Friday, February 29, 2008

A lack of a sense of humor

A friend recently sent me a link to this blog. It's called "Stuff White People Like" and is a bunch of musings on "white" middle / upper-middle class American culture. The site's description says: "This is a scientific approach to highlight and explain stuff white people like. They are pretty predictable." It's obvious satire, but as with most satire, it takes some very true points and exaggerates them for humor. For a quick example, take a look at this recent entry about bottled water. Personally, I found it quite funny.

Apparently, some people don't get the joke. I got sucked into reading the comments people left on the blog. Yikes! There are some wicked scary / crazy / angry / racists out there who don't have a sense of humor. I'll just stick to reading the regular articles from now on and skip the comments. But it's scary to think there are people having such angry and violent reactions to the blog. Telling the author they hope he/she dies or gets gang raped in prison?!?!? What the heck?

It reminds me of the time I was talking to two coworkers about a visit to San Francisco and how I was walking with some friends and we stumbled across a really crazy gay block party. One of my coworkers responded with something along the lines of, "Didn't you just wish you had a machine gun and could have mowed all those fags down?" I was so stunned I was left speechless. At first I assumed he was just making a really bad joke, but he was serious! I had worked with this guy for a couple years and had no idea he was so wacko and prejudiced.

It makes me wonder what percentage of the people in the world sincerely are nice people. I hope it's a significant majority and it's just the loud mouth jerks who sometimes make it seem less.