Don’t watch this video by Christian fanatic Matt Powell. He’s trying to be “funny”, so he made a “prank” video. The “prank” was walking into various fast food places wearing headphones and shouting his order loudly. Then taking the headphones off and speaking normally.
That’s it. That’s all it is.
And then the comments! People are praising him for his brilliant work. Reading those brought home the fact that I’ll never ever understand the fundagelical brain. They’re totally alien.
I don’t wish to besmirch the accordian, but it doesn’t seem out of place as a soundtrack.
And they say comedy is dead
I’m not actually upset by it. He didn’t actually harm anyone, and while the prank is mildly annoying, it mostly seems to be pointed at his own silliness. It’s not particularly funny to me, but I can see why others might think it is. It’s not especially imaginative but it’s not humiliating to the other people in the room.
I mean I laughed at the guy walking around a store who was having loud but deeply embarrassing conversations on his phone and filming people’s reactions, so there is that…
@1 Accordian bizarre, but bazouki funnier
PS stop saying “can I get”
The person serving you “gets” it for you, you can say “I would like”:or “could you get me” or lots of other polite things.
Actually, I can see why fundies would find this funny, and it is evidence of an astonishing lack of self-awareness. A simple analogy: the headphones are analogous to faith, i.e., shutting out the world around them., and can be removed as needed. Perhaps one of the most frustrating and even perplexing things about conversation with a fundie is how they can be so reasonable one moment, and for all intents and purposes, deaf to anything contradicting their professed beliefs, as if they were wearing headphones.
Perhaps not the most clearly presented notion, but hopefully suggestive.
I got a feeling that Matty-P grew up like most fundies: Completely cut off from the real world, barred by fanatical parents from experiencing any of the the “Satanic” culture they despise. Thus, Powell has no idea how humans interact or what they find funny leaving him to try to figure it out on his own.
As we can see, he’s not very good at it.
I think there are people who recognize what a “joke” is supposed to look like and they laugh on cue. But they simply have no sense of humor.
lakitha tolbert @3: It’s not that his actions are upsetting, he’s just failing to be funny or clever.
lakitha tolbert @3
Yeah, the fast-food workers already have a crappy job, what’s the harm in throwing a little more crap their way.
Timothy Hamilton @ #5 — Interesting perspective on the metaphor, but I can see how he meant exactly the opposite. It’s the non-born again who are wearing headphones and shouting to drown out the word of god. When the non-born again remove their headphones, then they can hear god’s call to grace, blah, blah, blah. In either case, the metaphor is obtuse so it’s anyone’s guess what he intended.
Would have been funnier if one of the workers distracted him by jingling their keys.
tangential humor
octopus kids
https://www.gocomics.com/break-of-day/2021/11/29
evolution!?
https://www.gocomics.com/break-of-day/2021/08/15
@4 ajbjasus
Oh, no, not more of that cheesy Monty Python humor?!
Good niiight, jingle, jingle jingle…
Where to find humor?
Mostly at Youtube these days, on TV it is a rare bird.
(warning long rant ahead)
I am normally too cheap to pay for it, but when God Awful Movies started to reserve their film reviews for the patreon-only listeners, I paid up so I can continue getting my fix of horrible religious films condensed by three stand-upper atheists.
Like Kirk Douglas fighting his son -the antichrist- in a 1977 film. Or muslims experiencing the prelude to the last days “The Day When Sun (Sic!) Rises In The West”. That one nearly killed me.
-Did you know that if parents dislike having a strange man touching their kids, it is a sign the parents belong to a satanist cult? (“The Bells of Innocence”)
An endless string of flat earth documentaries..
larpar@9
I’m just saying, my bar is set pretty low. At least he’s not screaming epithets at them, just yelling in general. I’ve been on the receiving end of both styles of public interaction and I would much prefer that the person just be loud and clueless, rather than loud and hostile! (Neither behavior is great, but one of those feels much worse.)
