Updating Jokes for Modern Sensibilities
#51
(Dec 21, 2021, 20:17 pm)SuspiriaTrumpsItFollowsCrap Wrote:
"If I was a mod here I would block this person via IP. Then neither of their accounts would be able to post here. "

This indicates that you are not a good candidate for being a mod.  A moderator must first investigate a situation which might justify banning someone from their IP versus merely "going twitter".  That begins with a private conversation w/the person at risk of being banned and seeing "what's what".  Gore Vidal would have been an excellent mod; Paul Lynde would have been a wretched one.



Oh look another new account... First off I don't want to be a mod. Secondly if you aren't brave enough to post your thoughts under you're real usernames I don't really care what you have to say.


Anyways, I apologize if the mods think my post was off topic. This will be my last post in this thread.

stormium edited Dec 22, 2021 20:43 pm this post because:

the topic is: updating jokes for modern sensibilities.

#52
As a gay person (and also, as it happens, as a person who hates when people begin their posts with "as a _______," so, sorry), I have to strongly disagree with the person who said I'm a sign of society's moral failing or mentally ill. However, I also strongly disagree with anyone going back to previous Rifftrax or MST3K episodes and deleting jokes. Not because I believe they should stand as a testament to our sordid, unenlightened past, but because I'm genuinely not offended by them. They're jokes. Relax. If your sense of self-worth hinges on Mike Nelson not making fun of a masculinity-challenged Tommy Kirk, then you need to think about possibly acquiring a tougher skin.

Also for what it's worth, stop conflating gay people with trans people. I'm not sure how we both got glommed onto the same acronym, since we're totally different things. Nobody dances around trying not to offend gay men; in fact, the majority of the longer acronym (everything after the B, in fact, which includes T's, Q's, I's, A's, another A, and a 2 for some reason) has a habit lately of throwing us under the proverbial bus. We're the most difficult of the letters to offend, and I'd be surprised if more than a few G's complained about old Rifftrax jokes. We know how to laugh at ourselves.
#53
when did self-criticism and making amends become a bad thing? and in what way is random assholes not feeling offended at offensive jokes relevant to the issue of censoring them? and like, for fuck's sake, why is the removal of some lgbt-phobic jokes from an otherwise politically neutral (more or less...?) comedic oeuvre a problem?

hi by the way. merry christmas/holidays and whatever.
#54
(Dec 20, 2021, 02:05 am)Rifftrax_Official Wrote:
(Dec 20, 2021, 01:01 am)NotRichBatman Wrote: I'd have to hear the joke in question, my hunch is it's not funny, good riddance. Imagine if they replaced all the unfunny jokes, bliss!

That's my point. Who decides what's acceptable and what's not? Plenty of powerless people get thrown under the bus in the name of comedy. The ones who have power make sure they're not the butt of the jokes.

Who has the power? Who is it you're not allowed to joke about or criticize?

Who has the power?  The people who actually wrote and performed the joke and acknowledged that sensibilities changed.
Who doesn't have the power?  Some guy on the internet who named themselves Rifftrax_Official complaining about it.

There's also the fact there's a vast difference between a comedian out there testing social norms and three guys watching Twilight and making "line?" jokes.  You can't be madder on the subject matter than the two parties who were involved, plain and simple.  Bill took the criticism/complaint and moved on.  So why are you or anybody so hung up on it?
#55
Just poking my head in to see if this very active thread has become the total pigfuck that I suspected it would become when it was born the other day.

Leaving satisfied.
#56
I salute Zello's comment.  Then again I recall the days when it was "GLB", not "LGBTQIA+".

Which seems like a stray comment, but it is actually germane; comedy mutates, then evolves. People used to think Chevy Chase on SNL was hilarious, while current comedy fans favour Kate McKinnon (with good reason).  Rifftrax is so busy it's had to evolve and hire new writers (some funny, some merely "hipster").  This indicates that ppl at the top of the food chain are pressed-for-time.  This means it's reasonable to presume that Bill has not had the time to go back and scour his catalogue of published jokes while trying to make/record new ones for new material; there are only so many hours in a day. 

