I am setting up a "Save the Self-Deprecating Humorist from Extinction Movement" (SSDHEM, or Save the JOKERS for short). C'mmon everything needs a catchy acronym to survive, so what if it's not exactly an acronym?
SDH's are the kind of JOKERS that self-deprecate themselves for your benefit. Their sense of humour is the exact opposite of, say, the Bill Mahr kind of humor and is more akin to the kind that Jon Stewart indulges in occasionally, and Ellen Degeneres, almost always.
For instance, watch this video where Jon Stewart does a push up challenge with Paula Broadwell who was promoting her book on his show. Note how he groans all the way, for the benefit of the audience. While he may or may not be able to do a hundred pushups -- I don't believe that he is in quite that bad a shape as he would have you believe. But it's all for a good cause: to give you a good dose of the best medicine there is. For free. That, and the other little matter of helping the soldiers.
So back to the JOKERS. The reason I feel the need to save this lot so urgently, is as follows.
I am one!
There, simple.
Even self-deprecators have self-preservation instincts. But, the more immediate reason is because someone decided to bite my head right off my shoulders recently. The whole thing stemmed from a misinterpretation of my comment on a social forum regarding my body's response to some types of stress.
I called my body a wimp. (See? Self-deprecation?).
But in the process of calling my body a wimp, I wrote something that implied that this person was also calling their body a wimp (in jest of course, as I would). For some inexplicable reason, this person decided that I was calling them a wimp (which is a vastly different thing).
Agreed, this was sloppy typing on my part; but I was typing something on the Fmost Ffamous Fsocial Fnetwork (whose name I will not Fmention); not a document on frikking Legal Zoom! Besides, if you know anything about self-deprecators, you know this: we mostly only denigrate ourselves for your benefit.
This is not because we have bad self esteem or because we hate ourselves and want to end our lives pronto. No! It's just that we don't want anyone else to end it for us ata time and place of their choosing!
Especially any of the fire-breathing, humor uninitiated, quick to bristle, paragons of self preservation!
A brave soldier will only die at the hands of another brave soldier. Likewise, a brave coward will only die at the hands of a brave coward!
Ask any self-deprecator "who is the most cowardly of them all" and we will gladly say, "Me!" For your benefit.
Further, most sloppy-typing JOKERS usually offer some form of explanation whenever there is a misunderstanding of their intent. True to form, I did. Very surprisingly that did not prove to be enough. So, long story short, I was called several things, and then advised not to joke with strangers!
OOooooo!! You see, you can say a lot of things to JOKERS, but you had better not tell them not to joke. That's like pulling the plug on our existence. We don't like that! No, no, we shall not be killed by non-cowards! Such denouments will cause us to ... erm... flee. We will proudly live to be killed another day by another flee-er.
So, I let the offended person have their last word and walked away from the argument. This was proving to be too stressful and anti-comedogenic (Oh wait! Comedogenic means pimple inducing, not laughter inducing? No wonder most models look like they haven't laughed in years!).
But I digress. So what was the thread about, you ask?
Someone in the group wanted to know what everybody's best de-stressing mechanism was! Certainly not hanging out at Ffamous Fsocial Fnetwork any more.
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