One thing that has become clear to me more recently is that there is "offensive humour" and then there's "offensive humour". There seems to be two categories of offensive humour. Discovering the extremes of the second category helped me understand a little about some other people's opinions of offensive humour.
One thing you may know if you have read my posts in the past is that I'm Australian. Offensive humour in Australia from my experience is mostly (but not entirely) the first of these two categories. It is humour, piss taking and actual jokes. Sometimes quite offensive jokes but still jokes. There's still humour there. Not all people will appreciate it, but it meets the basic concepts of humour and jokes.
It's stuff like this by Jenny Talia:
Or to include the Kevin Bloody Wilson song that I'd imagine would be the most controversial nowadays:
Or this by Kat McSnatch:
Is it offensive humour? Yes. Is it still humour? Yes.
However, I've also seen people online come out with what they claim is "dark humour" or "offensive humour" which doesn't remotely seem like a joke and more just a way to either masturbate over political views or outright state bigotry as though its a joke / and claim it's a joke and that's the other type of offensive humour. The first type is humour that is offensive and would include stuff like the songs listed above as well as stuff like Cards against Humanity. The second type seems to be offensive stuff that is either poorly attempted to be humour or is stated to be a joke even though it doesn't appear to be a joke.
The second category is stuff like stating stats related to crimes in America or trans suicide rates as though either of those are a joke in itself, or calling for the death of all members of a demographic group (I've seen this one written off as a joke coming from multiple political views aimed at different groups on twitter when it doesn't even remotely meet the definition of a joke) or a joke where there is a punchline but the punchline is "because women / black people etc aren't people" (without it being satirical and the joke is actually on the people who believe that). I don't see how those are even jokes. The last example I mentioned maybe is a joke but it isn't a very clever joke and the first two examples just simply don't meet the definition of a joke and seem to just be bigotry or hatred masquerading as a joke.
I recently encountered the comics of someone called StoneToss. I think I had seen them before (or at least their art before) but not enough to get an idea of their comics as a whole. From what I did see more recently, some (very few but some) of the comics I saw fit in the first category along with stuff like Cards Against Humanity and Kevin Bloody Wilson. Some are actual jokes. Whether they are funny or not is another question, but some are jokes, and there was one I found related to a couple working out what to have for dinner that I could actually see the humour in. The majority of them however weren't jokes. They majority were either just straight bigotry, or some smug masturbatory "owning x group" type of thing, or a comic that expressed a view / made a point but wasn't really a joke. They're not the only one I've seen do this. They're just one who is fresh in my mind at the moment. I've seen quite a few comics or jokes that are lacking the basics of humour and are more either making a statement, or just being prejudiced and claiming it is a joke. No matter who is doing it, it seems smug as fuck and more like an attempt at a "gotcha" than a joke. This type of humour can come out of Australia, but comparatively I've rarely seen it come out of Australia. We tend to piss take and actually make jokes more.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay
Maybe it's less a symptom of offensive humour and more a symptom of the political environment. I'm not sure. After all, most jokes related to "the left" or "the right" don't really seem like actual jokes either and they seem more like some masturbatory "yay I owned the leftists / right-wingers" thing, yet not all of them are on the super offensive end (some are ofc, but not all are).
Regardless, it makes it clearer why some people get up in arms about offensive humour, because if the only offensive humour you've encountered is the second type, you're probably not going to be a fan of it. This doesn't excuse calls for censorship, but it makes that stance make more sense.
As you may know from my previous posts, I believe all topics should be acceptable to joke about on a general level. One other thing I've encountered is people joking about specific incidents within a general topic. These may or may not be okay, depending on the specifics, but it's less likely to be okay and I have seen some disgusting examples of people joking about a specific incident. This makes no sense to me either. General vs specific is the difference between making a joke about death and joking about a specific person's death. General topics are free for all but depending on the specifics, you have to be a real arsehole to joke about some of the more specific incidents I've seen people make jokes about. I won't go into the specifics of the times I've seen this, but honestly, people should know better than some of the behaviour I've seen them display.
I don't think people should be criticised for liking or making jokes in the first category of offensive humour, but the second type is at best, not funny and seems ego stroking / masturbatory and at worst, like just unfiltered bigotry masquerading as a joke.
I like quite a bit of offensive humour that actually is humour but the second category doesn't seem to even remotely be humour. It seems more like not joking but using "it's a joke" as an excuse to say things (in which case they should either shut up, or own it and say it without the fake excuse). The first category is a lot funnier too.
Image by Ryan McGuire from Pixabay
It's not about punching up or down either. There are jokes that punch down that fit into the first category because they are still jokes and still have humour to them (even if it's not humour everyone will appreciate). I don't believe things that use offensive humour should only punch in one direction. I prefer things that take the piss out of everyone. But that's the key point - it should be taking the piss, not just making a statement or just using it as an excuse to be mean - because otherwise that isn't offensive humour, because it's not humour.
I have seen people criticise both categories of offensive humour. I've seen people claim that playing Cards against Humanity will make you a bad person (which is a terrible argument, people aren't that stupid that a card game changes their morals - at least I hope they're not). I've definitely seen people criticise the second category, and honestly I think they are totally within reason to do so.
I am not a fan of censorship so I wouldn't be calling for any of this to be censored as a whole (though if an individual platform does censor or ban people, it should do so equally, as I've stated before when pointing out how backwards it was that Feline Frequency was suspended from Twitter but at the time Graham Linehan was not - though he is now) BUT I think it is more than reasonable for people to criticise the second category of offensive humour. People can do what they want so they can criticise the first category too if they want, but the second one is actually deserving of that criticism in my opinion, even if simply because it fails at being humour. That alone is enough to criticise it, without even touching on the offensiveness side of things.
I think discussions about humour, offensiveness and the limitations and morality of comedy and what we say and write stand to benefit from being mindful that there is offensive humour that is actual humour but there is also some very nasty stuff out there being claimed to be humour or "just a joke". I'm anti-censorship, on the level of "I don't think your post / video etc should be removed" but that doesn't mean I would defend everything a person says either or that I'm not going to say that someone is being a dick or is being bigoted if they are doing so. And I feel I understand some of the people who don't like offensive humour a little better now.