by The Nutmeg News:
During year 4 of this website it is important for the editors and writers to sit down and take stock of the waters in which we tread.
The reality of satire is that it is effectively dead at this time. We live in a post-satire world where it feels that many of us are completely overwhelmed, at times, by a toxic miasma that settles upon everything we view.
When we look at political or cultural headlines more outrageous than The Onion, The Hard Times, Clickhole, or even David Borowitz could possibly conceive, an issue arises where nothing is satire because the essence of our shared reality appears to be indistinguishable from satire at best and broken at worst. What is believable? What is not? Where is the line anymore?
It should be said that some of this is, of course, highly dependent upon your world view.
This overexposure and cynicism that exists in the world can lead itself to the satirist or humorist or untalented hack attempting to lampoon their target by verging further into the extreme realms of joke. After all, if everything is crazy around you then you must exceed that crazy in order to generate something, whether a work or a reaction or a laugh.
Whether this is an attempt at humor created by offensive shock, racial overtones, homophobia, misogyny, or possibly just flat out provocation and insult, the humor itself is lost in the blatant attempt at being edgy and generally being a dumbass that thinks any of that stuff is funny.
Honestly, there isn’t much funny in “fuck you” despite the fact that this website has absolutely settled for such provocations.
Finding the edge in humor can be a line by line exploration of a knife edge ridge that straddles different cultural mores. This edge is necessary, in some cases, where in other cases dropping down into the valley on one side or the other can make an article feel profane, uncultured, offensive (without point), and false. This uncultured attempt at humor can be intentional, but it should never be accepted as a natural result of an attempt at humor.
Better minds than ours devoted themselves to the theory of humor from conceptual metaphor to the Benign Violation Theory.
However, when it comes down to writing dumb pieces like Soccer Supporter Celebrates Successful Agile Scrum With In Office Pyro Display or Singing Supporter Needs To Pick An Octave And Stick With It we decided for ourselves that the central feel of the story is either true or it isn’t true.
Fans, supporters, coaches, players, referees all know their own waters intimately. We know, in our own lives, that being around soccer and soccer supporters will worm itself into your life so much that you view the idea of celebrating a work related achievement the way a goal might be celebrated in the stands as a funny idea and/or contradiction.
We know the feeling of the pulsing energy (or depressing energy, let’s be honest) inside the stadium and the transition of this game feeling to your work where life exists in a slow march towards the evening, the weekend, the next game, the next gathering and the next celebration.
You may not be able to accurately define what authenticity is (if it exists at all), but people tend to know when they feel that it doesn’t exist.
Here’s a real, true, honest fact, however. None of these columns are written specifically for you and/or about you (in most cases).
With The Nutmeg News we created a world to make ourselves laugh and other people decided to laugh as well. Some of you decided to tell us to go fuck ourselves, or tell us that this isn’t funny. Some of you are probably right. With this ethos we never share our own stories past the boundaries of the social media we control. If you want it, it’s right there. If you don’t, you can just scroll past.
In the end, “This isn’t satire,” in this world at this time is probably true. It’s hard to do humor at all, trust us, we’ve failed more times than you can imagine, and we still constantly fail on a day by day by week by month timeline. We’ve written things that failed to make ourselves laugh, fretted over it in the drafts, submitted it for review to other writers and then deleted it or saved it for a better idea later.
There are drafts, pitches, ideas, submissions, pictures, and outlines that litter the landscape behind the scene. As well, there are columns/ideas that make it out that could be better, more concise, funnier or interesting. There are things that we love and find hilarious that you, apparently, don’t care find humorous or interesting. (These ideas still get written, though, because you fuckers aren’t paying the bills.)
The driving mission of this website four years later remains the same. We exist first and foremost to make ourselves laugh and in doing so we hope that some of you will laugh as well.
If you feel inclined, please put this website out of business by being better than we are. It shouldn’t take much because you can start at exactly the same level that we began. After all, all you need is a blog, and a bunch of dumb ideas that make you laugh.
We hope that you truly enjoy this April 1, 2019 and that some of the April Fools jokes out there online aren’t just brand created bullshit (ED: oooh, profane!) dedicated to amplify engagement while helping the bottom line.
With all the love in the world we urge you to take care of yourselves and be wary today of all days.
All of us with The Nutmeg News
(we don’t promise to say good bye)