Quick story: I used to live in Asheville, NC. If anyone knows anything about it, it’s a liberal hippie mountain town. My ex worked at a pet store that was owned by this young woman. I didn’t know her well, but I knew her enough that when I came back to town, I asked for a job. During the interview, I made a joke to her, the woman who was GM, and the younger woman who was store manager. I knew the owner a little, and knew she was a feminist hippie Grateful Dead fan—you know the type. And the store manager was a younger version of the same kind of new age hippie.
The owner was telling me about how sometimes, one of the assistant GMs, a man, would always be asked for when someone came in looking for the boss—they would ask the owner, this woman, if they could speak to he man, who they mistook for the owner.
I said, “well, I mean…can you really blame them? You’re just a woman.”
My delivery is very dry, these people didn’t know me well enough for me to be making this joke, but after a second of suspended shock, I let on that I was joking and I had the whole room laughing at the joke.
It’s all about intent. If you’re being ironic, and making a point that the ironic position you’re taking is absurd, your intent is good and you can make this kind of joke with zero problems. We all know Sarah Silverman. This joke is absolutely amazing and no one would ever be upset about it, because it’s clear she’s making a joke about the idiots who mistake them all for each other, not about the Indian people all looking alike. See what I mean?
You can still make any kind of joke you want—as long as your intent is good.
Anyone can make this joke. It’s all about intent.
Quick story: I used to live in Asheville, NC. If anyone knows anything about it, it’s a liberal hippie mountain town. My ex worked at a pet store that was owned by this young woman. I didn’t know her well, but I knew her enough that when I came back to town, I asked for a job. During the interview, I made a joke to her, the woman who was GM, and the younger woman who was store manager. I knew the owner a little, and knew she was a feminist hippie Grateful Dead fan—you know the type. And the store manager was a younger version of the same kind of new age hippie.
The owner was telling me about how sometimes, one of the assistant GMs, a man, would always be asked for when someone came in looking for the boss—they would ask the owner, this woman, if they could speak to he man, who they mistook for the owner.
I said, “well, I mean…can you really blame them? You’re just a woman.”
My delivery is very dry, these people didn’t know me well enough for me to be making this joke, but after a second of suspended shock, I let on that I was joking and I had the whole room laughing at the joke.
It’s all about intent. If you’re being ironic, and making a point that the ironic position you’re taking is absurd, your intent is good and you can make this kind of joke with zero problems. We all know Sarah Silverman. This joke is absolutely amazing and no one would ever be upset about it, because it’s clear she’s making a joke about the idiots who mistake them all for each other, not about the Indian people all looking alike. See what I mean?
You can still make any kind of joke you want—as long as your intent is good.
There’s one more layer, trust. If they don’t trust that you have good intent then the joke won’t land right anyway
So that was a lie.
Jesus the internet has ruined people. There’s no way it took anyone who knows how to read any longer than 60 seconds to read that