Personal commitments have kept me from updating the series recently. This is one reason I hope more people will contribute: when some of us are unable to write, others can keep the series going. This installment takes the form of a round retrospective, revisiting the main arguments and the adjudicator’s reasoning from a particular debate.
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本院反对在战争等国家危机期间使用黑色幽默
引言
本文基于一场公开线上 BP 友谊赛整理，笔者为观赛者。下文先复盘各队论证与裁判判断，再提出个人分析。比赛中提及的现实案例仅作为选手使用的例证转述，不视为经过独立核验的事实。
在战争、灾难或公共卫生危机中，人们为什么仍然会开玩笑？有人借此消化无法改变的处境，有人以讽刺揭露权力的问题，也有人将他人的苦难变成供人围观的内容。这场辩论要比较的，是在这些用途同时存在时，反对黑色幽默会让危机中的人过得更好，还是剥夺他们本已有限的表达空间。
OG：公开传播的玩笑可能伤害受害者，并削弱社会对危机的认真对待。
上议院政府方（OG）的首相（PM）首先收窄讨论范围：他们不针对私下交谈中的玩笑，而主要反对黑色幽默在社交媒体、大型网络社区和公开演讲中的传播。需要说明的是，PM 在发言中交替使用了“反对”“控制”和“禁止”等表述，但没有提出完整的执行方案。裁判后续主要按价值立场上的反对理解政府方，而非将其视为一项具体的法律禁令。这种表述上的摇摆，也影响了后续关于污名化与自我审查的交锋。
OG 的第一个论点是，受害者可能将有关灾难的笑话理解为对自己痛苦的轻视。副首相（DPM）以一类将俄罗斯士兵参战与家属获得拉达汽车联系起来的笑话说明：传播者可能自认只是在开玩笑，但阵亡者的家属可能听到的是对亲人死亡的贬低。
第二个论点是，反复接触危机笑话可能降低人们对事件严重性的认识。PM 以其所称的东北洪灾相关调侃为例，主张轻松的网络叙事可能遮蔽实际伤亡，进而减少公众的同情与援助意愿。
第三个论点涉及信息与合作。DPM 提出，用户一旦与危机相关的幽默内容互动，平台便可能继续推荐类似内容，使其较少接触重要资讯。OG 希望由此说明：黑色幽默不仅可能影响个体感受，还可能削弱公众理解危机、配合应对和共同调动资源的能力。
OO：不能仅凭最恶劣的笑话，就反对一种被当事人用于应对危机的表达方式。
上议院反对方（OO）的反对党领袖（LO）首先挑战 OG 的取样方式：如果要反对黑色幽默这一类别，政府方不能只展示最坏的使用情境，还需要处理其通常用途与可能收益。
LO 随后主张，在危机中具有广泛影响力的黑色幽默，主要来自身处其中的人，例如谈论死亡风险的士兵、调侃物资短缺的居民，或嘲讽无能官员的公众。反对党副领袖（DLO）进一步提出，来自外部的恶意内容容易被认作政治攻击，而当地人的表达更可能获得信任。这里呈现的是 OO 对主要使用者与传播情境的判断，并非已经证实的普遍事实。
OO 的第一个实质论点是，黑色幽默能够降低批评权力的成本。LO 认为，危机中的政府可能借团结、服从与牺牲的要求压制异议；讽刺与笑话则能使人们以较间接的方式表达不满，并削弱权威不可质疑的形象。
DLO 用一则关于战争负担分配的笑话展开说明：政客提供子弹，富人提供金钱，穷人提供孩子。按照 DLO 的解释，笑点来自人们对不平等牺牲的识别，因此笑声未必意味着接受战争，也可能意味着看清谁在付出代价。
第二个论点是当事人对自身经历的主体性。LO 指出，人们未必能决定战争是否继续，也无法控制灾难规模，但至少可以选择如何理解与回应自己的处境。与暂时逃离痛苦的娱乐相比，黑色幽默直接围绕痛苦展开，使当事人有机会在承认危机存在的同时，取得一点对自身情绪反应的掌控。
CG：即使出于善意，黑色幽默也可能在传播中削弱受害者与反战者的声音。
下议院政府方（CG）的政府成员（MG）同时提出了两层回应。首先，MG 反对 OO 对传播者的判断，强调未受直接影响的网络用户、追逐流量的创作者，以及亲政权账号，都可能参与制造和扩散危机笑话。其次，MG 尝试证明，即使笑话起初带有批判意图，其传播结果也未必有利于受害者。
MG 的机制是：平台偏好能够引发互动的内容，而笑话在转发中可能失去原有语境。原本针对战争决策者的讽刺，可能只剩下有关平民死亡的笑点。CG 据此主张，公众可能轻视危机，也可能将反战者视为拿伤亡开玩笑、不够严肃的人。
MG 还提出另一种伤害：创伤较深的受害者若对这些笑话表示愤怒，可能被指责为反应过度或不懂幽默。他们的痛苦因此难以获得认真对待，相关运动也可能失去支持。
政府党鞭（GW）进一步比较了不同受害者的需要，主张能够从幽默中获得宽慰的人，并不能代表所有当事人。对另一些人而言，严肃讨论、表达愤怒，以及看到社会仍在寻求解决办法，才可能带来宣泄与希望。CG 因而试图把比赛从“幽默是否让一些人感觉更好”，推进到“哪一种公共表达环境更能支持受伤最深的人”。
CO：反对黑色幽默，也可能要求当事人按照社会期待的方式悲伤。
下议院反对方（CO）的反对党成员（MO）首先强调，黑色幽默可以针对制造危机的制度，而非嘲笑受害者；开玩笑与认真关心危机，也不必互相排斥。
在此基础上，MO 提出了关于政治批评成本、悲伤规范和情绪释放的材料。其中最有辨识度的一条是：当社会把黑色幽默视为不合适的表达，就可能进一步规定当事人应该如何哀悼。人们不仅承受损失，还要不断检查自己的应对方式是否显得足够庄重、足够尊重他人。
反对党党鞭（OW）深化了这一论点，认为社会谴责可能促使人们压抑真实反应，转而展示一种公众认可的悲伤。这可以概括为“表演正确的悲伤”。因此，这一论证由 MO 提出，OW 进一步展开，而非由 OW 首次建立。
CO 也延续了较低成本的异议表达与情绪释放两条路径。不过，这些内容与 OO 已经提出的政治批评和主体性论证存在明显重叠。
裁判的判断：OO > CG > OG > CO
在 OG 与 OO 之间，裁判认为 OG 没有充分解释两个关键环节：为什么相关笑话主要来自受害者之外，以及为什么将痛苦写成笑话会使当事人感觉更糟。OO 对使用者的判断未被充分回应，而其主体性论证提供了相对更清楚的收益说明，因此在这一比较中领先。
裁判并未同样明确地认可 OO 的政治效果。对于幽默究竟使危机正常化，还是促进批评与抵抗，裁判认为双方都没有充分证明这些变化会产生多大的实际影响。
CG 高于 OG，主要因为它对传播者的动机、传播机制及运动受损的过程给出了更多解释。OO 与 CG 则是裁判认为最接近的一组比较。CG 仍有三个不足：其论证主要围绕战争，未说明为何这个场景足以压过 OO 对更广泛危机的分析；它较多解释了幽默如何削弱反战行动，却未充分比较政府方世界中行动能够改善多少；它也未有效击败 OO 的主体性论证。
