Cards against humanity.

[Stumpy Pepys]

Ban this sick filth now

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Which is, if you have any idea about the history of CAH, complete bullshit.

does that really matter? the history of something doesn't really affect what it's actually used for now. The World Wide web was invented by a mild mannered unitarian in order to bring the world together. Not Neo-nazi donkey porn.

The interesting question aside from it depending on context or not, is when it is transgressive and edgy, is it punching up or punching down.

[Snake Plissken]

Hang on. You don’t get to throw an unfounded accusation and then when called on it go “does it matter?” It is the work of seconds to find out what the inventors think.

As for the second, the answer is neither.

[Bored Of Education]

I don't agree, Snake. My take on the context was spot on. I played the game with friends. That's the context. I played the game with the sort of friends that, aside from my brothers, I can take humour to the most extreme possible. I saw them again last night and we all agreed that it was a crap unfunny game. I don't need to know the history of the game to provide any context of that (although that is not quite what you were saying, to be fair). I have also watched and done comedy (although that shouldn't make a jot of difference - it isn't a game for comedians). My favourite comedians - Bill Hicks, Stewart Lee - are the types that take comedy to a darker, more unsettling level.

CAH is allowing to people to say "big black cock" and having a smug snigger but feeling OK because they aren't saying "nigger", "AIDs" and having a smug snigger but feeling OK because they aren't saying "faggot" or "children with bum cancer" and having a smug snigger but feeling OK because they aren't saying "children with luekemia"

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

It's not an unfounded accusation. the intentions of the designers are irrelevant. Wilbur and orville wright didn't know that the airplane was great for delivering death from above. zyklon b was a perfectly normal pesticide, proton pump inhibitors are god's gift to Chemo patients, and the best hangover cure on the planet. one person's use of something for its prescribed purpose doesn't say anything about what other people use it for.

If it doesn't punch up or down, what exactly is edgy about it?

[DCI Harry Batt]

Did you not read? You can say "big black cock" and laugh with your mates and not be racist. If that isn't edgy, I don't know what is.

[anton pulisov]

The main problem I have with the game is that it is really boring.

[Bored Of Education]

There is that as well. Boring and unfunny.

[Vicarious Thrillseeker]

I played it last year with a group of humanitarian workers in Kenya. Not many - if any - sweary words were used and the winning card tended to be contextually apposite. But it is slow and a bit dull and I wouldn't play it with certain of my friends as I guess they would use the bomb words for non-contextual 'comic' effect.

[Bored Of Education]

Like jokes, if a game needs this much explaining, it is useless.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

yeah, I don't want anything I said to be taken as having a go at SP. Different people are going to use it differently.

I can't imagine that a crowd of people who were working at a galway arts festival would be an ideal group for playing a game like this. For a wide variety of reasons, but mostly because many of them won't require a game to say alarming things. Just not in the way that the game prescribes.

[Jah Womble]

Isn't it more about a lack of any real sophistication in its targets than the 'banning' of 'sick filth'? I'd doubt that any of the detractors on here are especially shocked by CAH, so much as they are disappointed (for want of, etc) in its apparently low-level ambition. The reason for this can only be in where the makers believe their core market lies - which has been well-documented already upthread.

Perhaps my expectations are unrealistic. Having only played the game once, I'm willing to accept that there might be something I'm not getting from it, but it feels to me more like a workable idea for a game not realised.

[Bored Of Education]

Good grief, no-one wants it banned. It isn't even really offensive - certainly not as much as it thinks it is - just boring, unfunny and a bit said, in all meanings of the word. Banning it would just give it an undeserved notoriety (that is surely desired by the makers) and oxygen of publicity. It will die off soon. Outside of a few millennial kidults who can't see why calling stuff 'gay' is wrong, people will only give it one go and be back to Scrabble at the first opportunity. Luckily, the one I got is untouched and still in its wrapper so can go to the charity shop. Probably one for kids with bum cancer.

[anton pulisov]

It would be a better game if there were no answer cards, i.e. you had to come up with words to fill in the blank yourself. I guess they thought of that first, but realised that Blankety Blank had beaten them to it.

[HORN]

That game actually exists, but I can’t think of its name. Vole had a copy.

[DCI Harry Batt]

It's bad form to accuse Snake of being racist, though.

I don't think I've done anything more than express my disgust at this from SP:

If I award a round to someone who completes "The Pope is a secretly the worlds biggest fan of _____" with "big black cock", I'm not being racist

I'm happy sticking with that.

[Satchmo Distel]

I don't think that the joke implies that black men really have bigger penises; it's playing on the idea that the leader of one the world's most homophobic religions is a closet gay man who assumes that black men have bigger penises because 400 years of racism have invented that myth, which white people have internalized at a deep Freudian level. Whether that's funny or not is an entirely subjective thing which an intelligent group of friends can discuss, but someone who takes offense would presumably be offended by "big black cock" in any context, in the same way that some people feel that the word n***er should never appear in a joke no matter what the context or intention of the comedian.

[DCI Harry Batt]

I don't think that the joke implies that black men really have bigger penises

So it's not quite as bad as I hadn't even imagined it might be? Excellent.

I think the "someone who takes offence" line is a pretty poor one to trot out, myself. But I doubt we'll get to a place of agreement here. I hadn't realised the game was quite as awful as SP has explained it is, and now I know, I'm glad I'm unlikely to come across it again. I'd be happier if it didn't exist, but I have no plans to burn every copy which has been made or sold.

[WOM]

It would be a better game if there were no answer cards, i.e. you had to come up with words to fill in the blank yourself. I guess they thought of that first, but realised that Blankety Blank had beaten them to it.

That was the entire premise of the TV games show Match Game. A panel of not-terribly-busy 'celebrities' vs two ordinary folk. The host would read "As Rhett Butler said to his barber, 'Frankly my dear I don't give a ________'". And if you and one or more of the celebrities wrote "tip" on your cards, you scored a point.

It's terrible, yet it's still going with new episodes on Canadian TV. A more depressing half hour you'll not spend.

[MsD]

Without getting into the detail/context or taking sides, I think the general trouble with "big black cock" jokes is that they reduce black men to a body part, reinforcing the "bestial" sexualised stereotype,

[WOM]

True. Funnier would be 'fully realized individual with hopes and dreams, just like you, and a big black cock'.

[MsD]

Best to leave it out altogether IMO. None of you would dream of joking about "big fat black pussy-lips", would you?

[WOM]

Were it a broadly-used (abused) cultural trope or stereotype or go-to, then yes. But it's not, so ... no.

The larger point is, again, trying to sanitize humour (or humourous premises). The very nature of humour is to create degrees of surprise / shock by causing discomfort / offense.

I guess my point would be, if you don't wish to hear something that might offend you, don't go to a comedy club. If you don't wish to engage in causing offence through parlour games, don't play purportedly offensive parlour games. They're not hard to avoid.

And yes, without wishing to offend TT, there are people whose job it is to get offended when the wind blows.

[MsD]

Do I seem to need instruction on humour? I wouldn't play CAH because it's boring, and my friends and I are inventively and spontaneously funny, but it's not just a question of my taking offence at "big black cock". It's dehumanising.

[WOM]

Anything humorous that leans on broad cultural stereotypes is dehumanizing. That's the entire point of it. It's why jokes about Mexicans being only obsessed with money, or Portuguese being shitty drivers, or the Japanese having big cocks, or the Swedish fucking goats just don't work.