Satire/sarcasm doesn't always work cross-culturally
Satire/sarcasm doesn't always work cross-culturally
No joke here. I just think stuff like this is interesting.
Oh yes, Americans really are the most sarcastic people on the planet and their humor is oh so dark.
Sincerely,
—A Brit.
We are.
It’s what happens when you take dry British humor, concentrate it like a cup of tea run in the microwave until almost all of the water evaporates out and add daily mortal risk from our fellow countrymen.
-A ‘Murica
Oi turn on the telly, the man is doin’ a silly walk!
Dutch humor and jokes are pretty dark, as are half of the swear words.
probably from living next to the Germans. But hey, most of the jokes these days are still about BelgiansHalf my family is dutch and many of my friends are full blooded, right off the boat dutch. Dutch humor can be so blunt and expertly delivered that it can literally cut you to the core if you arent accustomed. The only way i can describe it is if you have ever eaten dutch liquorice. Try a piece of dubbel zoute drop and you will understand everything you need to know about the dutch.
But lets give some credit to the hispanics though. Mexican humor, especially with their nicknames, can be exceptionally ruthless as well. Their directness and humor has absolutely got to be on par with the best of the swamp germans.
One of my Dutch friends explained to me that many of Dutch's darker swear words and related expressions tend to be derived from ruinous diseases. One of them roughly translating to something akin to, "I hope you catch the plague". Can you corroborate that?
It was part of a greater discussion about the roots of cultural differences. The Netherlands have a much more persistent memory of the era of plague and thus their taboos derive from it. Here in the US, less so.
You guys just got too good at it.
We learned from the best.
I'm neither British nor American, and whole-heartedly agree.
Stephen Fry on the difference between American and British comedy
Also made me think of a few of Mitchell & Webb's skits. Like Kill all the poor
OOP said people, so the British don't count.
Well Matthew Perry did invent sarcasm, so it tracks.
I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not.
Americans are also known for being really direct (YMMV; southerners are a lot more indirect, where West Coasters would much rather that you just tell them to get fucked than pretend that you like them). OTOH, from my experience hosting students from East Asia, they tend to be at the opposite end of directness. It took us half the school year to get the kid from Hong Kong to open up, start talking and joking without being prompted and be comfortable telling us mildly uncomfortable things (like if he was unhappy about something). We've had two Japanese students as well, and it's always been a constant struggle to get them to tell us if there's a problem; they prefer to reach out to a program supervisor instead of telling us directly, and one of them was so bad about indirectness that it felt like he was constantly lying to us. It turns out that differences in directness cause a lot more issues than I would have guessed.
Utah is extraordinarily passive aggressive. Home in New York, I was considered tactful with my words. Here in Utah, I'm considered rude.
People raised here, especially Mormons, will lie to your face with no remorse in order to avoid saying any "harsh" words or causing "contention."
I've pretty stopped being tactful and have embraced vulgar honesty. Not to hurt others - I really do care about my roommates and most of my coworkers on my shift - but to make my thoughts so motherfuckingly clear that even a god-damned inbred Mormon pioneer worshipping dumbass can understand.
I've heard this called a "West Coast Attitude", though AFAICT, it seems like the Northeast also has a reputation for not mincing words. Anyway, yeah, I'm a big fan of the West Coast Attitude; you always feel pretty good that you know where you stand with someone. There's people out here in Cali that fall in love with the south after a little visit and gush about how nice everyone is. I make it a point to tell them that, as someone who lived a good decade or so in the south, I know that 4 times out of five, that niceness is a facade papering over a whole lot of shit they talked about you the second the door hit your ass. In all fairness, there really are some super great people there that genuinely are as nice as they seem, but I found it hard to tell them apart without getting to know them first.
I have a similar experience being from the North and moving to Texas some time ago. At work in the North, I was well spoken, direct, honest, friendly, and kind. In Texas, I spoke my mind too much and wasn't nice, but was considered a dependable hard worker. The only people that didn't file HR complaints? Other Northerners.
