Po-Tay-To Po-Tah-To

When writing my blogs for this page, I try my best to keep a neutral tone or to focus on things in general rather than being extremely specific. There are times when I have a very vehement slant on something, such as the merits of a chocolate chip cookie versus an Oreo, but on the whole I try to be unbiased in what I say. The same goes for jokes and my sense of humor online as well. Lately I've seen cases where someone has said something and the results have been a bit off kilter. It more or less boils down to the difference between what someone finds funny compared to someone else. However, these days I feel that the sensitivity of lots of people has suddenly gone through the roof. It's all quite subjective but I'll give you some examples and you be the judge.

I was once at an office meeting where it was a partnering session and during the session we were going around the room introducing ourselves to our teammates. We each took our turn standing up and giving our name, division, and what we do for the company. To keep it interesting, the team lead had also asked us to give our idea of a dream job. There were many different responses to that last request and it kept the attention on the proceedings rather than resulting in people zoning out of the introductions (which I am also prone to do at times). Some people tried to inject humor into their introduction and it helped but there was one joke that ended up falling flat on the ground though it didn't seem like it at the moment. One gentleman stood up and said "My name is Joe Smith and I'm an alcoholic." The joke was timely and it went so well with the way things were going that most of the room had a good laugh though there were a few nervous titters around the room.

The reason for the nervous titters became obvious several days later. The team lead was absent for several days and we couldn't figure out why. Once he returned he told us that he had been to sensitivity training due to his laughing at the comment that was made regarding being an alcoholic. Someone took offense and let upper management know and the knee jerk reaction was to send the team lead to sensitivity training. Now I agree the joke may have been a bit risque but I didn't think it was all that offensive. Then again I'm also not an alcoholic or even a recovering alcoholic so I can't say whether it would offend me or not. In this case it was merely a joke so I don't understand why someone would get that serious about it. Perhaps the person truly was a recovering alcoholic or somehow was related to one and knew of the deep seated trouble that is associated with the disease. Or perhaps they just wanted to test the system.

The previous case was only one instance and in this case, the joke was mostly harmless though it was enough to tick certain people off. But what about when humor is a bit much? What do I mean? Well there's a case in Michigan where an individual was fired from Wal-Mart due to a joke he posted on his MySpace page. The individual, David Noordeweir, posted a comment on his MySpace page that said that if one were to drop a bomb on Wal-Mart stores, the average IQ would increase. Now this again is a joke and although he contends that he doesn't have a plane from which to drop bombs, Noordeweir is still not completely un-culpable from any guilt. In this day and age where gunman are leaving manifestos to TV stations or recording last statements to be played after their deaths, it wouldn't be surprising to hear people get tense when they see comments like this.

I personally don't believe that Noordeweir has a plane in his garage with bombs under the wing but who's to say that he hasn't mixed up the right quantities of fertilizer and cleaning agents to make an explosive? It may seem harmless to say it but these days with the increase in paranoia regarding such things, it's a joke to steer clear of. Especially if you are intending to post it on a page like MySpace which is open to the public and available for virtually anyone to see. People tend to forget that on sites like this, whatever you say is 'spoken' to practically the entire world. And you can be assured that it is likely to offend someone no matter what it is you said.

I mean I could probably write that I am coming up with a scheme to disrupt all pizza service in Washington Metro area by buying up all the pizzas that can be produced and then not paying for it or some other such inane scheme. There's probably an Anti-Pizza Defamation league out there right now who will stumble on this page after doing a search for 'Pizza Conspiracy' and I will end up being requested by the FCC or the management of blogger to recant my statement and issue an apology to the country. You never know how someone is going to interpret something, even the most humorous of statements. Now you can't very well keep your mouth shut all the time, but I guess the thing is to choose what you say carefully. There's apparently much more sub-text than we originally realized.