To be shocked by Cards Against Humanity game?

[Topaz25]

I saw a few Facebook friends mentioning this fun game they're playing, Cards Against Humanity, so I thought I'd check it out. The aim of the game is to come up with funny and offensive card combinations. I was aware that the humour was adult and offensive and I don't think of myself as a prude but I was still shocked to find that it contains references to: ‘Madeleine McCann’, ‘Jade Goody’s cancerous remains’ and the Hillsborough disaster. One of my Facebook friends who plays is a mother so I'm shocked that she has no empathy for Madeline McCann's mother. I know this game is protected by free speech etc but AIBU to think less of anyone who plays it?

I know older people who told me they could hear the screams from the stadium just don't understand how people could find that funny.

The whole concept of the game is to come up with offensive or surreal combinations of cards - hence why such controversial topics are included in it. You either accept that as the idea of the thing or you don't. If you don't then fair enough, you find it offensive, no one is forcing you to play it.

Why make life worse for people who are already going through a very difficult time by paying to play a game that mocks their suffering?

What Topaz said. I've got a pretty dry sense of humour that people don't always 'get', but finding hilarity from other people's suffering is sick.

You realize that the majority of the cards just have a single word on right? Its the player that makes it offensive or not based on the context. I look forward to the day when only what is not offensive to anyone is available - that will be a riot I am sure. Wall to wall Miranda reruns maybe?

Its like explaining colour to the blind really - you will never get it if you cannot see past what you personally find amusing as the only possible right thing. And I stand by Kate McCann probably being more bothered about her missing daughter than how I use her name in a sentence in my own home. This is all a bit pathetic - you just don't buy it yourself if you are offended, as with all books/games/music. Cards is no more offensive than Eminem/Tom Green/Chubby Brown or any number of other examples.

At the moment when we start trotting out the survivor stories you have heard 2nd hand as a justification for your moral superiority, I am off! You know my thoughts, YABU.

I wouldn't play it, I avoid 'comedians' like Frankie B also.

Would just like to point out that you don't need to be a Mother to have empathy when a child dies or goes missing. Most human beings with or without children of their own can empathise and have, you know, feelings.

The fact of the matter is that for most people, other people (and their tragedies) are just bit players.

People read of Madeline McCann, James Bulger etc, and take the story as a as life lesson.

Just as most people don't really believe they will ever die/suffer loss/experience war/famine etc.

Nobody plays that game and thinks of the day to day horror behind the story/idea. They see it in the abstract. A story. Something to learn from.

It is a form of buffering/protection, and it is what we all do when we read these news stories. We believe that we are untouchable, that we are 'better than that'.

Black humour has it's place. It is a coping mechanism, with added depth.

Bleating about it just suggests that you are rather lacking in emotional depth. Taking the tabloid 'oh shock, horror' view is the easy way out.

Really think about it. What do people fear? Where do they finfd refuge? What promps empathy (as opposed to Diana-esque tears)?

Would you like an example of how the game is played? One person lays the black card and then people pick from their hand of white cards either an offensive or surreal or just plain weird thing to fill in the gaps. So you can have the tame Tom Cruise ending your last relationship, or mouth herpes, or weirdly panda sex. Or if you have them you could pick to play something more shocked-gasp inducing like "a mime having a stroke" or "Stephen Hawking talking dirty" or "not giving a shit about the Third World". You also have blank cards to make your own. It's really as offensive as your choose to make it...

Topaz, your outrage is exactly the response that the game's producers are looking for.

Bear in mind that this thread is introducing a lot of MNers to the game. You're unwittingly promoting it.

The first time I played Cards Against Humanity I laughed so hard I cried. (You can only play it about twice before it gets samey, I found). And this is coming from someone who usually likes gentle humour, a la Miranda and Michael McIntyre! I would never watch Frankie Boyle. To me CoH is a completely different form of entertainment.

It's also impossible to comment accurately on the game without having played it. 'Hillsborough' means nothing in itself, it's what you do with the card, and there are plenty of combinations that would provide no offence whatsoever. (Although to be perfectly honest, within the context of the game there is no interest in combinations that aren't offensive/surreal/hilarious/gross).

Ive never played it and do want a deck, mine & my friends & OH's sense of humour is literally disgusting and vile but we keep it to ourselves. We'd play this together though.

