• linja@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If I’m not meant to think about it until understanding emerges, then that means it should be immediately understandable without thinking. It is not.

      • linja@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I might not find a joke funny, or I might not have the necessary context to appreciate it; that’s “not getting” a joke. If it’s possible to have too much context to appreciate a “joke”, it’s at the expense of people who know more than the audience.

          • linja@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It might seem harmless, but the purpose of a joke is to draw a distinction between those who get it and those who don’t, fostering a sense of community. In this “joke”, the in-group is people who don’t know something; the community ideal fostered there is that knowledge is undesirable, that anything that seems unintuitive to the uninformed mind is inherently ridiculous. The “joke” has no effect if it doesn’t do this. Entertaining the idea without challenge is dangerous.