I didn’t realize neckbeard atheists oppressed so many people compared to religion, thanks to the author for opening my eyes
So many militant atheists. Saying so much, all just to prove the comic right.
Having said that, my specific objection is not to all of the discussion taking place here, but to the fact that a lot of the comments seem to be projecting their own personal viewpoints onto the comic.
Also, I was not shouting people down; I was speaking in all caps to be funny. It’s fine if you personally did not think I funny, but that was the intent (which in retrospect could probably have been conveyed more clearly if I had also dropped the comma so that it was purely a stream of words), just like it was the intent of the comic author to make a dumb joke rather than to state a strong opinion about atheists. I think that it is useful to separate the intent of what an author was trying to accomplish from your own thoughts on the subject.
That’s somewhat my bad for taking the adversarial tone of your original comment to being serious and about all comments looking into the comic’s unsaid meanings.
At the same time, though, the comic is 100% meant to make fun of militant atheists, as in atheists who make their whole personality atheism. The folks who’s sole goal seemingly is to make everyone stop being religious. And the punchline is that despite achieving his goal, he only managed to make his mother’s life worse by forcing her through an epiphany she wasn’t ready for and then abandoning her with her own thoughts. The comic is partially funny because of it making fun of militant atheists. The other portion of the humor is the absurd nature of the situation.
The first comment you show takes that joke personally and the second resonates with that message. Neither of these are really off the mark, as grating as their tones may be to some.
I agree completely that the comic is parodying a particular cliche of a militant atheist. I disagree that the intent was to provide serious social commentary.
And I did not find either of those comments grating; I was merely citing them as evidence that not all of the discussion here is “intellectual”. Honestly, the real avenue of criticism that was left open to you that I was expecting you to take was to point out, correctly, that they were heavily cherry-picked for their unreasonableness; it actually surprises me a bit that instead you called them not “really off the mark” as if they were inherently reasonable responses.
Sure, that’s what satire is. A parody of something to criticise it. Often using clichés to ensure the subject is immediately identifiable.
This comic is a satire of militant atheists, because the author finds that militant atheists are insufferable and deserve to be made fun of, as the comic is doing. Why else would the author choose them specifically to satirize?
You chose those two comments to point at examples of unintellectual discussion. I am pointing out that they are not as unintellectual as you paint them to be. I don’t strongly agree with what they are saying, but that does not immediately disqualify them from contributing from the conversation. Your comment was the only one calling for the termination of the pursuit of deeper meaning in the comic, which is an anti-intellectual stance.
Ah, I see your point now; this is basically just like how the author was making the point that refrigerator stores have an annoying way of trying to sell people butthole pictures in this comic:
Your comment was the only one calling for the termination of the pursuit of deeper meaning in the comic, which is an anti-intellectual stance.
I have no desire to terminate anything. For someone going to so much trouble to express how much you care about the importance of intellectual discussion, you are working extremely hard to avoid engaging your intellect when it comes to my comments.
DEAR LORD PEOPLE, SOMETIMES THERE IS NOT A DEEPER MESSAGE AND IT’S JUST A DUMB JOKE!
It’s pretty blankly a thought terminating cliché without your later clarification, same as the noteable “The curtains were fucking blue” meme. Even with your clarification, you are now bringing up yet another one of the comics to try and show there is no deeper substance to find from these comics, which I disagree.
With most of these comics, the author does enjoy using absurd humor. But they do still have some grounding in real things. The first example you give is poking fun at taking the saying ‘you can do anything you set your mind to’ and the second is a joke about dual-businesses, with the premise being, generically, a business with one service that’s normal and another service that’s something almost no one is going to request.
There’s still some interesting things within that you can get from looking closer at them, even when they’re absurd by nature. Again, let people have their hobbies. Don’t try to make people feel like fools for picking silly comics apart.
That wasn’t my personal experience from the comment. I simply recognised it as anti-intellectual virtue signalling and didn’t want that to go unchallenged. It just seemed very clear that the intent of your comment was to belittle those picking the comic apart.
