alright it's time to explain the reason behind this thread
- Cecaelia is absolutely correct in that this thread is literally no different to a typical Riff-Raff upvote/downvote thread, and to a larger extent, Riff-Raff threads in general, in that the thread was made to receive validation for the OP. it's just that the post was written in a way that completely removes the pretenses commonly associated with Riff-Raff threads needed to ensure a reaction (such as irony, satire, depreciation, etc), and instead simply asked a question of "yes or no", with no obligation required of the person giving out karma.
- This then comes to the problem Eglamore faced, in that he felt guilty of having to upvote this.
The dilemma is, that by upvoting this type of post, the person giving out the karma validates those forms of posts and encourages them as the norm, even if it does not fit with the person who is giving out karma's idea of what humor is.
This then brings the next problem with downvoting this type of thread, in that downvoting these types of threads then only guarantees a negative reaction in response to these threads, and therefore it builds an unspoken rule in which "if you make a post like x, you will be received negatively", and since Riff-Raff is built on satire, this leads to parodies of bad threads, which then perpetuates a norm of parody, injokes and satire as the agreed sense of humor, and then therefore anything created outside of the realm of this sense of humor is seen as bad.
Thus lies the problem. The humor of Riff-Raff was built on satire and ridicule of things considered embarassing to the general public. When the humor in this was exhausted, a cycle of satire and irony was built around that original concept, making fun of the humor that the sub-section was originally created for. However, due to a lack of a new sense of humor actually being created due to no original material being made to be made fun of, the threads lose steam (they lose acceptance within the community), and eventually new threads are made to parody/satirize those threads, which then continually perpetuates a culture of such humor (ie satire).
Eventually, like all things that become satirical, they lose the original focus of what they satirized, so therefore, the humor in these threads becomes a form of self-parody/self-depreciation.
In this way, these types of posts have an inpenetrable barrier against critique in which a poster can simply leave a low-effort post and state that it was created as a form of parodying bad thread if they receive a negative reaction, or they can state that Riff-Raff is easy/predictable if they get a positive reaction. This then perpetuates, again, a communial sense of humor based entirely on satire without the creation of actual humor-based posts to satirize in the first place.
These posts then cannot be actually realistically downvoted or upvoted based on actual humorful characteristics in themselves, and instead have to be judged on external criteria relating to the current accepted norm rather than what is actually being said. IE A circlejerk.
The problem faced within this post's satire is that it directly addresses the problems faced within the community, and does nothing to change it, instead it boils down these types of posts (you know: low-effort, created just for upvotes/downvotes, trying to adhere to a norm in a community in the attempt to maintain social credibility within the society) down to a basic "do you find this funny or not", without any of the outside circumstances of the inside jokes, irony, self-depreciation or superiority that normally influences the decision of whether or not to perpetuate this type of humor as the norm.
The reader therefore realizes that this post, in essence, is exactly what Riff-Raff is, just without any of its pre-conceived ideas of humor, and without its pre-conceptions to form an impenetrable layer of anti-criticism and just the raw reason of why it was posted being laid bare (a need for validation, acceptance, etc), the reader has to think why these types of posts receive any attention at all, and whether or not they find them actually funny, or just another addition to the community that they, the reader, have come to accept as a form of creating a boundary of status quo.
It's 2:30 am, I'm tired af and I can't really get the words out correctly, but hopefully you'll understand why I made this post but:
TL;DR: this post is just riff-raff posts without any riff-raff jokes to hold it up together. do you find it funny or not? why isn't it funny to you? why is it funny to you?
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