This is Twittering: Meta-Commentary Digest, Episode 62

Sometimes I tell jokes on Twitter and then I freak out and wonder if anybody understood the joke I was trying to make because, OMG, what if I’m not as clever as I think I am!? So then I post them again here and explain them so they make even less sense, and This is Twittering: Meta-Commentary Digest.

REACTION:

This is pretty funny, because people misattribute quotations all the time.

WISDOM:

This is all true. It always bums me out when I hear about any crime on the news, but it especially bums me out when the criminals are from racial minorities. It makes me think, Oh, great. More fuel for the racists. This isn’t a very useful concern though, because racists are going to be racist whether they have any “evidence” for it or not. Maybe the fact that this even crosses my mind means that I’m racist, I don’t know. But I’m also aware that this same thought process rarely occurs when white people are the criminals.[1]

I really do try to not be an asshole, but it’s not really because I’m a straight white male. It’s because I’m a human being and you are too.

WISDOM:

There’s a trend that occasionally pops up on social media where someone admits to some (usually innocuous) thing about themselves and then says it is “why I’m single”. Ostensibly, the quality or habit they describe would be unappealing to others, but it’s never anything that would make them legitimately unattractive. At the worst/best, it’s actually something that could be considered a cute quirk (these are the most annoying ones).

The truth is, for most of the people who post stuff like this, the real reason they’re single is because their standards aren’t low enough. Nearly anybody can find a mate if their only goal is to find a mate (just watch daytime talk shows). But what people really want is a certain kind of mate, and that takes a lot more effort than just possessing a certain set of qualities.

And beyond that, there are probably better reasons for why they’re single. I know I have more compelling reasons for being single than toothpaste on my shirt.[2] And that was my point.

STUPID:

This may seem very profound at first, but then, after you think about it, it’s really just dumb.

WORDPLAY:

The process for this one went like this:

  1. Gee whiz, life would be easier if I didn’t hold myself to such a high standard of decency.
  2. It would be nice if I could lock up my principles somewhere, sometimes, just for a while.
  3. “Locking up principles” sounds like “locking up principals”.
  4. That’s kind of funny.

Pretty good, huh?

STUPID:

There’s no cultural commentary to this one. I just think it’s a funny thing (and it is).

WISDOM:

Problem solvers often seem more like problem creators, except in hindsight.

STUPID:

I think this is probably true.

WISDOM:

See, because Budweiser sucks. And so does Coors. In fact, Coors Light is so awful it can kill a werewolf.

STUPID:

This is nonsense, but it was one of those fully formed sentences that pops into my head from time to time.

WORDPLAY:

I like this one quite a lot.

That concludes this episode of This is Twittering: Meta-Commentary Digest.

  1. I say “rarely” because you could make the case that certain classes of people, regardless of race, are considered inferior and more likely to commit crimes. My personal theory is that racism is often rooted in disdain for a certain cultural subclass of people and then extended to the entire superficially-related racial group. Essentially, racism is based on a hasty generalization and then perpetuated by confirmation bias (when they come across an exception to their prejudice, they dismiss it by saying it “proves the rule”). [↩]
  2. Full disclosure: I didn’t really have toothpaste on my shirt—I got toothpaste in my eye. When I was putting toothpaste on my toothbrush, some of the bristles flicked a bit of Colgate into my eye and it stung. That’s what initiated the joke, but I thought “getting toothpaste in my eye” was too potentially confusing for a 140-character joke, so I altered it. [↩]

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