Today’s college students can’t seem to take a joke.

[Togo]

Plenty of stand-up commedy at my university. For students, by students, everything. Also recently had a production company recording for a commedy game show, and that was well-attended by students.

Recently went to a LGTB* caberet, and that was pretty funny. There was some parodies of the foibles of female fans, some fine dick jokes, a song about ignoring chances for dating/sex because 'someone on the internet is wrong', some great jokes about sex scenes in children's books and what children tell each other in school about the opposite sex.

So I'm not seeing the problem.

I suppose one issue is that mainstream commedians like Seinfeld are going to be used to a mainstream audiance, which will laugh at some things but not others. Students are a different bag - they take different issues seriously, and find different stuff funny. There's plenty of stuff that audiances take seriously enough that they won't laugh at it. Besides, if a big name commedian bombs, he kinda needs to blame it on a problem with the audiance or his career takes a hit.

But yeah, commedy is hard to get right. Saying you're not getting the right kind of audiance may feel like it's got some truth to it, but it's not really the point. It just means the same jokes are not as funny as they used to be.

*Fairly sure I left out some letters there, but hey.

 

[thebeave]

Professor Christina Hoff-Sommers, has addressed this in several recent videos, particularly in regard to feminists and gender politics. She has dealt with this personally when trying to speak at several Universities, most notably Oberlin:




She also has some advice for new students entering today's colleges:

 

[NobleSavage]

What about the 2nd point brought up in the OP?

To understand this change, it helps to think of college not as an institution of scholarly pursuit but as the all-inclusive resort that it has in recent years become—and then to think of the undergraduate who drops out or transfers as an early checkout. Keeping hold of that kid for all four years has become a central obsession of the higher-ed-industrial complex. How do you do it? In part, by importing enough jesters and bards to keep him from wandering away to someplace more entertaining, taking his Pell grant and his 529 plan and his student loans with him.

I don't remember much coddling, but that was 15 years ago.