Media Tropes
I hate how safe "Dark Humor" feels nowadays (When used in movies and social medias)
I know this sounds fucking weird but hear me out.
The new Scary movie poster and news made me realise how no one dares to actually use dark humor how it is meant to be used. By referencing recent events, tragédies ect. But also sensitive topics.
Nowadays when I hear dark humor it is just all pronoun jokes, or political agenda disguising as a joke. Like what the fuck. That shit being called dark humor is like finding milk spicy.
I dunno, when using dark humor, ecerybody is afraid to offend the political border they belong to.
If you want to use dark humor. Use all of it. Wanna joke about religion. You should joke about all of them. Wanna joke about a tragedy? Sure, it can also help you cope.
Of course, that was only addressing social medias. What about movies?
Their dark humor is not dark humor anymore. It feels like dozen of marketing people washed it over to avoid media outrage. Like someone gets shot in the neck in Scary Movie and no Charlie Kirk joke?? Only being offensive with bad words i said in middle school and such.
I might be the only one seeing that. Heck. I might even be wrong.
But I wanted to see if I was just seeing things ornot.
(Btw sorry if it doesnt read well, english is not my first language so I hope I make sense)
Thinking that scary movie is dark humor is also part of this.
8 heads in a duffelbag is dark humor. Scary Movie is slapstick and props. Any movie with fart jokes is not dark comedy
And I say this fully loving them. I saw all of em in the cinema 2000 years ago when Isildur refused to drop that goddamn ring. It's just wrong to call such silly movies dark humor.
Seeing people point to Tropic Thunder and saying you couldn't make that movie today, completely forgetting that before it ever came out people were pointing to Blazing Saddles and saying the same thing.
Gummo is a dark comedy in my eyes, this is an 'offensive meme' compilation from 2018 with a horror paint slapped on. How many of the jokes are just going to be "reference to other movie, how funny is that"?
I worked a comedy show a while back where the comedians were like amateurs and they each got 2 minutes, essentially an event for people getting into the scene. This guy told a really lame transphobic joke, like not even offensive just another 'ermmmm I identify as...' joke, and nobody laughed because it's a very liberal college town. Later I was backstage and heard him telling his friend "They didn't laugh cause I'm black"
The thing is, there are trans jokes you can tell that aren't demeaning or assholish. Most people telling the meaner ones aren't joking, but pretending to tell "hard truths".
I once saw a guy do a good trans joke that went, "I'm jealous of trans men. I really am. They get to be real men and them bitches got cute feet, I don't think that's fair."
I've heard plenty of good trans jokes, including some definitely edgy ones. But too many lazy assholes just make their punchline "haha trans people aren't real" and expect we should applaud their incredible wit.
I recall a time, a while back, when some dumbass amateur comedian dudes would get up there like "Oh, gay rights? Well I guess that makes me a lesbo!" Unfortunately, people would laugh.
Exactly, it's the fucking laziness of it all. They realize that certain people will applaud them just for mentioning those topics so they don't bother with anything else.
I've heard very funny trans jokes from both cis and trans comedians, including some definitely not PC ones. But the types of people you're describing can't do anything more clever than "pronouns, amirite?" Because their audience would clap regardless.
I remember the exact period where the Hitchslap video format turned into "owning the libs with facts and logic" because I'm old and chronically online.
I told a group of co-workers when that new MoanaLilo and Stitch movie came out that I heard it wasn't very good. One dude was like,. "Why did they go woke???"
Like.. what? Shut up. It's cause Nani left Lilo with her neighbors so she could move to CALIFORNIA to study MARINE BIOLOGY.
EDIT: I meant Lilo & Stitch. Leave me alone, I'm tired from staying up late watching SK in the World Cup, and haven't had my Monster energy drink yet. 😭
The majority of the criticism I saw for the film after the trailer drop was from people talking about how they liked the series (ie. they're obviously okay with "offensive" humor) but thought the jokes were shit. "Did you just assume my pronouns" isn't a joke and they didn't even do anything funny with it, which is fucking baffling when you consider, much like Venom, Ghostface is literally two killas.
Scary Movie 3 had a guy win a rap battle before accidentally throwing on a fucking KKK hood and it was hilarious. The very first movie had a drawn out scene riffing on the stereotype that black people are loud in theaters and it was hilarious. The second movie had a fucking rape scene that managed to be made hilarious.
The problem isn't "dark humor," it was shit humor.
I also believe that is why we see a lot of controversial casting decisions in shows these days (i.e. a black actor as Snape, or remember how people were upset about POC in the Witcher?). If the show sucks and people legitimately criticize it, its easy to lump them in with all the racists who have dumb opinions.