That seems incredibly silly; why on earth should I care about whether random people on the Internet think I have superior virtue or not? I am too busy making sure that they recognize my superior sense of humor!
those are also thought-terminating cliches that add nothing to the discourse though. like the other user said, it’s an open platform so anyone can just run their mouth.
Having said that, my specific objection is not to all of the discussion taking place here, but to the fact that a lot of the comments seem to be projecting their own personal viewpoints onto the comic.
this is a valid way to connect with and analyze any medium though, there is an interaction between the art and the viewer that can bring additional nuance and meaning to a piece and heighten its impact, regardless of the artist’s intent. for me, i not only identify strongly with the mother in the last panel (deconversion was a spiritually and emotionally devastating experience for me), but also the “neckbeard atheist” guys in the first two panels (i was a loud inconsiderate anti-religious jackass for some years). this comic causes me to pause and reflect on the way that i was in fact eager to pass along my deconversion trauma to the next person, because of how miserable and empty i felt inside. that’s powerful, and lends this work a hell of a gut punch for me.
is it not worth examining that where you perceived a dumb joke, i perceived a somber and rueful rumination on faith, loss, generational trauma, and the odd human desire to share suffering? and importantly, neither of us is wrong.
i think it’s fun and good to examine media deeply, even if it seems shallow. it’s an enriching and very human thing to explore our relationships to media and seek meaning, even if only on a personal level. and i find it very sad that someone taught you that it’s not cool to think deeply about stuff and share your thoughts, and to be flippantly dismissive of anyone who does so about the “wrong” things. that wasn’t cool of them. never mind, re-reading the thread i think i have you wrong. enjoy the rest of the writeup.
Sheesh, I don’t know why everyone here is acting like I am the sensitive one while being so sensitive themselves! 😄 I have never said that it is invalid for you or anyone else to reflect on and discuss the comic however you want. My personal contribution to the discussion–which I am making for the reason of amusing myself and others and no other reason–was just to point out what the author probably meant by citing their other work, because it seems to me like a lot of people are treating the comic as a serious expression of the deep beliefs of the author when it was more likely than not just an excuse to be silly. Here, let me cite another example of this author’s work as evidence in favor of this proposition:
Fair enough! I only saw you stroke out one sentence so I wasn’t sure if that was the only one you were retracting. (Also, it gave me an excuse to add another comic to the discussion!)
Example intellectual comments being posted here:
Having said that, my specific objection is not to all of the discussion taking place here, but to the fact that a lot of the comments seem to be projecting their own personal viewpoints onto the comic.
Also, I was not shouting people down; I was speaking in all caps to be funny. It’s fine if you personally did not think I funny, but that was the intent (which in retrospect could probably have been conveyed more clearly if I had also dropped the comma so that it was purely a stream of words), just like it was the intent of the comic author to make a dumb joke rather than to state a strong opinion about atheists. I think that it is useful to separate the intent of what an author was trying to accomplish from your own thoughts on the subject.
That’s somewhat my bad for taking the adversarial tone of your original comment to being serious and about all comments looking into the comic’s unsaid meanings.
At the same time, though, the comic is 100% meant to make fun of militant atheists, as in atheists who make their whole personality atheism. The folks who’s sole goal seemingly is to make everyone stop being religious. And the punchline is that despite achieving his goal, he only managed to make his mother’s life worse by forcing her through an epiphany she wasn’t ready for and then abandoning her with her own thoughts. The comic is partially funny because of it making fun of militant atheists. The other portion of the humor is the absurd nature of the situation.
The first comment you show takes that joke personally and the second resonates with that message. Neither of these are really off the mark, as grating as their tones may be to some.
I agree completely that the comic is parodying a particular cliche of a militant atheist. I disagree that the intent was to provide serious social commentary.
And I did not find either of those comments grating; I was merely citing them as evidence that not all of the discussion here is “intellectual”. Honestly, the real avenue of criticism that was left open to you that I was expecting you to take was to point out, correctly, that they were heavily cherry-picked for their unreasonableness; it actually surprises me a bit that instead you called them not “really off the mark” as if they were inherently reasonable responses.
Sure, that’s what satire is. A parody of something to criticise it. Often using clichés to ensure the subject is immediately identifiable.
