Our sense of humor is special.

During a slow moment at work, a coworker around my age and I were gazing out the window. I mentioned that the tree outside would good for hanging yourself. She laughed. I told her that that’s why I liked her.

I suggested the new epilepsy treatment center in our town needed a whacky wild inflatable arm guy out front.

My best friend (Gen X) gave me finger guns. His daughter looked horrified.

Yes! I still have the book "Truly Tasteless Jokes".

It's so sad that a family can be torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs.

I believe that Gen X has the best quality: we appreciate dark humor.

Dark humor jokes are like little kids with cancer, they never get old.

Sorry, I will see myself out now.

Just FYI, this is a trauma response. Health care professionals and vet populations also have it too. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it is a coping mechanism often used by ppl that have seen some shit. 

My kiddo (elder teen) has a wicked sarcastic sense about her being raised by 2 GenX. 

Haus of Decline on Twitter. At least one of them is a GenXer.

[Image] 

Sister and I were quoting the Monty Python Dead Parrot skit on the way to scatter our dad’s ashes after the memorial service.

I work with a lot of people younger than I am & I like most of them. But those generations just aren’t funny. Like, at all.

I think we benefitted from coming of age during decades in which we had great comedians/comedic movies/sitcoms. Nothing wrong with Tik Tok, watch whatever the hell you want. But I don’t think it shapes a collective sense of humor the way our entertainment did.

I feel like the dead baby jokes were the least offensive of the jokes we were telling back then. Nothing was off limits... Anne Frank, Helen Keller and Stevie Wonder come to mind.

I definitely do.

But please also consider why kids have “safe spaces” and why bullying is now actually taken seriously. How many of us were really really HURT by unnecessary cruelty? Shitty, mean and crappy teachers and parents? Neighborhood bully kids who were positively frightening? Being seen and not heard?

It’s not that I disagree with your point, because I don’t think kids (or any people) should be a bunch of wimps crying “Abuse!!” at every turn, but on the other hand, I’m glad that a lot of the shit we had to deal with isn’t being tolerated anymore. There just needs to be balance and perspective. Something kids just don’t and won’t have until they’re older.

Our trauma responses are great for us, but I wouldn’t wish it on our kids. For real, all the things that have helped us with our trauma (dark humor, sarcasm, apathy, etc.) are reasons why we’re fucked up. My kids are mostly caring and sensitive and I feel like that’s a win for us.

The other day I was with my millennial daughter and some of her coworkers. One of them asked me how my day was going. I replied, “have you ever had one of those days that you wanted to be out at the lake and you couldn’t wait to get on the rope swing so it could wrap around your neck when you let go?”

My daughter just put her hands over her lowered face and shook her head. I could still tell she was smiling though. She’s used to me.

When the Catholic Church next door rings its bells for the Christmas holiday, I sing along.

Joy to the world, The school burnt down And all the teachers died! We're looking for the principal, He's hanging from the flagpole, with a rope around his neck With a rope.aeound his neck. Oohhh Joy to the world, The school burnt down.

I find the humor on everything. Dark or not.

“Why so serious, Batman?”

Q: How come nobody tells jokes about Jonestown?

A: The punchlines are too long.

What did we call Magic Johnson on ice? Kool-Aid! (Followed by: oh yeah!)

I think part of it is that Gen Z doesn’t do face to face communication. Sarcasm doesn’t work as well when it’s being read

The gen-x in my family sit at the kid's table on holidays so we can laugh and let the others play their games. As we all remember, God's got a sick sense of humor, eh?

I have appalled so many people making jokes about my late husband. It’s an automatic response for me, I guess some sort of coping mechanism. When their jaws are on the ground and they’re squirming with discomfort, I remind myself that he’d damn well think it was funny.

Edit bc IDK how the hell “cheer” got in there but it doesn’t mean “guess”.

I definitely understand. The humor I grew up with is definitely too rough for many people these days. Any sort of sarcasm has to be heavily telegraphed.

3 days after the pope died. I almost got fired for asking my very Catholic boss if the pope would rise today like Jesus did at Easter.

I fogot the golden rule or time plus tragedy equals comedy

Worth it. It was damned good joke.

OHHH and what about all of the mama jokes we had to endure?!!! Yo mama so ugly…Yo mama so fat…etc, etc

You so ugly, when you were born, they slapped your mama.

I see all these ‘trauma response’ comments popping up more and more. I 100% think / feel that making jokes and being sarcastic about negative shit that’s happened helps me not to dwell and get stuck in negative thoughts and allows me to move on. I think it’s important.

Right now resilience in young kids / teens is low and everything is considered trauma. Sometimes you need to just accept you did something wrong / made a mistake / were treated badly and learn from it. This doesn’t seem to be happening as much.

When I start joking about something dark it’s usually because I’ve accepted it, or am trying to

We also had Spike & Mike sick and twisted festival of animation.

I have faith that dark humor isn't completely lost on younger generations.
Heard from a Millennial: What's another word for "mainsplaining?"
"Correctile Dysfunction."

I feel seen. 😌

Definitely not as dark as it used to be, we used to laugh at some of the scenes in faces of death.

But fuck yeah I appreciate some dark shit.

Dude I am a fuckin' garbage pail kid 🤘🤘

Between growing up a poor latchkey kid and working in healthcare, I’m all about that dark humor. The darker the better.

Completely agree. "How did they know Christa McAuliffe had dandruff?"

Yes. I also have a very dark sense of humour at times. One of my comedy writer heroes was Michael O’Donoghue who wrote wonderfully warped things like “The Vietnamese Baby Book” for National Lampoon Magazine and “Mr Mike’s Least-loved Bedtime Stories” for SNL.

I've always been a bit dry and dark, but I pick my moments.  

