At a certain point, you have to ask: Is a slightly more sophisticated version of a COD player calling everyone else a fag really where I want to stake my claim? — csalisbury

It might be. Some insults are clever because they cut so deep, toward subconscious inadequacies people have. There is no limit to how mad you can potentially make a complacent person.

With respect to Trump, here is the gist as I see it. There are roughly two sorts of people, who have different reactions to the following video:



One sort will becomes more sympathetic to Trump after seeing it, the other sort will be horrified. This was intended as a video critical of Trump – but it just doesn't work. Trump is funnier than the creator, and arranging why he is funny in artful sequence only emphasizes that.

You have to have some sense of humor to see Trump as worth a vote. People will respond and say that when it comes to their safety, etc. they can't afford to find things funny, because their lives are at risk. But then, I think this is grandstanding and crocodile tears. Because again, when complacent you lack a sense of humor.

Lol, you know that all of the Trump criticism did make me like him more, and want to be on his side more. That's just how I am, I like to side with the underdog, as it were. I never really heard anything about Hilary, anything funny quotable, or silly that she had to say or did. It was just that mirror practiced smile, and nothing really memorable.

I considered earlier today, that maybe all of the free publicity through criticism of Obama had a lot to do with his winning so well, and in this case may have had a lot to do with his winning.

I've always thought Trump was funny, and not just in a funny-for-me-as-a-smart-ironic-liberal guy way. But yeah, no crocodile tears, I think you have to differentiate between who's funny and who's a good candidate.

And I agree with you, complacency kills a sense of humor. But not-being-complacent is necessary, not sufficient. You can be a radical or outside the mainstream and still be super fucking boring.

I'm very arrogant about my sense of humor. As arrogant as Trump is about other things, maybe. And the alt-right isn't all that funny. They're a little funny on a first pass. But they have one or two jokes and they beat them to death and then get serious about their real concerns.

Everyone knows a meme dies after a few cycles. But the alt-right will keep posting pepe the same way normies keep posting gene wilder looking smug or picard being bewildered.

So is this funny?



I feel that this is an example of something on the verge of being too serious. But it's far more inventive than Pepe – although, to be fair, there was some amazingly creative Pepe stuff, especially around the time that Kek was first getting popular, and earlier in the poo-poo pee-pee and good boy points eras (look that stuff up if you want examples of the 'good' Pepe stuff).

I very rarely seriously consider, nor am effected negatively by race issues. I'm super white. I don't really even get that? Is that like, saying that movies like that support racial purity, and segregation because they're never bi-racial couples? If so, then I really never considered that. I'm always worried about how there aren't enough trannies, and dykes, and fags.

It's not bad at all. But it gets infinitely less funny if you view it as a serious attack on PC speech-policing (since it then turns into a sincere love song between two alt-righters - and would then be as unfunny as liberals rewriting the lyrics so they're celebrating the success of obamacare or multicultural tolerance)

And, as you've already said, alt-righters are all too eager to get serious and sacrifice the humor.

I think that I may be just too Godly, or too beastly to understand politics...

That video is hilarious... but not because of Trump's politics or policy. It's funny because being right doesn't matter. He contradicts himself, speaks nonsense and doesn't say the right thing, but all of that has no bearing on anything. On he goes, no matter how ridiculous or outrageous. Nothing is held back to save face or follow somebody's rules. Comedy isn't made on politics, but, in a certain sense, an expression of power of being who you are.

I think you feel sympathy for the alt right (at least more than others) because they are the underdog, more so than because they're particularly funny in comparison to anyone else.

According to the Guardian, "Neither she nor her campaign seemed to foresee that American voters would resoundingly reject a plea to hold on to unity in favour of division, and choose fear over hope."

American Voters didn't do anything "resounding'. Clinton (seems to have) won the popular vote, and though she lost the Electoral College race, it was by 50 votes, not 200. She won a good share of what was needed, but close doesn't count, of course.

American voters were split down the middle. Trump didn't earn the mandate of a landslide and Clinton wasn't cast aside by a landslide.

Watching it, I thought it could work either as a sincere expression of white supremacy or a satire criticising it, which is probably a good sign. I think it's funny either way.

As a sincere love song between alt-righters, I think it works much better than you give it credit for. There's a level of disruption, between family, identity, culture and relationship to politics, which makes it much funnier and substantial than just re-purposing popular media. I think there is disruptive a story-- I was actually thinking "How nice for them. Their fascist white supremacy will be so beautiful" watching it.

I think it works as best as neither criticism nor sincere expression, but as just a kind of strange crossing of two realms that would never otherwise meet - disney, with all that carries, and alt right. (tho even to spell it out like that kinda ruins it) Maybe that's what you mean by a level of disruption.