This comic is a satire of militant atheists, because the author finds that militant atheists are insufferable and deserve to be made fun of, as the comic is doing. Why else would the author choose them specifically to satirize?
You chose those two comments to point at examples of unintellectual discussion. I am pointing out that they are not as unintellectual as you paint them to be. I don’t strongly agree with what they are saying, but that does not immediately disqualify them from contributing from the conversation. Your comment was the only one calling for the termination of the pursuit of deeper meaning in the comic, which is an anti-intellectual stance.
Ah, I see your point now; this is basically just like how the author was making the point that refrigerator stores have an annoying way of trying to sell people butthole pictures in this comic:
I have no desire to terminate anything. For someone going to so much trouble to express how much you care about the importance of intellectual discussion, you are working extremely hard to avoid engaging your intellect when it comes to my comments.
Your original comment reads
It’s pretty blankly a thought terminating cliché without your later clarification, same as the noteable “The curtains were fucking blue” meme. Even with your clarification, you are now bringing up yet another one of the comics to try and show there is no deeper substance to find from these comics, which I disagree.
With most of these comics, the author does enjoy using absurd humor. But they do still have some grounding in real things. The first example you give is poking fun at taking the saying ‘you can do anything you set your mind to’ and the second is a joke about dual-businesses, with the premise being, generically, a business with one service that’s normal and another service that’s something almost no one is going to request.
There’s still some interesting things within that you can get from looking closer at them, even when they’re absurd by nature. Again, let people have their hobbies. Don’t try to make people feel like fools for picking silly comics apart.
To be sure, my comment was absolutely a dumb cliché! If your response to it was to feel like a fool, though, then that’s on you. 😉
That wasn’t my personal experience from the comment. I simply recognised it as anti-intellectual virtue signalling and didn’t want that to go unchallenged. It just seemed very clear that the intent of your comment was to belittle those picking the comic apart.
That seems incredibly silly; why on earth should I care about whether random people on the Internet think I have superior virtue or not? I am too busy making sure that they recognize my superior sense of humor!
those are also thought-terminating cliches that add nothing to the discourse though. like the other user said, it’s an open platform so anyone can just run their mouth.
this is a valid way to connect with and analyze any medium though, there is an interaction between the art and the viewer that can bring additional nuance and meaning to a piece and heighten its impact, regardless of the artist’s intent. for me, i not only identify strongly with the mother in the last panel (deconversion was a spiritually and emotionally devastating experience for me), but also the “neckbeard atheist” guys in the first two panels (i was a loud inconsiderate anti-religious jackass for some years). this comic causes me to pause and reflect on the way that i was in fact eager to pass along my deconversion trauma to the next person, because of how miserable and empty i felt inside. that’s powerful, and lends this work a hell of a gut punch for me.
is it not worth examining that where you perceived a dumb joke, i perceived a somber and rueful rumination on faith, loss, generational trauma, and the odd human desire to share suffering? and importantly, neither of us is wrong.
i think it’s fun and good to examine media deeply, even if it seems shallow. it’s an enriching and very human thing to explore our relationships to media and seek meaning, even if only on a personal level.
and i find it very sad that someone taught you that it’s not cool to think deeply about stuff and share your thoughts, and to be flippantly dismissive of anyone who does so about the “wrong” things. that wasn’t cool of them.never mind, re-reading the thread i think i have you wrong. enjoy the rest of the writeup.Sheesh, I don’t know why everyone here is acting like I am the sensitive one while being so sensitive themselves! 😄 I have never said that it is invalid for you or anyone else to reflect on and discuss the comic however you want. My personal contribution to the discussion–which I am making for the reason of amusing myself and others and no other reason–was just to point out what the author probably meant by citing their other work, because it seems to me like a lot of people are treating the comic as a serious expression of the deep beliefs of the author when it was more likely than not just an excuse to be silly. Here, let me cite another example of this author’s work as evidence in favor of this proposition:
yeah dude. thats why i made the edit at the end, i realized i had you wrong.
Fair enough! I only saw you stroke out one sentence so I wasn’t sure if that was the only one you were retracting. (Also, it gave me an excuse to add another comic to the discussion!)