Dragon Ball Z Uncensored

ALDP · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 1:51 pm)

What?

Fagzilla · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 2:57 pm)

Which is of course a funny tweet, exactly BECAUSE she's an adorable little kid who nobody would ever literally call a cunt, and the idea of the terribleness of calling her that is the whole fucking joke.

But then the Internet cried about it so they capitulated.

http://www.hollywood.com/news/celebrities/55002243/the-onion-quvenzhane-wallis-tweet-c-word-controversy

Fagzilla · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 2:59 pm)

This world doesn't deserve the Onion.

ALDP · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 3:08 pm)

I don't share your certainty about how well that joke should have played on Twitter. It's one thing to apologize for an article or something but they have no control over the distribution of that tweet. Also the joke "She is too young for people to be calling her a cunt" isn't really a stroke of genius that the Onion should have stood behind.

ALDP · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 3:11 pm)

Haha, people wouldn't actually call her a cunt for another two or three years!

Fagzilla · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:01 pm)

Part of my problem is with the angle of the apology.

"No person should be subjected to such a senseless, humorless comment masquerading as satire."

Huh? What the fuck? "No person?" You're the Onion. That's what you fucking DO. More like, no person SHOULDN'T be.

And when you say "humorless" and "masquerading" it's almost like you're implying that it wasn't a joke, or that the joke didn't have a rationale behind it, like it was a scheme to get away with calling her an actual cunt.

Just awful wording.

They should have said, "due to the high probability of the joke being misunderstood by the person who was named in it, we shouldn't have blah blah" or something along those lines.

It was also just really horrifying to see earnestness and ideals on the Onion's site. I was deeply disturbed. I don't ever want to see that again. I depend on them to be my light of humanity shittiness-incineration amidst the dark sea of YouTube comments and my Facebook newsfeed.

And everyone's doing that thing, that shitty, cheapass little vilifying technique, where you decontextualize the joke from the environment/tone in which it was made and rephrase it in terms of its neutral base elements, to make it sound worse.

Like when somebody says that he's going to rape his friend in the ass if he does 'x' (or whatever), and some bitchass goes, "oh, so you think it's funny to make light of sexual assault?"

I hate that. Just imagine somebody like that watching commercials.

"Here comes our CRAAAAZY going out of business sale!!! Have we gone nuts??!? Look at these low prices!!!! They're gonna have to put us in straitjackets!"

"Oh, so it's funny to trivialize people suffering from mental illness?"

ALDP · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:08 pm)

So you wish they had given a rambling, self-serving pseudo-apology that said they were sorry certain people didn't get the joke.

Fagzilla · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:13 pm)

Exactly.

Or the apology should have been satirical.

ALDP · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:17 pm)

It's offensive to dilute the meaning of satire the way you wish the Onion did.

Fagzilla · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:23 pm)

The problem with the apology is that it comes off as "well, I guess this is what we have to say."

ALDP · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:32 pm)

No, that's what their apology would say if they did the unrepentant schoolyard bully apology that you wanted.

ALDP · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:36 pm)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer

Fagzilla · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 4:44 pm)

I wish the Onion would go back to being less topical, and return to more existential despair and skewerings of socio/psycho-behavioral minutiae.

Popes and Mitt Romneys will come and go, but this shit is fucking timeless.

Fagzilla · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 5:34 pm)

I was actually offended, at several points, by Seth MacFarlane during the show.

Well, not actually offended, but could see that certain things would be legitimate grounds for offense.

Like when he said that Zero Dark Thirty was about “every woman’s innate ability to never ever let anything go.”

I wouldn't begrudge anybody for being offended by THAT, and it wasn't nearly funny enough to bother taking the risk that it was taking. "huh huh, women, amirite??" Which is as unfunny and annoying as "huh huh, men, amirite?"

Fagzilla · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 5:44 pm)

"It wasn't nearly funny enough to bother taking the risk that it was taking."

Fine, I guess that also applies to the Onion tweet.

I guess.

Though it was still funnier than Seth MacFarlane's joke, or anything he has ever done.

Whatever, next topic.

Magic Juan · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 7:28 pm)

I re-watched a lot of his jokes and they were just stupid and hackneyed.

duhhhh chris brown and rihanna domestic abuse joke

FancyMichael · (Mon Feb 25, 2013 9:08 pm)

Chris, sometimes I'm worried that there's a huge void in your life that you're struggling to fill.

Have you ever looked into cannabis culture? You might find some of the answers that you're seeking.

ALDP · (Tue Feb 26, 2013 3:26 am)

Chris, being offended isn't the worst thing in the world. Certainly people get carried away with a lot of stuff, but you don't lose anything by acknowledging that Seth MacFarlane is an insufferable douchebag who probably utilizes spreadsheets to maximize the quantity and even distribution of (something that was edgy in the 90s but is totally ubiquitous in the 10s) semi-jokeless pop culture references in literally every single creative enterprise he takes on. This thing from Tumblr last night after the Oscars sums it up:
seth macfarlane: boobs black people jews eating disorders domestic violence, am i right

If there are serious repercussions for that Onion tweet then I will probably agree that stupid shit is happening, but I mainly just don't think their apology should be a big deal. The line they crossed was obviously blurry enough for a segment of internet people to get and love the joke but I think it's also easy enough to articulate that this doesn't need to mark an awful turning point or something.

Fagzilla · (Tue Feb 26, 2013 3:49 am)

The Onion has never apologized for anything.

In fact, the Onion has never, not ever, broken character, in ANY way.

So this IS kind of a big deal! It's a first, in any case.

Though, having said that, they've never really fucked up until now either.

ALDP · (Tue Feb 26, 2013 3:58 am)

Twitter's place in the world has changed a lot and continues to rapidly, so if there was a time and place to fuck up, it was probably now.

I think the joke probably even could have worked if they just had, I dunno, an article with fake tweets like that. Not something that would blow up on actual Twitter.