A few people might hate what I’m going to say next, but Karens and the PC police have ruined humour and banter for us all, not just men.

Now we’re all more conscious of how offensive everyone finds…almost everything, we’re also living in fear that our true selves might slip out we get into trouble for it. People aren’t allowed to relax and be happy for fear someone is going to shop them. Life is now a banter free zone.

When I first started working in the late 90s everyone told jokes about everything and you could laugh at yourself as well as others.

I remember being at the annual health and safety training, that simple crap you see every year about how to pick up a heavy box or set your chair up properly. Everyone was trying not to doze off. I was sat behind the health and safety guy moving the slides along from a pc, and to wake everyone up I would flash a little bit of my bra so that only the people watching the slides could see. This got everyone quietly chuckling and we got through the training without people falling asleep.

Then there was Mark who in previous years had got himself caught in his flies and injured himself, at the Christmas party would get mortal drunk and whip out his plonker so we could all point and laugh at his horribly scarred knob.

The office was full of double entendres, sexual innuendo and jokes where a some point we were the butt of it and other times the instigators. And we’re close friends who worked hard, never let anyone struggle alone and always hit our targets.

Now that’s impossible to exist. There’s like a Berlin Wall complete with guard towers, search lights and land mines between us all - preventing anyone to really connect with anyone else without fear of career changing recriminations at the smallest gesture. That’s not progress. Everyone should be able to laugh at themselves and others. It seems pretty arrogant to me to think you might live for 80 years and nobody is allowed to say something that offends you in all that time.

And that’s my opinion in a nice neat bow. 🙂 Anyways, have a nice day.

SW-User

Aside from middle-class individuals who have no sense of humor, this is mostly driven by those in control of decision making and they are almost always people who sit behind a desk and don't engage with the rest of us in a normal, human way.

There's been some instances where I've been really surprised by some people's attitudes because I expected them to be as uptight and rigid as other people who worked for the same body or organization, but then I realized that they were different because they belonged to the older generation and because they engaged with others in a more free and unrestricted setting, meaning they could be more friendly, natural and less inhuman. I personally think that a lack of humanity and common sense is really what the issue of political correctness and rigid/extreme rules come down to.

But remember, if you don't engage with people like they are people...it will create a negative environment, and you won't ever get the best from them. We need to be able to be human beings and that's essentially what those in/with power are trying to stop.