your funny tweets so they appear on your Recents page, or get that @Favstar50. Blogging/Tumblring to direct traffic to your Twitter account. Heh. (Not gaming, just ranting here, folks.)

Even if no one intentionally takes advantage of the star system, we need to remember two things: 1) humor is by its very nature impossible thing to measure, and even if it were, 2) we are not computers. We star people, love people more when they show us stars and love. If you gave me only star to allot per day, and I have to choose to give it to @badbanana ‘s 1000th funny tweet or a funny tweet made by a friend of mine—I’ll star my friend. Every fucking time. In my eyes, it’s fair. I guarantee it will mean more to my friend/follower with a moderate to light following than a heavyweight of the Twitterscape.

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