"I was actually thinking "How nice for them. Their fascist white supremacy will be so beautiful" watching it."

Ha, yeah, I think that's why it works.

What this response ignores in my opinion is that being funny and being the underdog are deeply, deeply linked.

What this response ignores in my opinion is that being funny and being the underdog are deeply, deeply linked.

I disagree with this reading.

It's funny because it expresses the unspoken and unspeakable emotional undercurrents two powerful white ppl (say a news anchor(ess) and idk a senator) might feel, but would irl chalk up to something very different (just like a movie! a perfect romance! like a french novel!). lt's not funny bc it's about underdogs - it's because it presents that which is usually unspeakable due to repression and good manners , as spoken in naive, shame-free open disney-level musicals.

If you are not the underdog, there is nothing unspeakable for you. Your thoughts go out of the radio, into your ears, and out your mouth again.

If you are not the underdog, there is nothing unspeakable for you

Nah, most rich successful white ppl are repressed as fuck. It's a psychological minefield, every day, of what's speakable and what's not.

I'm not up with all of the latest buzzwords, so I didn't know what "alt-right" was until the explosion of use I'm seeing for the first time... so had to looks it up.

Like I said, the video is funny bc white ppl already do this exact same thing but code it (like a movie! like a french novel! like jane austen!) but this clip just makes it explicit.

I think you are naive to suggest that white people are the ones in power, at least in the US. Yes there are correlations, but it's far more complicated than that, and they have certain things unique to being white that make them unable to say a vast host of things.

Wealth I can agree on. Wealth works anywhere. But if you're really rich, there is a sense in which you can say whatever you want.

I'm not sure what you mean. I think by and large white people are in power, yeah, but there are important social/class things that come into play and make it impossible to talk it about it strictly as white/non-white thing.

What's the non-naive understanding of white people and power?

If you like, csal, you are the underdog if you discover anything unspeakable, because if you weren't, your opinion would determine, implicitly or explicitly, what is unspeakable and what is not.

What's the non-naive understanding of white people and power? — csalisbury

I think a non-naive understanding would be that white people have a unique relation with racial guilt and masochism that makes them self-hating and resentful of the idea of working toward their own interests, and that there are a host of words and ideologies that can be employed against them at any time not only by other white people but anyone non-white to enforce this. This is something that non-white people of any stripe simply do not have to deal with.

On the world stage, things get even more complicated -- white people there have a unique status, implicitly or explicitly, that they are the only large ethnic group not entitled to a homeland, IMO. This is one of the talking points of the alt-right, and I don't think it's crazy, I think it's quite plain. It's another fact what one is to make of it.

I know, but I think that's wrong. The significance is disruption, not in being the (political) underdog. (Political) underdogs make rote and unfunny statements all the time, no matter how shocking the might be to the elite or powerful. Simply offending and hurting the elite or powerful (or frequently, less powerful, since something like protection form hate speech is distinct from an individual power) is not enough to make something funny. Indeed, sometimes it is just a vile expression of power.

You are, I think, more interested in annoying, hurting or seeing proponents of doxa get a comeuppance than in what's funny.

If you like, csal, you are the underdog if you discover anything unspeakable, because if you weren't, your opinion would determine, implicitly or explicitly, what is unspeakable and what is not.

I guess I don't see that as an underdog/overdog thing. It's an ethos thing. And a public/private thing. There are certain taboos in any culture. Both wealthy people and poor people, with our ethos, suffer repercussions if they say racist things in public, so they generally don't (Even Donald trump wouldn't say nigger right? & Mel Gibson did his time etc. etc.)

This is not true: non-white people are allowed to say racist things in public. If you believe racism against whites isn't possible (note the racially charged ideology required to think this -- very deep), then it still holds for minorities saying racist things toward each other. The ban on racism applies only to white people. This is what I mean when I say your position is naive.

I'm going to suggest that the reason you don't find it funny is that you are the overdog and hence feel threatened by it. *shrug*

Oh ok, yes, I agree minorities are allowed to attack white people in ways white people aren't allowed to attack minorities.

Is not being allowed to attack someone symptomatic of being in a position of power over them?

I still don't think that makes the white people the underdog, tho, certainly not enough to explain the humor of the vid.

Some argue that the notion of whiteness is itself racist and privileged, and that the solution to racism (at least in the West), is to abolish "whiteness" (blackness is tied to the definition of whiteness).

This doesn't mean that the people we currently identify as "white" don't get to participate in their unique ethnicity, unlike everyone else. It just means that we stop treating people descended from a continent as belonging to one race, be it white, black or otherwise.