I just asked him to explain the joke because I don’t get it.
Autobot Silverwynde @16: And if you have to explain a joke, there is no joke.
Explaining jokes..
Gary Larson was (and is) a genius, but sometimes the jokes depend on having lived in the US and knowing the background. Like “The fake McCoy’s “.
It seems clear enough to me that, to the Fundie mind, this works because they think he is making the secular liberals around him uncomfortable. The entire raison d’etre for the current right-wing political movement seems to be “own the libs” (also “save the unborn babbies,” but that’s a different video I guess).
Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s the endless reaction shots of people who appear to be outside of the white nationalist norm that makes me think so.
To my knowledge, there has been precisely one funny conservative–P. J. O’Rourke on a good day. The rest? Suffice to say that among conservatives, Ann Coulter passes for a humorist.
I remember, when I was a kid, hearing jokes about people with headphones shouting everything when listening to loud music. This was during the 90s, when portable music was really taking off.
Which means that Matt’s humor, much like his scientific knowledge, is significantly out of date.
the essence of humor is often self-deprecating that is something this guy can not do he is too full of himself . He can try to laugh at others with his jokes but that is also pretty hard to do with out just sounding insulting. humor is pretty hard for someone so conceited
his “joker” might have been funnier if he still shouted after he took off the headphones he would have had to add some sight gags to really sell it. he would have to look like some kind of fool
So this is what passes for trying to be funny among the right? I’ll be damned. Ive been calling this being an asshole all this time. I stand corrected.
Comedy among the Right is whatever makes Dr. Evil laugh maniacally.
Other comedy: the muslim social media profile Zakar Naik discussed the problem “does wet dreams nullify the fast?”
And you can also grab a beer and sit down to watch the film versions made of the far right novel Atlas Shrugged. Or the far right Christian films with David A R Wright.
The right is all about emulating the 1950s. And the comedy films of that era were rather meh. Could this explain the problem?
Trigger Happy TV: The Big Phone Guy
https://youtu.be/27aVPqpnL7Y
I guess alot of people willhave seen this already sicne Ithink it was shared on one of teh FTB blogs not too long ago but <a href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSXKzPOcYDU″>Soem More news has a good albeit over an hour long video discussing that there.
Damn. Stuffed that up. Sorry. Take II
I guess a lot of people will have seen this already since I think it was shared on one of the FTB blogs (Oceanoxia?) not too long ago but Some More News has a good albeit nearly an hour & a half long video discussing that here .
Punching down is basically conservative “humour” and its really cruel rather than funny.
Most of the people who wear headphones in public are either
a) People listening to something who don’t want to be disturbed. They might shout a little if they forget, but hopefully they usually turn the music off when speaking to someone. They are being considerate in keeping their music to themselves rather than blasting everyone around them.
b) Women hoping that creeps won’t bother them if it looks like they are listening to something and won’t hear the creeper. They tend not to shout when speaking.
c) People who are neurodivergent or have some issue with sensory overstimulus, the headphones are often noise cancelling to try and keep the noise of the world out rather than them listening to something. They tend not to shout when speaking.
d) Some group I haven’t thought of who are minding their own damn business.
Making fun of people who are likely wearing headphones for perfectly valid reasons that aren’t hurting anyone else is a jerk move.
Take into account many Trump voters are likely to have made fun of mentally r(redacted)d people when they were kids. And their judgement did not improve.
@ #26 I was going to bring up Trigger Happy TV. The joke was already wearing thin by the end of the nineties…
sounds like Seinfeld observational humor.
IE Presenting everyday common annoyances in order to make people laugh about it.
EG (1) whether or not to pee in a shower. (2)double dipping a chip into the salsa at a party.
I have heard of people talking loudly while wearing earphones, then suddenly realizing they need to hear and their volume drops by removing the earphones.
at least Seinfeld put some form of story around these pieces of observation