Yo mama so fat, we clould BBQ one of her hemorroids and feed the whole neighborhood.

I loved the dead baby jokes! And the jokes about “what do you call a guy with no arms or legs at your front door”

Absolutely!! My wife married me! If that’s not a sense of humor I don’t know what is! 🤷🏻‍♂️😂

What did Gary Hart say to Donna Rice? I told you to fuck my erection, not wreck my election.

Yep. This is why grunge music became one of the voices of our generation. The cynicism, dark humor stemmed from growing up in this environment, musicians around our age began to write and perform and… voila

My dad would say that you laugh to keep from crying. He had a lot to laugh/cry about.

Addams Family Values is the funniest movie that I have ever seen. It cracks me up after literally seeing it dozens of times.

As long as you aren’t punching down, I will appreciate most dark humor.

We have failed to share our sense of humor. We must double down and try to increase levity in the world 🌎

I love my dark fucked up gen x sense of humor.

We went through grammar school telling dead baby jokes

We watched 7 astronauts literally die on live TV.

Hell, I was in jr. high at the time, kids were telling Challenger jokes only days afterward.

Q: What color were Christa McAuliffe's eyes? A: Blue. One this way, and one that way.

I also watched Bud Dwyer commit suicide live on TV.

Agreed, dark humor and sarcasm. I knew this for sure when my children (when they were little) would say - Mom, are you serious or being sarcastic? A lot.

Your mom agrees

Silent Gen raised Gen X and that is why you and your Dad could joke about it.

Silent gen were kids and grew up during depression and world war 2. Fun times.

My Mom was hysterical and had a dark dark sense of humor beneath her cheerful facade.

Gen X just lost the facade.

I can't say half rhe things I'm thinking out loud

I think reading Hitchhiker's Guide and watching Monty Python re-runs at an impressionable age left me with my odd sense of humor.

I have that dark sense of humor. It basically helps me deal with the fact that we are not all special little snowflakes, but rather, just replaceable cogs in the machine that will be swept aside once we are no longer useful to anyone. I just don't have any fucks left to give about that.

Thank you, I laughed through this entire post. I am so Gen X.

The day my dad died, I was wearing his tshirt that read “Bring out your dead.” When the nurse suggested we change his shirt to something more dignified, I stripped in front of my entire house full of people and handed her the shirt.

As they were wheeling him out of the house, we were quoting, “Have fun storming the castle.”

I think the hospice people thought we were fucking strange or that we snapped under the stress.

Certainly, but then I'm a retired forensic tech. The job helps.

My friend's son, who is 32, is living with us. It took him a few months not to freak out with my jokes.

When people ask me how I like the kids today I simply respond with “medium rare”.

You mean it wears a helmet on the short bus?

Young generations have weaponized the language of ‘safe spaces.’ The concept of a ‘safe space’ originally meant if you were gay, you weren’t going to be tied to a rural fence and beaten to death like Matthew Sheppard.

Unfortunately, younger generations take it to mean that within their ‘safe space’, nobody can disagree with them.

To this day, BBQ sauce, is Baby Que sauce in my head....

I had the “baby in a blender” poster from National Lampoon on my wall.

We grew up in the Sticks and Stones era and this helped give us "thick skin" so we didn't go around being a victim of everything and everyone.

Dark humor is like food. Not everyone get it.

I agree. GenX has a quality that no other generation has.

To this day I know that Christa McCaulifes eyes are blue. One blew this way and the other blew that way.

I really think that younger generations have a MUCH better handle on their emotions and mental health than we do. It does, however, come at the expense of our wickedly dry, ironic senses of humor. I love this quality about myself, and it’s a quality I look for in others. But I admit that my sense of humor is trauma informed.

The problem is that I need to remember that, most especially with younger people, I need to know people well before I can let my freak flag fly.

Not just dark humour, we were raised on dry sarcastic humour as well, especially us Canadians. Think about the comedians we grew up with: John Cleese, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase, John Candy, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, and other assorted sarcastic mothers who took the piss out everyone around them.

I'm gen x and joined the army at 17, was introduced to a new level of colourful insults. You were allowed to be verbally abused back then and there were some hilarious moments. It was very similar to full metal jacket, except the guy who blew his head off in my intake did it at the range while we were raising and lowering targets.

I showed an article (https://www.livekindly.com/vegan-cannibals-rejoice-theres-finally-plant-based-version-human-flesh/) about vegan imitation cannibal meat to a friend who finished his shift and it made his fellow barista who overheard it roll her eyes and mumble in her manager's vicinity that it made her uncomfortable.

The Zillennial manager told me that I was harassing the barista.

The Millennial barista defended me and said she never said "harassment" and the manager said that she knows harassment when she sees it and that the barista just doesn't recognize she was harassed.

I think it's less that a dark sense of humor is special and that there are more people who take themselves too seriously.

We were definitely more accepting of jokes. I do have my own limits, 9/11. For some reason, I cannot and will not laugh at that. Not that I've heard a lot of jokes about it.

I wonder if the majority of kids are actually sensitive to jokes or if it's the vocal minority. If 20,000 like a tweet, that's not even full fraction of a percent of younger folks. Anger always motivates people to be more vocal.

At the same time, when AB picked a trans spokesperson, their sales dropped a fair bit. That was anger from older folks and conservatives. They're sensitive to trans people.

27% of GenZ are conservative (compared to 12% Millennial and 30% GenX). It's unlikely that conservatives are downvoting jokes unless the joke was somehow a conservative tragedy. It could also be a bad joke.

If you got 400 downvotes, that's nothing. Seems like a lot but it's insignificant in terms of the big picture.

I think dark humor is the best humor

I'm a younger gen x, and I was raised by a navy sailor. My humor is not appreciated by a lot of people.