this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
118 points (91.0% liked)
Religious Cringe
823 readers
1 users here now
About
This is the official Lemmy for the r/ReligiousCringe***** subreddit. This is a community about poking fun at the religious fundamentalist's who take their religion a little bit too far. Here you will find religious content that is so outrageous and so cringeworthy that even someone who is mildly religious will cringe.
Rules
-
All posts must contain religious cringe. All posts must be made from a religious person or must be showcasing some kind of religious bigotry. The only exception to this is rule 2
-
Material about religious bigots made by non-bigots is only allowed from Friday-Sunday EST. In an effort to keep this community on the topic of religious cringe and bigotry we have decide to limit stuff like atheist memes to only the weekends.
-
No direct links to religious cringe. To prevent religious bigots from getting our clicks and views directs links to religious cringe are not allowed. If you must a post a screenshot of the site or use archive.ph. If it is a YouTube video please use a YouTube frontend like Piped or Invidious
-
No Proselytizing. Proselytizing is defined as trying to convert someone to a particular religion or certain world view. Doing so will get you banned.
-
Spammers and Trolls will be instantly banned. No exceptions.
Resources
International Suicide Hotlines
Non Religious Organizations
Freedom From Religion Foundation
Ex-theist Communities
Other Similar Communities
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Ok one hand, yeah you shouldn’t try to hurt individual people for fun.
On the other hand, everything must be up for ridicule, it is the snarky sibling of valid criticism. Without it the person, or ideology, or belief system, etc. Is given an enormous amount of power over everyone.
That is not compatible with a democracy, everyone and everything must be able to bear ridicule and criticism or it has no place in it.
This reminds me about the time I went to church with an ex and her parents. When it was time to get up for communion, she asked me if it even meant anything to me. I whispered back "well I didn't have breakfast". She was ex- about a week later
Damn, that's a pretty valid point.
The danger of 'you can joke about anything' is that tribalist cranks hear 'all jokes are valid.' They refuse to understand that meaning matters more than subject. How you make fun of something can be terrible, no matter what you're making fun of. So expect to hear 'you can joke about anything!' spat back at you, when someone points out they're espousing sincere bigotry through amusing turns of phrase.
I call this is the Yo Mama hypothesis. Some kids got genuinely angry when classmates made fun of their mom, and were told 'calm down, it's a joke.' By outward appearances they got it. They stopped yelling. But internally, they learned that jokes are lies you're not allowed to get mad at. Like it's a socially acceptable format for abuse you have to shut up and take.
This was absolutely infuriating while Dave Chappelle was torching his reputation. 'He's a comedian!' was constantly parroted as if that meant his opinions were beyond criticism. Even when pointing out the many times he said the exact same shit, out loud and in public, with no audience and no punchline.
These people genuinely do not comprehend there's a part of the joke that you mean. 'Eat the rich' is a joke about wealth and cannibalism... but it's only joking about the cannibalism.
This lacks a lot of nuance that is needed.
George Carlin, who I think is still widely regarded as one of the greats, had a "rape can be funny" bit that I doubt would fly today because a whole lot of us have a better understanding of how rape jokes harm victims. Doing harm to such a group is, or at least should, never the goal of a quality comedian. That's why they're not generally made by comedians except the "you just can't take a joke" type.
You can absolutely criticize without doing harm to open wounds. There's space between not being allowed to criticize and not being allowed to joke.
Maybe you need something like the more power a group has the more they need to be able to bear being the target of joking. That's why a white, Christian, American man is a far cleaner target.