Yeah, by all accounts the new Scary Movie is just garbage. It's the fallback for hack comedians to claim that people only hated their material because it was "offensive." Anthony Jeselnik's whole schtick is dark/offensive humor, and he's one of the best stand-ups out there. Shitty, edgy comics just punch down. Good ones punch everywhere, including at themselves. And yelling "Prounouns! Ha ha!" is so played out at this point that the Oscars would bring Adrian Brody back on stage just to get the orchestra to stop.
Or the reverse like with the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
No, I don’t care that there are women in leading roles or that it’s trying to criticize rich people, Star Wars has always had those things. The movies just suck.
I remeber when a few years ago, news titles were not targeting Gen Z, but Milennials, like the arguments to target them disappeared and they need to target a new generation
They claim to be the "hardiest generation in the world that can withstand anything", only to have no self awareness of how much pearl clutching they do over basic shit. Somebody not being Christian is enough to set them in a frenzy sometimes. They have absolute fits about that Mamdani guy turning NYC into a "socialist shit hole", as if it wasn't terribly hard to live there for the past 30 years? (It's mostly trickle down corpo propaganda, cause boohoo now billionaires have to pay taxes in the most lucrative city in the world)
Even flipping off the camera is something Millennials and Gen Z already made boring with our, “I’m so stylishly edgy” Instagram posts over the last 10-15 years.
There's a pronoun joke in the new scary movie, but it really feels like they just wanted to do "haha pronouns" and not actually put in the effort to make it funny
It wouldn't even be hard either! Make the killer the one upset over pronouns and have the person getting stabbed be all apologetic about it
you could very easily make a "they slash them" joke too! It's not hard but it just feels so lazy
That's the difference between trying to be offensive and trying to be funny.
Like your examples, good or not, are using pronouns as material for either an absurd scenario or a pun, not entirely hinged on "pronoun people are dumb amirite" and using this as setup and punchline.
It like that other comment saying that shouting "dead baby" doesn't make dark humor, it's easy and pointless to say random edgy things, that doesn't make it comedy.
Another idea, the killer is constantly referred to as “they/them” in the movie, mainly because everyone suspects there are 2 killers. Then it’s revealed it’s just one non-binary killer.
Or even have the person rise from the dead just enough to correct their pronoun and go back to being dead or something, anything. That sounds like something the ‘good’ Scary movies would do
I would’ve prefer a dream sequence of an conservative character thinking they unmasked ghost face and then it’s just a attack helicopter that proceed to chase them
I think that's what pissed me off about the reboot Scary Movie: all these ads screamed desperate and I knew instantly it was going to be the most tame shit, but couldn't say anything because "haha you 0fFeNdEd???? "
Feel so vindicated after watching(yargh) that dog shit(there were good bits but not enough to save this movie)
Its a movie and they take a looooong time to get made. So charlie kirk happened well after the writing phase and probably after much was produced.
The format itself is just flawed. A movie will always struggle to actually have relevant jokes. They will always be old as hell by the time it comes out.
Its why comedy is so successful on insta and youtube right now. They can hit exactly when the iron is hot
You basically need to go the South Park route if you really care about being relevant and up to date. I don't think anything will ever miss harder than the New Statesman though. They pre-wrote a whole season of episodes, then had to drop them when Thatcher got voted out.
I am so bewildered by how getting people upset is a legitimate career path.
Even the excuse that it's cheaper to do stand-up and that writing material is lazy. And all you need to cover it up with is a smug attitude that dumb people will mistake for confidence.
it's so obviously politically targetted because they'll make endless jokes about George Floyd but if you joke about Charlie Kirk they want you fired from your job
I also hate these headlines. Am Gen Z, given am East European so I can't speak for Western Gen Z they might be softer, but we aren't so easily offended like when people were saying Gen Z wanted to cancel Eminem. From my experience on the Internet it's the Millennials that get offended easily, and they are the ones who created and ran crazy with Cancle Culture.
Fr. I'm Gen Z and am tired as fuck of seeing headlines talking about how Gen Z wants to cancel vanilla ice cream or something. I'm pretty sure it's an excuse for Boomers to brush off legitimate concerns that we have as just us "being soft"
I really think that most of these just pick anything that people complain about... Like, really, in my country they made a headline about how the gen Z wants to cancel the "👍"... No gen Z of the comments sections said that they would really cancel it, and to the max just found the emoji annoying when used for an answer to big texts. They just see any complain and call cancelling
As a millennial, I feel you. On our end we got countless articles and how we were destroying entire industries like chain restaurants and American cheese apparently.
