In my 17 years of writing, I have never replied to criticisms that my work is "unfunny," because they usually don't matter. Here's why:
YOU'RE NOT QUALIFIED.
Not in the sense that you don't meet the minimum requirements to have an opinion, but because you haven't qualified your opinion. That's because nobody knows who you are.
In order for anyone to give a shit about your opinion, we need a frame of reference so we know what makes you tick, what your personality is like and what kind of
sense of humor you have. My opinion matters because I have a vast body of work, and am a known writer so when I say something "sucks" or isn't funny, people know I'm coming from a place of genius, truth and
concentrated righteousness. That's why
critics like Roger Ebert have opinions that matter; not because his opinion is more valid than yours, but because people know his taste in entertainment and movies, so when he pans video games for not being "art,"
people like me know to ignore him because he's a curmudgeonly old man who probably doesn't understand how or why people play, never spent much time with them and probably sucks at them.
You, on the other hand, are an anonymous nobody. Your sense of humor might be lame (as evidenced by your comment). You might be a fan of prop gags and pictures of cats with captions on them,
which would be useful information to know before someone decides on how much of a shit to give—if any—about your opinion. Just like you wouldn't ask Justin Bieber his opinion of death metal, asking
your opinion on my humor would be pointless if you're a fan of stupid Skyrim "wounded knee" memes. So that raises the question:
WHAT IS YOUR SENSE OF HUMOR?
So I did some research and found out what Tomek's sense of humor is exactly. In a Digg post, Tomek shamelessly promotes some shitty card game he and his friends play:
Tomek tries his hand at suggestive humor by saying "Go to the website, gooooo, I am hypnotizing you to go" followed by a toothless dare and a pointless emoticon: "I dare you not to go... O.O" So I went to the website and
dug around for a bit and stumbled upon this little gem from Tomek himself:
“First rule of comedy: never have both the foreground and the background of the scene doing something comedic.”
-Tomek
Ah yes, the first rule of comedy. Everyone knows the first rule of comedy, so it's hardly necessary for Tomek to elaborate, but he does: "For example, you can have a news reporter talking to the camera in all seriousness while
in the background someone is eating a flaming squash while screaming in pain. It would not be funny if both of them would be doing something comical." So to Tomek, a news reporter talking "in all seriousness" while
someone is eating a "flaming squash" in the background, is funny, but if the news reporter was also doing something "comedic," then it would be NOT FUNNY. And we can all take for granted that someone eating a flaming squash
is hilarious, right you cock? It's astonishing how many classic works of comedy violate this simple rule. Take, for example, this pie-throwing scene from "The Three Stooges:"
Clearly since Moe is in the background along with three pie-victims, and Curly is in the foreground, Tomek's rule of comedy dictates that either the foreground or the background is funny, but not both. So in this
example, the opposite must be true:
That gives us a pretty good idea of Tomek's sense of humor, but I wanted to be thorough, so I dug a little bit deeper and found this:
Tomek didn't write this joke, but he clearly appreciates the subtle nuance of a double entendre. The phrase "the police are looking into it" could mean that the police are investigating the hole, or that the police are
literally looking through the hole at the nudists. The presumption here is that the police are either investigating a crime or commiting one. Is it a crime to view nudists? Probably not. But still, HILARIOUS!
Still, I felt like I needed more, so I dug a little deeper and found a clip in which Tomek and his friends created a long, incoherent video mocking British people as part of a school project.
Here's a scene in which Tomek dances around like an asshole as he and his friends self-consciously glance at each other, the camera and their scripts as they bumble through line after line of shitty British stereotypes. The
audio in the video isn't normalized properly, so all the sound effects and music are uncompressed and are garishly loud, but the dialogue is almost completely inaudible. What little you could hear was bad British clichés:
fiddlesticks, cheerio, crumpets & tea, fish & chips, etc. Sound funny? Words can't do justice to Tomek and his friends' shrill performance as they act like goofy assholes, so...
BEHOLD, COMEDY:
Fucking idiot.
So to recap, here's what Tomek finds funny: flailing arms wildly while mocking British people, burning vegetables, and the prospect of cops looking at nudists. So finally you can make a more informed decision as to whether or
not you give a shit about his opinions, now that they are qualified. Do you share his sense of humor? If so, then you too might think I'm unfunny, and that's completely understandable
because you too might be a lanky moron who thinks he has comedy all figured out. Whether or not that's the case, however, doesn't
matter because your opinion, like Tomek's, doesn't matter unless you qualify it. And even then, it probably doesn't matter.
*Notes:
On Trolls: It has become far too easy for anyone on the Internet these days to simply use the copout of being a "troll" when they get called out for being a
dipshit. It's the Internet equivalent of a twist ending where you make it seem like you're a mastermind and planned your ruse all along. However, in order to be a troll, you have to have the intent to be a troll. You can't decide
to be a troll after the fact. Tomek is not a troll. He had no intent to provoke me or my readers with false or misleading opinions. Based on the evidence I found above, his opinions are
real, and are consistent with similar opinions he's stated in the past.
On privacy: everything posted here is available publically on Tomek's own accounts that he has chosen to share. Some of my readers think this is carte blanche to start posting personal
information such as his phone number, school,
address, etc. It is not. Also, all use of his public images here are used for the purposes of commentary or criticism, and are fair use. Don't go posting his private information everywhere. He's a careless idiot, don't be one too.