对于 GW 提出的严肃表达与希望叙事，裁判还质疑：这些替代是否对当事人实际可及，为什么不能与黑色幽默同时存在，以及部分内容与 MG 原有论证的衔接是否足以获得完整采纳。
CO 排在第四，是因为批评成本与情绪释放的收益很难独立于 OO 获得充分计分。相对独特的悲伤规范论证，也没有说服裁判接受从反对某种表达，到污名化使用者，再到自我审查的完整推导。这里的判断是论证不足，而非这些后果绝不可能发生。
赛后，裁判建议政府方更集中地证明个人层面的实际伤害：即使只有少数旁观者出于猎奇或冒犯的动机制造内容，算法放大也可能使脆弱的受害者难以避开。政府方不一定需要证明多数笑话都来自外人，但需要解释这些内容如何造成足够重要的伤害。
裁判也提醒 OO，不宜过度依赖政府压制异议的情境，因为这并不代表所有国家危机；DLO 在政治批评上投入了较多时间，却没有充分发展 LO 的主体性论证。
笔者的分析：这场比赛仍有三个值得追问的问题。
首先，创作者是受害者，并不能自动排除对其他受害者的伤害。OO 的判断有效挑战了 OG 对外部嘲笑的依赖，但同一场灾难中的人，经历和承受方式仍可能不同。一个人的自嘲可以帮助自己，同时让另一个人感到痛苦。更完整的比较需要分别辨认创作者、传播者与接收者，而不是把“受害者”视作反应一致的整体。
其次，笑声本身不足以证明冷漠。CG 从语境丢失推向苦难被轻量化，再推向公众减少支持与行动，每一步都需要解释。人们可能因为看见荒谬而笑，也可能在笑过之后更加愤怒。因此，关键问题是哪些笑话在怎样的传播环境下改变了谁的判断，以及这种变化是否进一步影响行动。
这也关系到双方对替代方案的比较。严肃倡导能够带来希望，不意味着它会因为黑色幽默而消失；幽默能够提供宽慰，也不意味着它能够满足所有人的需要。CG 需要证明公共注意力或表达空间确实受到挤压，反对方则需要回应：当两种表达发生冲突时，为什么保留幽默带来的收益更值得优先考虑。
最后，反对黑色幽默究竟如何改变社会环境，应该在开场就交代清楚。它可以意味着个人不赞同、形成公共规范，也可能被理解为平台限制或国家禁止。这些情境产生伤害与收益的路径并不相同。CO 的自我审查论证有一个可以辨认的方向，但仍需说明，政府方所支持的那种反对如何产生可预期的社会惩罚，而不能把不同程度的干预直接等同起来。
裁判批评全场对黑色幽默的说明过于抽象。不过，按照转写稿，场上并非完全没有具体例子：DPM 的拉达汽车笑话、DLO 关于战争负担的讽刺，以及 GW 将子弹比作糖果雨的例子，都提供了可以分析的对象。更准确的不足在于，这些例子没有被充分用于比较不同受众的理解，并追踪从接触、解读到情绪和行为变化的过程。
对这道题而言，一个具体笑话可以成为完整分析的起点：它由谁讲述，针对谁，被谁转发，又落到谁的面前？谁因此获得了表达痛苦的空间，谁反而更难让痛苦被认真对待？如果社会开始反对这种表达，这些人的处境又会如何改变？把这些问题放在同一个比较中，才能判断危机中的笑声究竟帮助了谁，又让谁承担了代价。
Introduction
This article draws on a public online BP friendly debate that I attended as a spectator. It first reconstructs the teams’ arguments and the adjudicator’s reasoning, then offers my own analysis. Real-world examples are reported as illustrations used by the speakers, rather than as independently verified facts.
Why do people still make jokes during wars, disasters, or public health emergencies? Some use humor to cope with circumstances they cannot change. Others use satire to expose abuses of power. Still others turn someone else’s suffering into content for an audience. With these uses existing alongside one another, this debate asks whether opposing dark humor would improve the lives of people experiencing a crisis, or take away an already limited space for expression.
OG: Publicly circulated jokes can hurt victims and weaken the public’s response to a crisis.
Opening Government’s Prime Minister (PM) began by narrowing the discussion. OG did not target jokes exchanged in private, but focused on dark humor circulated through social media, large online communities, and public speeches. The PM used the language of opposition, control, and prohibition at different points, without setting out a complete enforcement model. The adjudicator subsequently treated Government primarily as expressing opposition on grounds of principle, rather than proposing a specific legal ban. This ambiguity also affected the later clash over stigmatization and self-censorship.
OG’s first argument was that victims may experience jokes about a disaster as a dismissal of their suffering. The Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) illustrated this with a joke linking Russian soldiers’ participation in war to their families receiving a Lada car. While those sharing it might regard it as merely a joke, bereaved relatives could hear it as belittling a loved one’s death.
