Humour is Hard

Last week I started off with improvisational workshops for the tech sector and ended up writing about sacred clowns. Since then, I kept thinking about the same things and decided to discuss something that has really bugged me for a long time: nasty humour.

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There are several ways that what people call funny I find reprehensible. The one I want to complain about here is when a person says something that is just a flat out lie, but when called out they say "can't you take a joke?". To illustrate this situation, consider the following. First, I'll start by deconstructing a website post that someone sent me because she was upset about animal experiments.
 

  

The above purports to be about some cruel experiments that Dr. Anthony Fauci funded while head of the National Institute of Health (NIH). 

According to FactCheck, if this assertion was actually true, it would have been one of thousands of different studies that would have been funded that year---and which were cleared for support by a large committee of experts. So while in some tenuous sense "the buck stops at the top", the truth is that Fauci probably wouldn't have anything about this individual experiment's design. 

But having said that, let's look at the particulars of the story. It contains the following quote from a Congressional organization I won't give a link to because I don't want to help spread it's nonsense. 

"Our investigators show that Fauci’s NIH division shipped part of a $375,800 grant to a lab in Tunisia to drug beagles and lock their heads in mesh cages filled with hungry sand flies so that the insects could eat them alive,"

I looked into the details, and what was happening was that these dogs were being sedated and then exposed to sand flies so they would be bitten to see if an experimental drug gave them protection against a really nasty, common tropical disease called Leishmaniasis.

An ulcer caused by Leishmaniasis, public domain image c/o Wikimedia Commons.

A couple minor points bear mentioning. The story says that the sand flies were supposed to eat the puppies alive. That's just hyperbole. The idea was to ensure that the dogs got a sufficient and consistent load of parasites from bites to ensure an adequate data sample. It also goes on to say that the dogs had had their vocal cords "removed" [sic] to cut down on the barking. (They are beagles, which is a breed that is know to be quite loud, and a lab full of them barking would have gotten really loud and chaotic.) A procedure known as "debarking" is commonly done by vets to dogs that owners find excessively noisy. People can debate the ethical merits of this procedure, but it certainly isn't as obviously outrageous as this article would suggest.

I think it's important to put this experiment into a context. First of all, whatever one may think about the issue of animal rights, lab experiments often seem (and probably are) cruel. But historically society has tended to decide that as long as the issue being tested is sufficiently important (like trying to cure or prevent a serious disease like Leishmaniasis) and there is professional oversight to ensure things don't get out of control, the decision has been made that these tests are "OK". 

Animal rights are a big issue and I'm not going to get into them here. But almost all the people reading this article have benefited from animal experiments because it is how most medical research gets done. Moreover, the vast majority of people are not vegans. And having worked in the livestock industry myself, I know there is nothing happening to these dogs that is any worse than what happens in modern intensive livestock production or modern high capacity packing plants. If this effects you emotionally, I think it should spur you to some reflection about the big picture instead of focusing on one particular individual---such as Anthony Fauci.

Moreover, when FactCheck looked into the story they found out that the study hadn't actually been funded by the NIH anyway. When this was pointed out to politicians who originally brought this to the public's attention, they backed down (probably in a private email only). But please note that as I write these words, Zero Hedge has yet to take the post down---let alone offered a retraction. 

Indeed, after a bit of research I found out that the byline for the story is actually fake. Here's a blown up view of it plus the original version of the photo that I found on line:

 

 
"Tyler Durden" is actually a character from the movie Fight Club that was played by Brad Pitt. Functionally, this hides from the general public who exactly wrote the piece. This is a useful tactic for two reasons. First of all, it hides the actual identity of the person libelling Fauci. But even more importantly, it creates semi-plausible protection to both the author and the website by wrapping itself in the mantle of "satire". 

This is important because judges (especially American judges) give political satire a pass when someone tries to sue an author for libel. The idea is that if someone in a clown suit stands up on a stage and says something, the audience can be assumed to be less prone to believe it than if he was wearing a business suit.

But what exactly is "satire" in the first place? Wikipedia has the following definition:

Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or exposing the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society.

Just what vice, folly, abuse, or, shortcoming is this anonymous writer drawing readers attention towards? That doctor Fauci isn't personally reading every single experiment that was funded by the NIH? Or, that medical research is evil because it harms puppies? This is what bugs me. There is absolutely nothing humorous or "satirical" about this article. It is written in a deadly serious way and the friend who sent me the post was really upset by it---and used it as evidence that Dr. Anthony Fauci was a cruel, inhumane person who could not be trusted. 

Many readers will probably think I'm over-reacting to this post and projecting the idea of bad humour onto it. Perhaps I am, but look at this last image that the anonymous writer put on on the article:

The Babylon Bee is a website that explicitly purports to be humorous. Do you see anything at all on this tweet that is funny? Or even looks like it was meant to be funny? This tweet was probably a "teaser" designed to get people to go over to the story they wrote about this subject. For those of you who have more sense than to click on the link I've given, here's a quote:

"Now that everyone's upset about the puppies, maybe they'll forget about how I played god with their lives for the last year and a half," he confided to a friend, according to an anonymous source. "Everyone loves puppies. Well, except me, because I'm an evil bad guy. But people get real mad when you kill dogs for some reason. They'll get upset about this and probably try to cancel me. You know, this whole 'cancel culture' thing is really getting out of hand. You torture and murder a few dozen puppies and suddenly everyone's out to get you."

