Humor, irony, sarcasm

[TektonikShift]

I am in a phase of self-development and I am re-evaluating a trait of me that is also part of my personality. Since I like to entertain people (which I think is one of my main purposes and missions in life), I often make jokes and attract large crowds of people when they are well-done.

However, I notice that sometimes, in order to entertain with a really good joke, I do say things that I don't mean, that - if I said it in the presence of another group of people - I would never say since it might hurt them.

Do you think irony and sarcasm should be as minimal as possible in general public situations, in order not to offend anyone (especially at conferences, speeches, etc.)?

[JimOfferman]

No. I think that people who fail to understand irony and sarcasm should be kept to a minimum.

[Cran]

Irony and sarcasm are two different things.

Sarcasm is bitter, often used to attack people. This form of speech should, imo, be limited, because it is likely to hurt other people and spoil the conversation. Unless you can be reasonably sure that everybody in the group agrees about something. For example: I can be as sarcastic as I want to be at my Jesuit-lead university, as long as I limit myself to topics like the Opus Dei. This might be considered a bit cheap, of course.
Cynicism should be used even more carefully than sarcasm.

Irony: Not every sentence should be ironic. Each figure of speech can be overused - bad style. But I agree with Jim: People who do not understand irony at all are banned from my (private) company.

In business interactions, it is best (always imo) to steer clear of irony/sarcasm, because it can be misunderstood and you HAVE to deal with those people and don't want to anger them.

[RT Wolf]

I know what you mean. I consider myself a pretty funny guy and have faced the same issue. I don't have a lot of clarity on this issue so lemme just throw in my coupla cents and see if they make up enough to buy any.

I wanna draw a distinction between feeling offended and being hurt. I dunno what it is, but I'd say that being offended isn't that big a deal but being genuinely hurt is.

Being hurt/offended is a choice. I believe in complete responsibility for emotions, so strictly speaking if someone is being offended/hurt, it is their problem. That said, I recognize that I can offer stimilus that they can refer to as harmful/offensive, so I tend to limit that because I'd rather not hurt someone just to get a laugh. There's someone out there who can and will get offended by any single thing you do. Additionally, I tend to believe that people who can't laugh at themselves are taking themselves way too seriously, but I do like to make jokes that put people down. Is there a limit? Like say there's 100 people of your "target" around and 1 person is offended out of all them. The other 99 are amused. Would you still not make that joke?

"Bland" jokes that would not offend anyone are often not that funny...unfortunately. That siad, you could totally make a career out of completely clean humour like Bill Cosby. Not my style.

Reminds me of Jeremy Clarkson on the motoring show "Top Gear". He was learning to drive at truck and said, "Truck driving is hard work. Change gear, change gear, change gear, murder a prostitute, change gear." He later said that he's carefully considered whether he'd say this in the presence of truckers before he decided to say it on the show. Unfortunately, it was the prostitutes that sent in a complaint to th BBC saying it wasn't funny.

All of that said, my preferred sort of comedy is a satire/parody where I'll usually say something the complete opposite of how I really feel. So I'll say something racist, not to make fun of the race involved but to make fun of the bigots. I'm ok with offending bigots. Or, this sort of thing I wrote just a bit ago:

Google is My Dear and Glorious Leader | Mind-Manual

I'm looking for feedback on this actually, so I'd appreciate it if someone would oblige.

Nope, doesn't seem to have come to any conclusion. You simply have to wonder if the "good" you're causing by people choosing to laugh is worth the "bad" some people choose to feel. Figure out what the split would be.

[TektonikShift]

Something I often do is make fun of diversity/integration programs (which I find inefficient) also by making fun of ethnic minorities. However, I do it for fun and not racism.
I am one of those ethnic minorities myself :P