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Viliam_Bur comments on Making Fun of Things is Easy - Less Wrong Discussion
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So perhaps a good joke is about the essence of the criticized thing. And a bad joke is mere pattern-matching of the criticized thing; sometimes using a very poorly matching pattern.
(Or the bad joke may be about something irrelevant. Reminds me of two politicians in my country who were very powerful a few years ago. One of them seemed mentally unstable, and he frequently said the exact opposite of what he said before, just because it happened to fit in his newest conspiracy theory. His opponents made fun of him, often simply by quoting what he said last year and what he said now; and they also made fun of how his supporters also quickly changed their mind but sometimes didn't get the memo about the latest change of mind of their leader, so they contradicted each other, and then clumsily pretended the contradiction didn't happen. But also the other side made fun of their most important opponent... saying that he was short. And it seemed equally funny to them.)
So what you're saying is that he was willing to change his mind. ;)
At least that's how American politicians who do things like this try to spin it.
This one was an extreme case, even for a politician. Most likely really mentally ill, suffering from paranoia. His stories felt credible and sincere (I wouldn't be surprised if this is true in general for intelligent paranoid people), and he started very popular, but gradually more and more people noticed that his words don't match well with reality, and not even with his previous words. At the end mostly the old people remained loyal to him, so we say cynically that his political base died of old age. I guess that unlike many politicians, this one probably truly believed what he said.