So the punchline is “if you drink your kid may get FAS, here’s Tom depicting it”? That’s not so much offensive as just…not funny? Like it’s just a dumb, poorly executed joke.
But that description also fits many of the stuff i myself put here.
As a far left anarchist i have to disagree with censorship of “dumb and not funny”, though I also respect the will of a collective (lemmy community) to decide what topics they find acceptable in their space, subjective humor and intelligence isnt a good reasons for exclusion (borders discrimination).
Imagine the joke was funny, would it have been acceptable? Obviously in a community for recovering addicts or one exclusively for pictures flowers it would not, but others?
We must be intolerant of the intolerant and only the intolerant otherwise we risk becoming intolerant ourselves.
It’s not “censorship” as you mean it I imagine because we aren’t a state entity. Every forum engages in censorship to some degree, even if only to protect themselves legally. I think too many think we have some (misguided) mandate to protect free speech to the point where we should endure the feds banging at our doors.
Sure, an individual forum shouldn’t carry the responsible to protect all human rights on that forum. But as an anarchist i object to the authority of a centralized state so i cant see it their job either.
In my ideals humanity is a collective of people and all of us carry the responsibility to safeguard the wellbeing of all people, as a collective. People who have been at the rejected end of continued intolerance know how damaging it can be for ones health.
Currently i dont know any true safe online spaces for
the world most misguided or seriously ill people. So where can these people go? Social isolation is an echo chamber of their own mind.
Lemmy.ml doesnt need a nazi community but as - moral global human collective we should at least maintain lists of resources to help those struggling (with morality). A simple “we dont allow this here but here is a list of resources” ranging from social media to mental heath providers, or better social media monitored by non authoritative mental health providers.
I get what you are saying, but at the end of the day I’m just a volunteer trying to do the best I can. I’m thinking about the people in my community who are participating in good faith. I don’t have time to rehabilitate some asshole across the world who’s decided they just don’t like me and it is now their mission for the next few days to make my life miserable. I would love to rehabilitate them if I had the resources or time, I am all too familiar with the radicalizing nature of a lot of the Internet, especially when people are isolated. But at some point, I just can’t be expected to do the work no matter how much I want to. It’s enormous and outside of the scope of the many other things I’m already managing.
I don’t just kick people out for disagreeing or whatever. If some jerk shows up but they can play at least decently nice, they are welcome to stay around. I think that more than anything else I can manages would help turn them around. The good place put it really well: first change the behavior, then change the motivation.
You are doing what you can, as a volunteer no less so that on its own deserves all of my respect.
I am fully aware my ideals are idealistic and even radical, i have no belief that i one day may see them true exactly as i imagine them. I will still promote them fully because my rationalize is that by aiming for ideal perfections we can nudge reality as close to it as is possible. Every small step on the way is a huge victory.
The joke is in the image: of course the text description of it won't land. But I can't post it because it would get taken down
Whether its funny is beside the point. Why did it get taken down? I see people screenshotting unfunny tweets and posting it to meme communities and it gets 1k upvotes.
Let me ask you this: should I find a Tom and Jerry depiction of somebody dying of lung cancer in their final moments funny?
I just don’t see the comedy here. It’s overlaying a cartoon over tragedy. But because (I’m assuming) there is little sympathy for a mother who drinks and thus impacts their child, it’s suddenly acceptable and funny because it’s appropriately judgmental.
Edit: I think you should reframe this as “people find this joke tasteless.“ I find being tasteless different from being offensive. I don’t get offended by 9/11 jokes. But I’ve definitely heard a couple that I found tasteless. Though some people rightfully find it offensive as well - would you share this meme with someone who suffered a miscarriage or has experienced/been around FAS in some capacity? Would you knowingly share it with a NICU nurse?
It's starting to sound echoy in here. You can joke about kids being shot up in American schools but you can't joke about abortion, fat people, etc., because then it seems too mean spirited.
Jokes about school shootings are jokes about America and its priorities. The punchline is America and its ruthless protection of firearms, not dead kids.
Jokes about obesity are jokes about a person and their weight. They’re the subject and the punchline and there is no meaningful observation other than “I find them repulsive.”
I think the big issue is that joking about school shootings is satirical to bring up how common it is in hopes to change it, while joking about fat people is just to be mean. No one is going to change because you made fun of them, in fact it might make the problem worse as state of mind is a factor in being unhealthy.
You could probably make the same argument about abortion jokes being satirical, but I don't think abortion jokes are made in order to enact social change. It's usually just to be offensive. Satire is usually used to point out how ridiculous something is, the hope is that we as a society will see it and do something about it.
You can be offensive and funny at the same time. But it's an extremely fine line, and difficult to pull off. Watch Jimmy Carr if you want to see it done properly.