Culture shock in your own country is a hell of a thing.
I call it being “subtle as a sledgehammer.” Makes it a little harder to make long lasting friends, but the ones I have greatly appreciate it.
Americans are also known for being really direct
Maybe in America. They are also known for saying "this is the best XYZ I've ever had in my entire life!!!" for every XYZ they ever have in their entire lives.
We are the most hyperbolic people ever of all time, I'm absolutely positive
From an American, this means the thing meets expectations, or possibly even exceeds them.
"Not too bad" means I almost died.
"Pretty good" means it wasn't the worst possible result, but not great.
E: You'll know it's actually the best ever if we stop talking.
Again, Your Mileage May Vary. People in the south can be frustratingly indirect because they believe it's polite. Broad strokes, however, Americans do tend to be more on the direct side of things; I reckon we're a little behind Germany (as the exemplar of extreme directness), but much closer to them in directness than we are to, say, England.
My American-immigrant-in-Germany self snorted when I read that Americans were direct. It’s a spectrum, for sure.
I live in a very direct culture, but that does not mean we're being impolite towards each other. I work with a lot of immigrants from cultures which do not separate these two concepts, however, and when you tell them to be more direct, or if they are not getting anywhere by merely hinting at what they need, they quickly switch to:
- frowning
- shouting, or talking very loud
- using very short sentences, as if they were ordering people around
- being borderline insulting
And that is not acceptable in any society. I was absolutely miffed by this many times until I understood that they don't actually know communication which is both direct AND polite because they didn't grow up with it.
I put together a quick illustration to show what I mean:
So, the people I'm talking about go from top left to bottom right, maybe brushing on bottom left, because that's the only direction they know.
I lived in SF for a while and learned that people in SF are very passive aggressive because they don't like to be direct.
Lol
-- a German
I mean, there is sarcasm and dark humor here in Japan. It doesn't always work in the same way, however.
There's a ton of it. But it takes a long time to learn how exactly to express it well, and some people don't like it at all.
So to all the language learners, don't use sarcasm until years after after you can understand when others are using it.
Or use it, and have trouble making friends. Either way.
Definitely. It's also worth noting that most people here will probably take a learning trying to do sarcasm in the way they might in the US as just making mistakes (or being serious). I would add you probably want to avoid it with people you're just meeting.
I've heard from multiple expats living in Japan that Japanese people just do not recognize sarcasm at all and just react as if the person is completely serious.
Which is its own form of sarcasm
I think it's more in the delivery. Some things that might also sound sarcastic in English can also just sound insulting in Japanese so directly translating won't work like that. There's also the matter that, no matter which language, both parties are presumably non-native-level in opposite languages which makes processing information and delivery harder.
I've been in Japan almost a decade now.
you mean like creating horror by unneccesary brutal force to someone else like all the world would just be a game would NOT be funny to japanese people as it is to the us ppl who enjoy doing so calling it sarcasm or dark humor?
forget about the us! tell me more about those great japanese people living in a country way greater than the us could ever be (at least during that occupation of white brutish -once british- invaders), i already like them more than the us ppl by the way they don't 'joke' about victims of terror, war crimes and such!
is this a new cringe bot I haven't been made aware of? What even is this comment?
Not sure if the replier saying that Japan doesn't do sarcasm is being earnest or sarcastic...
If it's in earnest, it's wrong. Americans are far from the most sarcastic people on the planet.
Why is this dude replying to a reddit question on Twitter?
It's a cultural thing
So we can all grumble about it on Lemmy.
There's any number of reasons. They might have a friend who uses Reddit who sent it to them. They might have replied on Reddit, and also have thought it worth broadcasting to their shitter followers as well. They might browse Reddit on desktop but not have an account.
