If you cant take the heat, get out of the kitchen


In an interaction, where there is a recipient and a donor (yes that is the antonym of recipient), the burden of responsibility, of proof, is on the donor. It is the donor’s responsibility to ensure that the recipient actually receives what they are giving. It isn’t the customers’ responsibility to buy your product; it is yours to sell it to them. So sell it. It is the artists’ responsibility to reach their audience, not the audience's to accommodate the artist. It is the comedian’s responsibility to make the joke land, if the crowd doesn’t laugh then the comedian failed. 

There is a pandemic of donors who forfeit their responsibility to the recipient, and then cry woe when the recipient doesn’t pick up what they dropped. Comedians from the last decade, and the one before have expressed their disdain for the “current generation” for being too sensitive. They say that the audience has lost their sense of humour, and they take everything too seriously. The people, whose job is to use their wit and smarts to interpret and intellectualise things that are happening in society, and present them to an audience in an unconventional and thereby, humorous manner, are blaming the audience for not being amused by their attempts at entertaining them using societal happenstance. 

People like Kevin Hart who was funny yesterday because they could wrap their brains around the topics of the day are now crying foul because they can no longer understand, intellectualise, interpret and articulate where society is today; are blaming society for leaving them behind. 

We are too sensitive, for knowing better than before and behaving accordingly. He has lost his audience, has not kept up with the pace, and somehow the issue is everyone else, not him. It is the responsibility of the speaker to reach his audience, if he fails; they will shortly disperse, and find something else to occupy their time. 

If comedy refuses to keep up with society, it will be left behind and forgotten, like stonemasons, cassette tapes, or conversion therapy. Keep up or get left behind, but please stop bitching. 



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