Sorry op I played it with my siblings at Christmas and we were in tears of laughter. It's funny, at least we found it so.

if you don't like it don't play it. Simples

I find it more worrying that smug morons want stuff banned just because it doesn't appeal to their very narrow tastes. You whinyarses are probably the sort of people who think that reading 'misery memoirs' makes you a caring person.

I've played it. Yes, there are cards that go too far, but a lot of it is the context of the combination created by the players.

As for bad taste humour - that's a British tradition in its own right, frankly.

I am also in the USA and have a different version of the game, but we love it! It is so much fun - like a grown up version of Apples to Apples. I would also love a McCann card, although preferably the parents, as all my sympathy lies with the child. I would not use the Jade Goody card, but that is the point of CAH, to find the level where it makes you uncomfortable. You can generate your own cards too to make a personal game for a group of friends. I have played this game at a party where the hosts had their 60 year old in laws there and they loved it even more than we did.

I am a Mum of 3 and have plenty of empathy, you can have empathy and a dark sense of humour at the same time. Otherwise comedians like Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr, who go for shock value and offending everybody, wouldn't be successful.

YABU and judgey.

I'm fairly empathatic but sometimes its just nice to have a bottle glass of wine with friends and make jokes which go beyond boundaries I'm otherwise comfortable with. We know its just in the game and when the game ends we move on.

TBH I win by putting down the card that my first instinct is to feel guilty about.

I'm fairly empathatic but sometimes its just nice to have a bottle glass of wine with friends and make jokes which go beyond boundaries I'm otherwise comfortable with. We know its just in the game and when the game ends we move on.

TBH I win by putting down the card that my first instinct is to feel guilty about.

I know older people who told me they could hear the screams from the stadium, just don't understand how people could find that funny.

Because jokes like that don't mock individual victims, and there's a sense of detachment from something like that. There's a huge difference between laughing at individual victims and their families from 9/11 and "Don't make 9/11 jokes, they're just plane wrong". I can promise that not a single person would go meet a family that was affected by it and laugh if they told their experience. But I think if you were to really sit down and ponder every terrible thing that happens in this world, you'd die of depression.

Every offensive joke has the ability to mock people's pain, that's why they're offensive. Rape jokes, dead baby jokes, jokes about the holocaust, sexist jokes, religious jokes, morbid jokes, etc... That's exactly my point about it being just a joke. Whether you find it funny or not isn't the point.

Like all jokes, it's about context and knowing your audience. If you know people from the Hillsborough disaster, don't tell jokes about it around them. Or make sure your friends have the same humor as you before telling a joke. I don't tell racist jokes to my dark friends unless I know they're cool with it and understand it's a joke. That's not so hard is it?

But it's a little ridiculous to say that people shouldn't be allowed to laugh at certain things just because you feel uncomfortable with it. I have family in NYC, my uncle only avoided getting killed in 9/11 because he woke up late and decided to just work from home instead, his entire company was taken out an hour after he got off the phone with the boss because a plane crashed through those floors. My cousin watched people jumping out of the buildings. I still remember the panic of frantically calling family to make sure they were all ok. I still laugh at 9/11 jokes and I don't hold it against people that do either. Nor do I scoff at people that don't find them funny, and I would never tell those jokes to people that were uncomfortable with it. It's not about mocking victims and their pain, sometimes its about finding a way to detach yourself from tragedies like that and sometimes it's just about funny and tasteless shock value.

But laughing and not laughing at a joke like that doesn't really say much about you as a person, and it doesn't make you a better person to proclaim that certain jokes just aren't funny.

cant anyone have any bloody fun anymore
you dont like it fine, my kids like it, fine live and let live ffs

PrincessBabyCat But in this case, not telling the joke around the people involved won't spare them from being upset and offended. The relatives of Madeline McCann and victims of the Hillsborough disaster are already upset by this game. So no, whether I find it funny or not is not the point. The point is that this company is making money mocking grieving people and the people who buy or promote this game are supporting that.

It's a great game! But with all, if it offends you, don't engage with it, no one is making you play.....

somewheresomehow
Really? I thought it was an adult game. Do your kids get the cultural references or do you have to explain to them why Hillsborough and Madeline McCann were in the news and why that's funny?

I'm nearly 30. I only learnt about Hillsborough when the lies were uncovered (its not something you tell a 5-6 yo as I was at the time). So there are plenty of adults who won't recall the horror at the time.

OP, do you get a prize every time you mention Madeline McCann or her parents? [6 times by my reckoning]. You have made your point. Repeatedly.

YANBU to think it's in poor taste and dislike it. YWBU to try to stop other people playing it.