Seems like the part of this thread where we're depositing gripes, so I'll just pile on without being helpful or answering your question:
The shit is backwards. It's like hearing the punchline of a joke before the setup. Posts like this translate so poorly to screenshots
America is a big place. Sarcasm isn't popular everywhere. Here in the rustbelt it's king. Other than one 9/11 meme I saw yesterday I'm not too aware of any 9/11 jokes, can say the same for Hiroshima & Nagasaki
"The record for speedreading was broken by multiple New Yorkers in 2001 when they sped through over 100 stories in under a minute"
That's the only 9/11 oneliner I can think of but there's a lot of joking about it in general
I saw a video on YT Yesterday with 2 decent 9/11 jokes:
"Saying you're a a COD Zombies fan is like saying you're a 9/11 fan, people ask if you mean before or after it all came crashing down"
Which sets up later:
"I apologize for that 9/11 joke. I know for many people it can be shocking, and then the second one hits" followed be a few seconds of silence
Which legitimately got an out loud chuckle out of me
New Yorker here, many of us (or at least most people I know) enjoy a good 9/11 joke. Mostly young people afaik.
As a New Yorker who was around at the time, I'm pretty sure I told my first 9/11 joke on 9/12.
I've seen quite a few "A second ___ has hit the ___" memes in my time.
The situation is similar in Korea. A friend and I went to see Drag Me to Hell here and we were a bit embarrassed to be busting a gut in a dead silent theater. Horror comedy doesn't work here at all.
There's an entire political party dedicated to political satire in Japan (the nhk party or the anti nhk party, I forget which one)...
Hey they told us to never forget they didn't specify how.
If Godzilla is sarcasm/satire then yes.
Japanese comedy is 70-80 years behind
I can't wait for Japan's "WHERES THE BEEF" phase.
I mean most of their comedy is “Manzai”, which is essentially Abbott & Costello.
Japanese culture is still very much Confucian, so any sort of making light of authority figures or anyone deemed “above” oneself in the caste-like hierarchy is not done, not even ironically.
Idk man some of these are hilarious. https://www.boredpanda.com/mundane-halloween-hilarious-costumes-japan-taiwan/
Takeshis castle is still unmatched
Except by mXc itself, which of course uses dubbed footage from TC, with funny idiot announcers dubbed in.
Yeah that’s my point. That is literally the comedic level of prat falls and people slipping on banana peels.
Jerry Seinfeld kills in Japan
You must leave now...
Clearly, the Americans haven’t met the British or Australians yet when it comes to sarcasm. Or was this just another American touting they are best at everything again?
Hiroshima and Nagasaki had 60 times as many deaths and many more with lasting injuries including radiation sickness, and rather than being shoved down everyone's throats by the media and politicians as a justification to start a bunch of pointless wars that got a bunch of people killed, they were instead used as a reason to end a stupid pointless war that got a bunch of people killed. There's good reasons to mock 9/11, but not the atomic bombings.
More generally though Americans tend to be more irreverent, and imo a lot of that has to do with religion. Most Japanese people aren't religious at all, and their religions don't often intersect with the political sphere - it's almost unimaginable if all you've known is the US. In the US, mocking certain topics is a way of establishing which group you belong to, and there's many different groups in the US who all hate each other and are constantly making fun of each other.
But they sure do have a culture of sexualizing pre-pubescent girls and then making some weird excuse as to why it's okay!
I say this as an avid fan of Anime; but I sometimes have to quit shows over it.
For sure. America too tho.
Really? Because other than weird outliers like Cutie or whatever, that's not really a thing in American culture; at least not in public media. The clergy is another story altogether! Like sure, there's plenty of sexualizing 16 and up; but japan is shameless about it, these girls look 10-12 half of the time. They only JUST raised the age of consent from age 13 to age 16. It was the lowest in the world just prior.
It's just a weird culture overall - everyone being shamed into looking exactly the same, insane emphasis on working so hard you keel over from it, etc.