The second argument was that repeated exposure to crisis-related humor can diminish people’s sense of an event’s severity. Referring to what the PM described as online jokes about flooding in northeastern China, OG argued that a lighthearted narrative could obscure actual casualties and reduce public sympathy and willingness to help.
The third argument concerned information and cooperation. The DPM proposed that once users engage with humorous content about a crisis, platforms may continue recommending similar material, reducing their exposure to important information. OG sought to show that dark humor could therefore affect more than individual feelings: it could weaken people’s ability to understand the crisis, cooperate with the response, and mobilize resources collectively.
OO: The worst jokes do not justify opposing a form of expression that people use to cope with a crisis.
Opening Opposition’s Leader of Opposition (LO) first challenged OG’s choice of examples. To oppose dark humor as a category, Government needed to address its ordinary uses and potential benefits, rather than rely only on its worst manifestations.
The LO then argued that influential dark humor during a crisis comes primarily from people experiencing it: soldiers discussing the possibility of death, residents joking about shortages, or citizens mocking incompetent officials. The Deputy Leader of Opposition (DLO) added that malicious messages from outside the affected community are more easily dismissed as political attacks, whereas local voices are more likely to be trusted. This was OO’s characterization of the main users and circumstances of circulation, not an established general fact.
OO’s first substantive argument was that dark humor lowers the cost of criticizing power. The LO argued that governments may invoke unity, obedience, and sacrifice to suppress dissent during a crisis. Satire and jokes allow people to express dissatisfaction less directly, while weakening the impression that authority is beyond question.
The DLO illustrated this with a joke about how the burdens of war are distributed: politicians provide bullets, the wealthy provide money, and the poor provide their children. In the DLO’s account, the humor depends on recognizing unequal sacrifice. Laughter need not signal acceptance of war; it may instead reflect an understanding of who pays its price.
The second argument concerned people’s agency over their own experience. As the LO explained, individuals may have no control over whether a war continues or how far a disaster spreads, but they can still choose how to interpret and respond to their circumstances. Unlike entertainment that temporarily takes people away from their suffering, dark humor directly engages with it. It can offer some control over their emotional response without requiring them to pretend that the crisis is not happening.