Why worry about a few stray jokes which may not be up to his current standard, when - as a creative - he wants to make new/fresh jokes?  When he can then hire a Final-Cut Flying Monkey to edit those few old jokes out of extant material?  I'm sure the guy who handles the digi-wizardry for Frank & Trace and Mary Jo could achieve that in less than an hour.  Pointing out "best use of one's time" does not fall into any partisan claptrap of "with us or against us" , and that claptrap does not apply to the actual title/topic of this thread.
#57
I've read through all the comments, here's what I think is going on. (Yeah, I know, no one cares... haha)

1. Most people seem to agree that Bill is permitted to retroactively remove any jokes he doesn't like. 
2. Some people think that Bill may be caving to complaints from offended people, they don't agree with that.
3. Some people think that once a product is out, it should just remain. 
4. A few (2?) seem offended by the "Trans" jokes specifically because they themselves are trans. 
5. Most (?) think one should be able to laugh at themselves or, alternatively, ignore jokes they don't like. 

Did Bill's personal taste in humor change or was he responding to complaints? Probably both. Well, he doesn't need a reason to go back to change jokes. But, will he do that for every joke he doesn't like anymore? Every joke that offended someone? Every joke that just fell flat and didn't land? While I don't doubt that Bill wants to respect trans people (as in the OP's original post), I suspect it has a lot to do with making sure people still buy riffs.

I liked the references from the MST3K days a little better than some of the references in RIFFTRAX, mostly because I'm in the 40-50 year old range and I "got" those references better. Some of the newer references go over my head, but I presume they are trying to appeal to a modern audience. Probably why when Kevin makes an old-reference they joke about how old he is.

I think we sometimes presume that because we like the jokes and performances of the guys that if we were all to be friends we would have the same opinions about stuff, but things like Twitter reveal to us that we don't actually KNOW these guys even though we hear so much from them. When we get to know them a little better (like through their posts or podcasts) we find that we may not agree with their political ideas or religious ideas or whatever. Or that we do agree with them! Does that change whether we like their riffs? Hmm. 

I will say that I LIKE that the riffs on RT remain mostly politically neutral, unlike the Mads who get plenty of political jabs in.

Of ALL the things that divide us, I think we should appreciate how much we are UNITED by our shared love of bad movies and corny jokes about those movies.

Merry Christmas, folks.
#58
(Dec 23, 2021, 15:41 pm)inelegy Wrote: Just poking my head in to see if this very active thread has become the total pigfuck that I suspected it would become when it was born the other day.

Leaving satisfied.

Absolutely. I just deleted my Facebook two days ago because I couldn't bear any more of this kind of noise.
#59
Let’s see them stop making fun of people for acting “too white” or being too plain for being white. They’ve got LOTS of jokes at the expense of white people. Nobody seems to care about that. Either be okay with all jokes at the expense of all things, or stop whining like a toddler.
#60
(Dec 23, 2021, 18:30 pm)MalakJoe Wrote: I've read through all the comments, here's what I think is going on. (Yeah, I know, no one cares... haha)

1. Most people seem to agree that Bill is permitted to retroactively remove any jokes he doesn't like. 
2. Some people think that Bill may be caving to complaints from offended people, they don't agree with that.
3. Some people think that once a product is out, it should just remain. 

...

Did Bill's personal taste in humor change or was he responding to complaints? Probably both. Well, he doesn't need a reason to go back to change jokes. But, will he do that for every joke he doesn't like anymore? Every joke that offended someone? Every joke that just fell flat and didn't land? While I don't doubt that Bill wants to respect trans people (as in the OP's original post), I suspect it has a lot to do with making sure people still buy riffs.

To comment on these particular remarks, one thing people seem to be forgetting about or entirely overlooking is that we've known they've been revising and removing jokes for years now. It's come up on this very forum before a couple of years ago, when it had already been going on for some time.

When Mike, Kevin, and Bill heard feedback from some viewers that some of their early gay/trans jokes were cringey, they agreed and removed them without saying anything. After quite a while, it came up publicly that they'd been editing themselves for some time whenever they came across something they thought hadn't aged well or they wished they hadn't written in the first place. It was never just Bill making these decisions; he's just the most vocal and publicly-facing member of the group. It just came up again because Bill publicly responded to someone complaining about a joke (a joke I believe had already been removed previously, but it seems like they were probably watching one of the pirated pre-synched movies we all share here that featured the original release mp3 audio and, hence, doesn't change with the times) and encouraged people to tell them if they'd missed something egregious.

None of this is news or a new trend or anything outside the norm of what's been going on with Rifftrax for years now. The clutching-of-pearls accompanying their choice to self-edit seems disingenuous having already known about these things for some time and seems to be more of an excuse to try to saddle the decision with political implications and social pressure instead of it being their own personal decision as a group and a company to not make lazy jokes that demean many of their own consumers. Just because most people will roll their eyes and ignore the jokes doesn't mean they have to keep them forever.


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