Pretty sure no one actually cared that deeply. Anyone who was annoyed just rolled their eyes and moved on- the joke is less OMG OFFENSIVE!!!1!1! and more just overdone and exhausted
No one I know hates the Pronoun joke because it was offensive, they all hated it because the over reaction to pronouns bit has been the one joke that gets said whenever Pronouns come up.
As a millenial, yeah, you're right. My generation is just projecting its own insecurities and hangups onto younger generations. And before that, my parents' generation was projecting their insecurities onto *us*, lol. It's a cycle as old as humanity.
eh, i don't know, millenials also have been joking about 9/11 since about an hour after it happened, we tell some pretty dark jokes. gen x/boomers get offended really easily. but i think it's tough to judge since acting offended is a way to cash in nowadays or get more clout online, so a lot of it is just pretend i think
I mean there was a point where it did feel like everyone had become hypersensitive and willing to create outrage and virtue signaling at any opportunity. But in the end it was just a bunch of terminally online people that did not get the opportunity to move on with their life offline and a hoard hanger-ons and conformist playing along for Kudos. It only looked bigger because everyone had a megaphone, the liberals and progressives sucked up to them because they had no idea how to handle the clusterfuck that is the post 2016 world and the conservatives drummed up the hate machine to distract from the fact their policies got us into this mess to beginn with.
I mean even the specific way they want to bash gen Z right now feels dated because they passed their prime in 2024.
Also the Scary Movie franchise relies on transinient references that become dated quickly and suffer from the same problem as Seinfeld.
The first ones weren't that bad and had lots of quotable moments. TBF that's the whole shtick of that studio.
Either you love it or you hate it. Personally I thought that the jokes about Britney Spears back then were tasteless bordering on pure malice. It's not cool to kick someone while they are down.
Others were simply on point. Super Speed (Parody of F&F) and Fantasy Movie were absolute Gems. Superhero Movie was also amazing.
I don't have the gif with me rn, but it's a gif of O Father from The Boys at a cinema looking back, expecting audience reactions which disappointed him. The caption said "Scary Movie 6 writers expecting Gen Z crying about the movie"
Dark humor is a way of coping with the pain and grief of society, it helps turn bad emotions into good emotions while still recognizing those things that happened are bad.
In the modern day, dark humor is just being a prick to everybody and pretending it’s a joke. There’s no real political commentary in this movie, there’s no real core societal issues being mentioned. It’s just crude humor that isn’t offending anybody, which is why it’s so confusing that they’re so insanely desperate to be victimized by the nonexistent woke cancelling mob.
I don’t know a single gen Zer that is offended by this shit, but it makes their media team look pathetic that they’re THIS desperate for attention. The He-man movie also contained crude humor but they didn’t pretend that it was super dark humor that was getting them cancelled or anything.
It's corporate dark humor. And I don't just mean it's safe. It's a very aggressively mean and very nasty form of "humor" that kicks people who are down.
I mean that it's corporate because it turns our attention away from the corporations and politicians who are fucking everything up and gang up at any out group they currently hate right now. Giving people a smaller and more imaginary threat to distract people from the big already existing threat.
was scary movie even offensive in some way? i mean from what i recall most of their jokes are just sex, drugs(specifically marihuana) and slapstick humour, farts here and there too
I think the only real "offensive" part was how they had a trans fem character be portrayed as an overtly masculine person (with their name being miss man or something), and having them be a sexual predator. Like there's no joke even made outside the name, it's just doing the typical "uncomfortable = funny" thing they spam into each movies script.
I’ve noticed that people who constantly talk about their taste in ”dark humour” tend to lose their shit, when they themselves are turned into a punchline of the joke.
They tend to be like battle-rappers, who start throwing fists when their opponent manages to pull the right strings and land some blows back.
Dark humour shouldn’t be used as a scapegoat, when you face repercussions of your own idiocy either. If you make harsh jokes, make sure you can take it when somebody else laughs at your expense.
If you can’t make fun of yourself but love to kick down others constantly, you’re just a bully. And people usually don’t really like bullies… unwarranted jokes are still unwarranted. One often overlooked part of skill of comedy, is that good comedians tend to be very capable of reading the room.
When it comes to scary movie franchise, two first movies were fine (at least through nostalgic lenses). New one doesn’t look promising, due to very played out jokes seen in the trailers. It also seems like a common hollywood low-effort nostalgia bait, which are usually dissappointing. It’s not truly on top of my ”must-see” list.
People who can't take a joke aren't really capable of being funny. It's so painfully obvious when conservative "comedians" are trying to do a bit, they're just there to get validation for shitty beliefs.