The "satire" of the piece is that Fauci is torturing puppies to divert attention from the people he's torturing by encouraging them to wear masks and get a vaccine against a disease that's already killed almost a million Americans. Take a look at the hilarious chart I downloaded from the Centre for Disease Control.

Cumulative deaths of American citizens due to COVID-19. Closing in on that 1 million death rate. The USA is still exceptional---in fact, it's a shining charnel house on a hill!

Never mind what's really going on with Zero Hedge, the fictional movie character can't be sued by Dr. Fauci because it's obviously "satire"---see, there's an image of a tweet from the Babylon Bee being used to support his laugh-out-loud piece.

I started with the Tyler Durden piece because it got sent to me by a friend who was deeply upset about it. But Zero Hedge isn't a predominately humorous site, the Babylon Bee is the "go to" for this sort of thing.

Check out this knee-slapper from the Bee.

Not only would no libel lawyer would ever touch this with a ten foot pole, it also seems to have gotten past the fact checkers at Google, Twitter, and, FaceBook. And it has advertisements too, which means that it hasn't even been demonetized. 

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Why am I making such a big deal about a dumb attempt at humour?

First of all, because the only way you can show there's a problem with the humour is to make a big deal of it. This is the phenomenon that is referenced in the saying:

A lie is half way around the world by the time the truth has put its boots on.

It's really, really easy to make something up or just repeat something someone else told you. It's a lot more work to come up with a new idea and critically research to see if it makes sense. It also takes a lot of work to double check something someone else says in order to figure out if they know what they are talking about. (I've spent a lot of time researching and thinking through various ways of writing this article, for example.)

Secondly, these sorts of stories are based upon reinforcing already existing stereotypes. I suspect that this is a lot more important than we might think. 

When my wife got her dog she did an exceptional job training it. She got me to help her. She wanted to avoid "begging" behaviour by having me train him that if he was quiet and well-behaved he would get more treats than if he begged for them from me. The way she did this was have me sit and watch tv with some potato chips. (Something I'm an absolute expert at doing.) When Nic (the dog) came over and begged for a chip, I ignored him. When he gave up and just laid down in the room, I'd wait a while and then call out "Nic!". Once he got up and came over, I'd give him a chip.

He eventually got to the point where I could give him different commands "Sit", "Come", etc. But Misha (my significant other) told me that even once he'd learned well, I should repeat the practice once in a while just to ensure that he didn't slide back into begging.

What's this got to do with jokes?

I'd argue that these sorts of bad jokes act on anti-vaxxers like those potato chips I tossed to Nic. They are reminders to hold onto the description of reality that tells them that vaccines are dangerous and part of a conspiracy to take away their freedom to die in a hospital room with a ventilator tube jammed down their throats. It tells them that they aren't alone in their tinfoil hat idiocy, but rather holding onto a very reasonable assessment of what does or doesn't make sense. 

Moreover, if the form these lies take is very polished---like that very nicely done "Compliant Elmo" fake advert---it helps reinforce the idea that the ideas they spread are completely rational. And because effort put into form is much more visible than that put into substance, and translates into "credibility" for a lot of people, the business model of things like the Babylon Bee is much more successful than fact-based sites like the Guelph-Back-Grounder.

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Which raises the issue of subscriptions. If you can afford it, why not sign up on Patreon or Pay Pal to help support the work I do?

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There used to be an absolute Niagara of sexist and racist jokes that flowed in workplace lunch rooms when I left the farm and started paid employment. Thankfully, they seem to have dried up and I haven't heard one in decades---that type of humour has moved from "mainstream" to "beyond the pale". Maybe there's a corner in Hell where the comedians who invented these witticisms play dominoes with blackface musicians---but they seem to have moved out of my neighbourhood.    

I think that this has been an important part of slowly reducing racism, sexism, and, homophobia in society. That's because each one of those jokes was reinforcing prejudice as an essential element of people's worldview. When those---and other---conceptual potato chips stopped flying through the air, it became easier for people to look at things a little more objectively. And the result is a younger generation who are much less prejudiced than mine.

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Just to show that I'm not a grump who can't appreciate humour, let's quote a couple jokes my sister sent to me the other day. 

A woman was picking through the frozen turkeys at the grocery store but she couldn't find one big enough for her family. She asked a stock boy, "Do these turkeys get any bigger?"
The stock boy replied, "No ma'am, they're dead." 

A truck driver was driving along the freeway and noticed a sign that read: Low Bridge Ahead. Before he knows it, the bridge is right in front of him and his truck gets wedged under it. Cars are backed up for miles.
Finally, a police vehicle comes up. The cop gets out of his car, walks to the truck driver, puts his hands on his hips and says, "Got stuck, huh?"
The truck driver says, "No, I was delivering this bridge and I ran out of gas."

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Moreover I say unto you, the Climate Emergency must be dealt with!