The core of the joke is that Russian roulette is a terrible game to play if you intend to do anything after it.
he killed her
That’s not how you play Russian roulette, btw
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Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 6 months agoSo literally, “haha he killed her and raped the corpse” except you added a bunch of condescending overexplaining to it.
Like… you realise you sound like an asshole, right? That’s my point.
Also preemptively deciding that me disagreeing with you automatically makes you right because you predicted your explanation wouldn’t satisfy me is just A-tier bullshit.
QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Not if you plan to rape the corpse, which this person apparently did. Sorry, that’s not an explanation, that’s a new joke. It was pretty good, by the way, but it’s not what I’m asking for.
And the way you “play” russian roulette is as a torture method with a prisoner. That’s where it comes from, and there is no established way to “play” unless you’re about to tell me you’re reading from the official rulebook of the International Russian Roulette Association. If you’re going to try to ground this thing in reality that doesn’t work because it was never grounded in reality.
Also, I’m not even saying this joke isn’t funny. It made me chuckle for a second, but if you think about it for like three seconds it treats the woman as a prop on so many levels. The woman in this story has no agency whatsoever, even when she’s offering sex in the setup it’s just a weird incel fantasy that would never happen.
QuaternionsRock@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Not if you plan to rape the corpse, which this person apparently did.
Well, sure, the other half of the joke is that the speaker is a literal psychopath, thus the Patrick Bateman. You don’t start reading a meme expecting it to be psychopathic.
Also, I’m not sure you could call that the “plan” considering there was a 50% chance the speaker would have been dead at the end of the game.
Sorry, that’s not an explanation, that’s a new joke.
I’m pretty sure it is. Feel free to explain why it isn’t, and I’ll respond to that,
And the way you “play” russian roulette is as a torture method with a prisoner. That’s where it comes from, and there is no established way to “play”
Where are you getting this from? I have found absolutely no evidence to support this, and lots of evidence to the contrary. By all accounts, you take turns holding the revolver up to your own head of your own free will.
If you think the players take turns shooting at each other, that seems to be a particular variant called Russian poker, and it’s depiction in media is relatively uncommon in my experience.
it treats the woman as a prop on so many levels
Yes, I don’t think anyone disagrees with you here. IMO, the rule of thumb is, “Would it be equally funny if the genders were swapped?”, and IMO, the answer is “yes” in this case, because the joke doesn’t rely on sexism.
The woman in this story has no agency whatsoever
Except for agreeing to play Russian roulette. Surely both parties were aware of the odds of their demise.
even when she’s offering sex in the setup it’s just a weird incel fantasy that would never happen.
And now we’ve arrived at the cringiest part of the meme. It’s a pretty lame setup that indeed relies on dialogue that would never happen IRL. I guess that’s why it’s a !lemmyshitpost@lemmy.world.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Yes, I don’t think anyone disagrees with you here. IMO, the rule of thumb is, “Would it be equally funny if the genders were swapped?”, and IMO, the answer is “yes” in this case, because the joke doesn’t rely on sexism.
This is a good rule of thumb, and I think where the joke actually lies. See, it relies on the viewer’s familiarity with the Patrick Bateman image, where it’s suddenly recontextualised as an image of a man having sex with a corpse. That works because the popular image only focusses on the man and the woman is so depersonalised that there is nothing to indicate whether she’s even alive.
The question about whether it would work with the genders swapped depends on whether an equally popular image-of-a-woman-sexually-dominating-a-man-who-is-so-devoid-of-personhood-that-he-could-be-dead exists, and the answer is no, of course not. The man sexually dominating a woman who lacks agency is pervasive throughout our culture because our culture is deeply patriarchal. That’s why this image is so common.
That cultural backdrop is the point here. That’s why this joke can so easily be misongynistic without triggering people’s disgust, because it’s not so different from the baseline level of misogyny that we experience every day. If you had to explain this to someone without that background, you would sound like a monster if you were trying to sell it as funny.
As for the origins of the game, there’s debate as to where it comes from, mostly from fictional accounts or from stories of mock executions. But yes, the popular imagination comes from Deer Hunter, where you do in fact point it at your own head. There’s nothing to indicate the woman agreed to play, however, since her consent isn’t part of the equation once she’s dead. That was my actual point there.
suy@programming.dev 6 months ago
Also preemptively deciding that me disagreeing with you automatically makes you right because you predicted your explanation wouldn’t satisfy me is just A-tier bullshit.
I predicted that I would waste my time by replying to you, and I predicted right.
I wanted to give it a chance, though, because Lemmy is a place that is friendly enough and that I want to thrive, despite how little I contribute. I tried to be constructive and explain things the best I could, and assume the best possible faith, etc. When you just say that I sound like an asshole, and completely act in bad faith in how russian roulette is supposed to be in the context of someone who says “you can beat me at any game”, now I feel the urge to try the block feature in Lemmy, sorry.
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
Your explanation didn’t significantly differ from mine, so it seems to me like I was right that you can’t explain this joke in a way that removes the misogyny inherent in it. That’s the point here. I made it clear that was the point, and I suspect you knew it was right. That would be another explanation for why you could predict that your explanation wouldn’t change my mind.
I’ve explained how I disagree and given specifics, and you’ve chosen to ignore them. That certainly is a waste of your time because when you do that, there’s nothing to learn. Only you can decide if you’re going to attempt to learn something with an exchange or waste it, that’s not my fault.
For myself I have learned some things here. I’ve refined the way I explain this point for one thing. If you want to understand that you coild read my replies or ask me, or you could just block me and leave this interaction as a waste of your time. It really is up to you.
helpmyusernamewontfi@lemmy.today 6 months ago
guys this post was nearly three days ago do something productive you have so much more to live for
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
These threads are often around for decades; a few days is nothing. I’m not here because I can’t let this go; like I said, I’m still having this conversation because I feel like it’s helping me clarify my own position. If you don’t think it’s worthwhile nobody is making you watch.
jas0n@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Your point is that he sounds like an asshole? Because you badgered him for an explanation to a joke you obviously understood and he didn’t give it to you nice enough?
Preemptively deciding you won’t agree doesn’t make him right. He preemptively decided you wouldn’t be happy with his answer … and he was correct.
By the way, I thought it was funny. I sent it to my wife and she thought it was funny and sent it to her mom. (No one asked for an explanation).
Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 6 months ago
I never said this joke wasn’t funny, I said it hates women. It made me laugh for a second, but then in the following two seconds I said, “oh, ew”. Hating women is just so normalised in our society that it gets a pass under the banner of “edgy humour”.
And the reason I wasn’t swayed by the explanation is because it was essentially the same as mine. None of it is new information. You admitted my explanation is correct when you acknowledged that I clearly understood the joke.
So yeah, like I suspected, I’m not missing something here that makes this joke less misogynistic. Noone is telling me my characterisation of “haha he killed her and raped the corpse” is wrong, because it obviously isn’t.