Hacker News Reader

Comment by iterance | Hacker News Reader

It's not just acceptability. Jokes written even just five or ten years ago often fail to land on modern audiences. That taste in humor changes is neither morally positive nor negative. It's easy to look for deeper meaning in the notion that what once was funny now isn't, but often, there isn't a deeper meaning to find. Life is different now; so too must humor change.

View on HN

When I re-watch comedy like ‘The Young Ones’ or many other funny series from the 80s or 90s, I don’t find it funny any more. It’s not that the jokes weren’t good and that I didn’t find it funny at the time, it’s just that humour changes. In that case, it’s nothing to do with the jokes becoming ‘unacceptable’.

I find Yes Minister funny now, and I'm too young to have watched when it first aired.

I watched the entirety of Yes (Prime) Minister relatively recently despite being younger than the show and not British; and found it delightfully entertaining and often surprisingly relevant to contemporary political issues.

I used to find The Thick of It hilarious but now I find it a depressing reminder of how ludicrous modern politics has become

Yes Minister is a reminder that politics has been ludicrous for a long time, but I think its style is much lighter than The Thick of It.

The institution yes minister makes fun of has barely changed in 400 years, let alone 40, the jokes on the whole thus remain fresh.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com