ballp.it
Snakes In The Ball Pit => Yay, I get to talk about me! => Topic started by: crow on August 13, 2014, 11:09:28 pm
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When you think about it, isn't it weird how we choose to make fun of people on the internet? We take time out of our lives to feel anger at someone for doing something we don't like even though they exist somewhere far away from us and they have no impact on our lives. At the same time, we laugh at someone for being dumb nerds when we are dumb nerds at the same time.
Do you have any theories as to why we do this beyond "it's funny" or "it's fun to do?" If it were truly that fun and funny, more people would do it. Why is it that we find it fun and funny?
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To hide our crippling shame and insecurities at the failures we've made of ourselves.
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I'm sure there's a French idiom for being fascinated by absurd things. The best episodes and the best pieces aren't infuriating, but alluring. Even for the people that are despicable, like Roosh, or infuriating, like incels, the best stuff is the stuff that makes no sense at all. Why would you make Taco In A Bag? Why is Garfield a rock god jamming out to Dio? What kind of a mind comes up with 'cum that comes alive and fucks you back'?
Maybe it's a desire to feel better than these people, but I always felt like it's more of a celebration of the sheer weirdness that exists out there. It's outsider art and absurdist humor and typing in 'gay sex' in every website's search box just to see what comes up.
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Cause failure is actually much more interesting than success. Successful people pretty much all have the same things to say, but every Internet loony is beautiful and unique.
Oh, and whathesaid, the crippling insecurities thing.
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When you think about it, isn't it weird how we choose to make fun of people on the internet?Smoking Crow, August 13, 2014, 11:09:28 pm
Weird enough for an F Plus episode? Put together a doc!
We take time out of our lives to feel anger at someone for doing something we don't like even though they exist somewhere far away from us and they have no impact on our lives.
man that something awful discussion really got you thinking, huh
At the same time, we laugh at someone for being dumb nerds when we are dumb nerds at the same time.
This is hardly unprecedented.
Do you have any theories as to why we do this beyond "it's funny" or "it's fun to do?" If it were truly that fun and funny, more people would do it. Why is it that we find it fun and funny?
I wasn't aware an explanation was forthcoming beyond "it's funny" or "it's fun to do." People slow down as they drive by car accidents because they want to see the damage. Then later you get to describe to others how the car was literally wrapped around this one tree with half a motorcycle jammed up its wheel well at the same time.
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Mistakes and bad writing often create different meanings than intended which is often funny.
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Because once we have seen all the twisted unique awfulness the internet has to offer, then, only then, will we truly understand the Time Cube.
And once we understand the Time Cube, we will no longer be educated stupid and will feel better about ourselves. 'lo, we will ascend to the higher levels of existence and no longer will we find humour in middle aged women enthusiastically making terrible recipes that look like poop. Indeed, we will be so elevated that we will no longer poop and no longer be able to remember why we laughed at poop. We will see with clarity of vision to the truth of all things, to the very heart of questions on Yahoo Answers, divining their true meaning.
We will join Rob the Parrot.
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Personally, I make fun of people because for the first time in human history we have an idiocy aggregator and I would never forgive myself if I did not take full
advantage of it.
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Because when people progress to the point where they become complete fanatics over a thing, lose the ability to relate to others, or wrap themselves up in an unhealthy lifestyle then its fair game for mockery. I also happen to take personal pleasure in watching the lives of deserving individuals burn around them.
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Fuck man, I don't have anything better to do.
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If I stop, the bomb in me explodes.
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Fuck man, I don't have anything better to do.
Runic, August 14, 2014, 06:53:03 pm
It's either this or make fun of people in real life, which has far more disastrous consequences....
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I wasn't aware an explanation was forthcoming beyond "it's funny" or "it's fun to do." People slow down as they drive by car accidents because they want to see the damage. Then later you get to describe to others how the car was literally wrapped around this one tree with half a motorcycle jammed up its wheel well at the same time.
Isfahan, August 14, 2014, 06:38:35 am
Oh hush up Isfahan. It's a valid question.
Personally, it's just fascination. You always hear these interviews of famous, successful people. They always say "dreams do come true!" or "work hard enough and good things will come!" For the longest time these were the only stories you heard because hey, reporters weren't lining up to interview losers. Now we get the losers' stories, direct from their own mouths, in their own words. And not just losers, of course! Crazies, idiots, the willfully ignorant, the irrationally angry, the selfish entitled jerks, the obsessive fetishists... now we get to hear their tales. In many ways their views on the world paint a very unrealistic picture of reality. There are no gangstalkers, magical griffon dimensions, or jobs for "idea guys" out there. But in the grand scheme of things it does show us a much more accurate view of humanity. It shows us that not everyone achieves their goals, not everyone slays their demons, and a lot of people just straight-up never learn their lesson no matter how shitty they make their own life and the lives of those around them. It shows us that despite what the famous folks tell us, life isn't some cute fairy tale. For every real life rags-to-riches hero, we have hundreds of dopes like these. I just find that very interesting.
I love the range of topics the podcast covers, but my biggest interest is in fucked-up communities. For the first time, we can easily look at how culture develops by using these types of subcultures as a model. In these little microcosms you can see the rise of an idea, then watch the idea spread, then see people band together for different reasons. Then the jargon forms, the taboos are established, and the criteria for becoming a leader are set. Heroes and villains rise out of this, factions form, and then you get a clash of ideologies. Then people who have no connection or even an idea of what the movement was originally about try to form their own tangentially-related criteria and they add more arguments into the mix. Then huge groups break off and declare war on each other.
