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Stop Killing Comedy or You’ll Kill Us All
Time travel to my past to understand why laughing now will save our future
Last week, Facebook censored a satirical post a friend of mine wrote and it pissed him — and me — off.
I’m saving it for the very end because I don’t want the content — and your reaction to it — to shade your understanding of this essay. In these hyper-partisan times, I feel this is unfortunately necessary.
Like a lot of you, I’m really disheartened by the state of the world right now. And that means when I’m not crying about it, the best thing I can do is laugh.
Watching America from my home in Japan, especially over the past decade, has increased my concern that our world is losing its sense of humor.
What happens when we make it harder to laugh? Well, speaking for myself as a 47-year-old dude, when I’ve been in situations I found disturbing and absurd but I wasn’t allowed to laugh, I’ve felt one of two emotional reactions rise up: anger or depression.
Not to worry, if humor isn’t an option I vow that my anger would at least be creative. Perhaps I’d raise an Avatar-esque platoon of poorly trained, masked monkeys to rage against all machines (including machines disguised as humans).
