It’s worth considering who’s at fault when nobody “gets” a joke.
The purpose of humor is to entertain or communicate in some form; if a joke flops with every member of its target audience, I don’t think you can blame said audience without lowering yourself to the standards of smug postmodernist writers.
Tangential: Nietzsche could conceivably be accused of this attitude, but he was really aiming to discourage lightweight thinkers from reading and misunderstanding his work. Obviously, it didn’t work.
Zack_M_Davis got the joke, as did everyone who modded him up. Only those who modded up the above wedrifid, and down my “whoosh” comment, didn’t get the joke.
I think a sufficient fraction of the audience got it. wedrifid was an outlier on this one.
It’s worth considering who’s at fault when nobody “gets” a joke.
The purpose of humor is to entertain or communicate in some form; if a joke flops with every member of its target audience, I don’t think you can blame said audience without lowering yourself to the standards of smug postmodernist writers.
Tangential: Nietzsche could conceivably be accused of this attitude, but he was really aiming to discourage lightweight thinkers from reading and misunderstanding his work. Obviously, it didn’t work.
Zack_M_Davis got the joke, as did everyone who modded him up. Only those who modded up the above wedrifid, and down my “whoosh” comment, didn’t get the joke.
I think a sufficient fraction of the audience got it. wedrifid was an outlier on this one.