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[Loud Whispers]

Tasteful jokes?

[LuckyNinja]

Well it opened to a bang, with ratings shooting to the top.

It's been a real hit with audiences, with hundreds dying to watch it.

[Euld]

No.

[RedKing]

Well....thread has gotten slightly less derpy after two days. That's good.

[Ochita]

but recent developments show that it has now attracted bad humour.

Yeaaah.

It would be best if everyone stops the jokes. Its really distasteful, and its insulting for everyone who was there. I know that black humor exists, but seriously. There is no good reason to make jokes about people being shot, as its just horrible.

[ChairmanPoo]

Meh, people make these kind of jokes all the time. It's a way of coping, not something particularily offensive, at least as far as I'm concerned.

What would make it offensive to me would be gloating at the shooting. Gallows humor is ok, but taking pleasure in human miseries is extremely distasteful to me, even when the victim is some dislikeable character, let alone when it's a bunch of random bystanders in a cinema.

[Loud Whispers]

It would be best if everyone stops the jokes. Its really distasteful, and its insulting for everyone who was there. I know that black humor exists, but seriously. There is no good reason to make jokes about people being shot, as its just horrible.

It's a great deal better than what the media does...

[Willfor]

The difference between tasteless jokes in person and tasteless jokes on the internet is one of scale. In person it can be a coping mechanism where if you know your audience you can be sure to tailor the jokes to the taste of anyone who is going to hear you. You only risk offending the people immediately surrounding you.

On a public forum you are literally putting this joke up for all to see, and ceases to become simply a coping mechanism. It loses all the tone, it can lose a great deal of the familiarity the reader has with the writer, the timing -- an intricate part of process -- is completely lost. In effect, tasteless jokes on the internet can lose quite a bit of the advantages they have in real life -- or even in a chat room -- when used on a forum, and they remain in that disadvantaged state forever. There is no ice to be broken here, no socially awkward pause that needs to be remedied with a quick shot to the ethereal melancholy.

Just keep that in mind.

[alway]

It would be best if everyone stops the jokes. Its really distasteful, and its insulting for everyone who was there. I know that black humor exists, but seriously. There is no good reason to make jokes about people being shot, as its just horrible.

It's a great deal better than what the media does...

Or what the preachers do.
http://www.examiner.com/article/rick-warren-aurora-shooting-the-fault-of-evolution

[GreatJustice]

Anyone care to count how many rights that'd violate? I'm guessing at least a dozen.

In other news, I'm forcibly reminded how poorly humor gets transmitted through the internet-particually on a topic like this. But more seriously, this guy wanted to be taken alive. Why, I don't know. But why would he get all of the armor and then just surrender? Even assuming he's insane, something's off here.

Maybe he thought the theatre goers would be heavily armed or something. He could have considered that if anyone else had a gun, he'd be a giant target and could be shot dead before he managed to finish his spree, and thus bought body armour to at least protect against the possibility.

Or maybe he's just nuts and thinks hes a commando.

[Cthulhu]

Anyone care to count how many rights that'd violate? I'm guessing at least a dozen.

In other news, I'm forcibly reminded how poorly humor gets transmitted through the internet-particually on a topic like this. But more seriously, this guy wanted to be taken alive. Why, I don't know. But why would he get all of the armor and then just surrender? Even assuming he's insane, something's off here.

Because now he's a celebrity.  Everyone will want to know what he was thinking, I'm not sure I can think of any spree murderers like this who've been taken in fully intact and able to answer questions.

This was done for infamy, and he's now the most talked about man in the country.

[palsch]

Maybe we can talk about the victims instead.

The local news channel, 9news, has had excelent and non-sensationalist coverage, more factually based than most of the major services and with a great focus on the victims over the killer. That link goes to profiles of the twelve dead.

I'm putting their image of the victims behind a spoiler simply because it includes a photo of the six year old who was killed. All of the photos are of them in happier times, but thinking of that girl being murdered is a likely trigger for some people.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Watching that channel was an excellent look into how coverage of such events should be handled. Professional, but local and not detached. The anchors and reporters were visibly affected at times, including being visibly angry at some of the speculation and rumours that were being passed back to them from other services and outsiders, but were ultimately supportive of the victims (they gave Jessica Ghawi's brother, Jordan, an open platform to speak about her life and appeal to the authorities to confirm her status) and just fantastic all round. I can't stand watching these things on major networks (even UK ones these days) where they let the 24 hour news flash and thirst for details turn it into ghoulish entertainment over anything else.

[kaijyuu]

Yeah I don't think an adult's life is worth any less than a kid's. It's like using "women and children" as an intensifier. If you use "even this person was a victim," it has the unfortunate implication of everyone else not mattering as much as the one(s) you pointed out.

[Loud Whispers]

It's base disgust from the killing of members of society we would instinctively protect.

[Alexhans]

I think it has to do with a perceived status of vulnerability we don't find in, say, young/adult males.

I do hate the emphasis though.  Specially when you're talking about collateral damage in wars and stuff like that and you pretend that just for being male (and not kids) it's somehow justified or that they're less innocent.