Crazy communities serve as a particularly fascinating model because this process can form over the dumbest, most unrealistic things: "I'm unhappy with my life" -> "I've decided I'm an elf because I'm happier that way!" -> "Wow, you can be an elf? We're elves too then!" -> "Well I like dragons more so I must be a dragon!" -> "... And so are we!" -> "If dragons exist in some way, why not Digimon or Sephiroth or Indiana Jones?" -> "Hey, you don't believe that I'm a Pokemon, yet you're a griffon? That's soooo not fair! I'm going to start my own club then!" -> "If these beings can travel dimensions then they can live in my head! Because why not!" -> "I HAVE LIKE 50 CARTOON CHARACTERS THAT LIVE IN MY BRAIN AND THEY'RE ALL VALID AND I SWEAR THIS IS A PHENOMENON THAT'S BEEN GOING ON FOR DECADES (PS I AM 16 AND DON'T KNOW ANY BETTER LOL)" -> "It's an IDENTITY ok so telling me I'm wrong is literally abuse! ^_^"
This will all form over nothing! Elves and dragons and Palmon and shit don't exist and yet you will get a whole culture based around the notion of them existing, yet so far removed from the basic idea that its goofy founder came up with. That's just really intriguing to me.
Also because a lot of these people type funny things about dicks.
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Can't listen to metal all the time.
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Can't listen to metal all the time.
jack-chick, August 15, 2014, 12:53:13 am
What am I reading? I don't understand.
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Lies.
Sweet, sweet lies.
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there are many well thought out responses in this thread but i basically think that dicks and poop are really funny.
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Can't listen to metal all the time.
jack-chick, August 15, 2014, 12:53:13 am
The metal was always in your heart, no matter what was in your ears.
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I agree with the "nerds laughing at other nerds," because any of us could have gone down any one of these paths, but something or someone along the way stopped us (or maybe our mental health is a bit more sound). I mentioned before how I found artists drawing Brony porn art on Picarto listening to F Plus episodes during their art streams. It's less "I'm so much better than that" and more "well, at least I'm not that bad.
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We take time out of our lives to feel anger at someone for doing something we don't like even though they exist somewhere far away from us and they have no impact on our lives. At the same time, we laugh at someone for being dumb nerds when we are dumb nerds at the same time.
Smoking Crow, August 13, 2014, 11:09:28 pm
I don't know about anyone else, but I could probably count the number of times I've felt anger over something on the Internet on one hand.
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I used to get really angry about weird internet shit, but now I find it way more satisfying to laugh at it instead.
(also, I tell myself that it's not nearly as bad as being a real-life atrocity tourist, since they get their kicks out of real-life tragedies rather than stupid shit on the internet)
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Why is it that we find it fun and funny?
Smoking Crow, August 13, 2014, 11:09:28 pm
It's a few things, depending on exactly what we're talking about. For one, weird and gross stuff is funny in its own right, and there's really not much further explanation to that.
At the risk of coming off as a pretentious douche, I also have a casual interest in psychology, especially group dynamics, and a lot of PoE/F Plus things are great object lessons in that. It's genuinely astounding to see how norms, language, and tribal allegiances spontaneously crop up around the most inane and trivial bullshit imaginable. It's also interesting to see how those things then influence individual people. Communities on sites like 4chan and Tumblr have the power to induct relatively normal people, particularly young teenagers, and turn them into roaring assholes. I guess I'm basically just repeating what Portaxx said.
Not that I think we're immune to that stuff, either. I started browsing PoE when I was 13. PoE was always fucked up in its own way, and it would be naive for me to think that it didn't damage me somehow. At least I'm not putting maggots up my peehole, I guess.
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We take time out of our lives to feel anger at someone for doing something we don't like even though they exist somewhere far away from us and they have no impact on our lives. At the same time, we laugh at someone for being dumb nerds when we are dumb nerds at the same time.
Smoking Crow, August 13, 2014, 11:09:28 pm
I don't know about anyone else, but I could probably count the number of times I've felt anger over something on the Internet on one hand.
Old_Zircon, August 21, 2014, 07:43:45 am
I mean, I come from Something Awful where recently a thread got gassed where a bunch of people unironically talked about wanting to kill fat people and another where people wanted to kill all the Jews
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We take time out of our lives to feel anger at someone for doing something we don't like even though they exist somewhere far away from us and they have no impact on our lives. At the same time, we laugh at someone for being dumb nerds when we are dumb nerds at the same time.
Smoking Crow, August 13, 2014, 11:09:28 pm
I don't know about anyone else, but I could probably count the number of times I've felt anger over something on the Internet on one hand.
Old_Zircon, August 21, 2014, 07:43:45 am
I mean, I come from Something Awful where recently a thread got gassed where a bunch of people unironically talked about wanting to kill fat people and another where people wanted to kill all the Jews
Smoking Crow, August 26, 2014, 12:53:04 am
bring back lf, unironically
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The Internet has created a place were people have an ability to create little isolated hug-boxes for themselves, and get away with terrible conduct that real people would never (or very rarely, fucking nerds) put up with. I think it's appropriate to apply a little negative pressure, give people some semblance of the kind of feedback they'd get if they told random strangers in real life that "hey, I masturbate to Pokemon." And it's OK if we have fun while we're doing it.
Can't listen to metal all the time.
jack-chick, August 15, 2014, 12:53:13 am
What am I reading? I don't understand.
MISANDRY CANNON, August 15, 2014, 01:22:56 am
You're reading God-damned Yankee Lies. I've seen this shit before, people from the god-damned North telling lies, trying to undermine your culture and heritage. Fucking carpet-baggers!
You can listen to metal all the time, I believe in you.