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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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A number of the women offended at his joke have invoked their credentials to explain why Shane Gillis is obviously not a good comedian. A uniquely qualified student of comedy invokes her prestigious internship with a smirk to inform you that she knows about comedy. A graduate of comedy writing believes that her classes permit her to speak with haughty authority on comedy.

As with ludology (the study of games), the study of comedy should be considered an experimental discipline. It's reasonable for an expert in these fields to not be able to make a fun game or a funny monologue, but they should be able to predict which games are fun and which monologues are funny, and to explain why they are with principles that reliably generalize to other games or monologues. If they cannot, they are not demonstrating that the hiliarious comedy is actually Not Funny or the bomb is Funny, (nor equivalently for games); they are instead demonstrating they are bad in their field or their field is without basis. In other words, being an expert in the study of comedy absolutely does not qualify you to contradict the success of practical comedians, and more than being an expert in the study of aerodynamics allows you to contradict the flight of bumblebees.