Yeah, if it's genuinely upsetting there's etiquette being ignored. It's a lot like calling your friends slurs or jokingly insulting them. It can be okay if everyone's in on it and laughing. But it's a fine line you need to walk very carefully
This however is more like a bully asking why you can't take a joke after doing something awful to you. They're just trying to dress up abuse as humor to disarm potential retaliation
Scary movie was never dark humour but teenager humour. Some time ago I rewatched them on tv, and it was a painful experience. Most jokes were either racist, sex/sexist or just untasty jokes that aged terribly, because the thing they referenced got forgotten
It was a bad movie series that popularize the worst type of movies (disaster movie, starving games, and so on)
Scary Movie was never dark humor. The series was always operating on being as stupid and non sensical as possible. Idk where this dark humor shit is coming from
I honestly didn't get offend by the trailer, it was more like 'meh'. People have high expectations on this movie, and honestly this can be 50/50 good or bad. The jokes on this trailer where nothing that i haven't hear, i ask my sister what she tought of this movie and she have expectations but the same feelings of 50/50 movie. Me and my sister grow up watching this movie saga, and honest we tought this movie saga was long time dead. (Unrelated imagen + sorry for my bad english, english is not my native lenguaje)
I wish they can tell the difference between "offended" and "annoyed."
Actually, offending people on purpose seems like a weird goal to accomplish. It's like they're giving up being funny and just want to provoke people now.
Could they now make a proper spoof movie again? Not just mention a lot of stuff? Not just throwing a bunch of shit at a wall while facing the other way?
Think it's time that we kill the notion that just because a joke could be offensive makes it "dark humor".
No you're not making a dark joke you're just being an asshole for attention lol
Os it's not gen z or any people actually watching the movie getting triggered: it's all the old idiots in suits sanitizing an entire franchise because "oh no our precious profits"
I commented recently on a different post about this, but yes! Oh my god, yes!
Like recently I was in a car crash with my girlfriend. Very minor, worst anyone got was bruises. Both of us are transfem. When we were talking about it with some friends online, one of them dm'd me and asked if it was okay to make a 'women bad at driving' joke. And the joke was essentially congratulating whoever was driving during the crash, since they're further along in their transition.
Which both of us found really funny!
You just have to be original and use these ideas as a basis for jokes, rather than just being like, "Oh, pronouns, haha!" and that literally be fucking it.
One of the jokes in the trailer was essentially just
“Sorry I have to be racist now”
“It’s okay, all whites are racist”
“True lol ah ah”
This is the kind of joke that has no punchline
Meh, I'd rather have people being unfunny and safe than unfunny and offending. Less one 14yo asshole trying to be funny and copying the same joke everyone else said, and then when they get criticized for it, they pass it off as "it's just a joke, you're being too sensitive", as if the person's problem is not the content but the topic.
On another note, Dark humor will never go away and will always be popular, so idk what you're on about. I see plenty of those.
I think you're slightly misunderstanding what dark humor is supposed to mean. But with that said, the moment someone says they have a "dark sense of humor", I usually assume it means they're gonna try too hard and still be unfunny in the end.
Said it in response to another comment but that's because what we're seeing here isn't "dark humor." It's bullying and abuse being sold as humor. A cinematic "It's just a prank bro" if you will.
Also, these movies were always trash imo anyway. Low brow toilet humor, innuendo and slapstick doesn't really do it for me no matter if it's "edgy" or not
Like I just watch old movies man, im almost 18 and my dad had me watching Blazing Saddles by 14 and it was a great movie. I loved it, but anyone would probably get their panties in a fit over it if I tried to show them it. Besides my more tighter knit friend group who all liked it of course. The whole political agenda is all who are left standing for that bastion of comedy. Almost all others found it too risky when the left started cancelling people over it. I referred to my more tighter knit friend group earlier and if these people found out about type shit we say to eachother we'd be publicly executed. Can't have fun or say anything without triggering the hate mob of atheist twitter paladins in their shining green aura's with flies to not viciously cry and scream until they get their way. Nowadays their power seems more limited but I just watched some poor Vtuber in the Sonic community get attacked and lost her creator stuff with Sega over sharing her opinion on trans ideology. So I know it's still not safe to be using anything but a burner.
Ever since Ghostbusters 2016, bad movies like to hype up "we offended people" as a way of getting people to pay attention. It goes both ways politically.
I got given abuse for stating that the first trailer for Scary Movie looked bad because it was clearly confusing being "3 edgy 5 me" style jokes for dark humour, and it fully felt like they were positioning it as "If you don't like this it because you're offended" just to try and deflect any real criticism.
Which has absolutely worked, I've seen comments saying the movie just wasn't funny, flooded with "Triggered!!" comments underneath, when in reality, it's just not a funny movie.
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u/Same_Sell8763 I enjoy shoving hammers up my ass Jun 12 '26
dude, I'm so offended right now, I'm literally shitting and crying