CG: Even well-intentioned dark humor can, through its circulation, undermine victims and anti-war voices.
Closing Government’s Member of Government (MG) offered two responses. First, the MG disputed OO’s account of who spreads dark humor, emphasizing the roles of unaffected online users, content creators seeking attention, and pro-regime accounts. Second, the MG sought to show that even humor originally intended as criticism may circulate in ways that do not benefit victims.
The proposed mechanism was that platforms favor content that generates engagement, while repeated sharing can strip a joke of its original context. Satire aimed at those responsible for a war may become little more than a punchline about civilian deaths. CG argued that this could encourage audiences to take the crisis less seriously, or to see anti-war activists as people who make light of casualties and lack moral seriousness.
The MG identified a further harm: deeply traumatized victims who object to these jokes may be dismissed as overreacting or unable to take a joke. Their suffering becomes harder to have taken seriously, and the movements they support may lose backing.
The Government Whip (GW) developed the comparison between victims with different needs. Those who find comfort in humor, the GW argued, do not represent everyone affected. For others, serious discussion, expressions of anger, and evidence that society is still seeking solutions may provide greater relief and hope. CG thus tried to move the debate beyond whether humor makes some people feel better, towards which environment for public expression best supports those who have suffered most.
CO: Opposing dark humor may pressure people to grieve in socially approved ways.
Closing Opposition’s Member of Opposition (MO) first emphasized that dark humor can target the systems responsible for a crisis rather than ridicule its victims. Joking about a crisis and taking it seriously are not necessarily incompatible.
The MO then introduced material on the cost of political criticism, social expectations around grief, and emotional release. The most distinctive claim was that treating dark humor as inappropriate may also establish expectations about how people should mourn. Those experiencing loss must then not only endure it, but continually assess whether their way of coping appears sufficiently solemn and respectful.
The Opposition Whip (OW) developed this argument by suggesting that social condemnation may lead people to suppress authentic responses and display a publicly acceptable form of grief. This can be described as performing the “correct” kind of grief. The argument therefore originated with the MO and was elaborated by the OW, rather than being introduced for the first time in the whip speech.
CO also pursued the benefits of less costly dissent and emotional release. These claims, however, substantially overlapped with OO’s existing arguments about political criticism and agency.
The adjudicator’s decision: OO > CG > OG > CO
Between OG and OO, the adjudicator found two insufficiently explained links in OG’s case: why the relevant jokes should be understood as coming primarily from outside the affected group, and why turning suffering into humor would make victims feel worse. OO’s characterization of the users of dark humor was not adequately answered, while its agency argument offered a comparatively clearer account of the benefit. OO therefore led this comparison.
The adjudicator was less convinced by OO’s claimed political effects. On whether humor normalizes a crisis or facilitates criticism and resistance, neither side sufficiently established the scale of the resulting practical change.
CG placed above OG because it offered more explanation of the motives of those spreading humor, the mechanisms of circulation, and the process through which movements could be harmed. The comparison between OO and CG was the closest of the round. CG nevertheless fell short in three respects. Its case focused mainly on war, without explaining why that setting should outweigh OO’s analysis across a wider range of crises. It spent more time explaining how humor undermines anti-war action than establishing how much better such action would fare in Government’s world. It also failed to adequately defeat OO’s argument about agency.
On the GW’s proposed alternatives of serious expression and narratives of hope, the adjudicator questioned whether these were genuinely accessible to affected people, why they could not coexist with dark humor, and whether some of this material was sufficiently connected to the MG’s case to be fully credited.
CO placed fourth because the benefits of less costly criticism and emotional release were difficult to credit independently of OO. Its more distinctive argument about grief did not persuade the adjudicator of the complete progression from opposing a form of expression, to stigmatizing its users, to inducing self-censorship. This was a finding that the argument had not been sufficiently established, rather than that these consequences could never occur.
In post-round feedback, the adjudicator suggested that Government focus more closely on concrete harm to individuals. Even if only a minority of outsiders produce content to shock or provoke, algorithmic amplification may make it difficult for vulnerable victims to avoid. Government need not establish that most jokes originate with outsiders, but it must explain how the resulting harm is sufficiently important.
The adjudicator also cautioned OO against relying too heavily on governments suppressing dissent, since this does not describe every national crisis. The DLO had devoted considerable time to political criticism without sufficiently developing the LO’s argument about agency.
My analysis: Three questions remain worth pursuing.
First, a joke’s creator being a victim does not automatically rule out harm to other victims. OO’s characterization effectively challenged OG’s reliance on external ridicule, but people experiencing the same disaster may still differ in what they have endured and how they cope. One person’s joke about their own suffering can help them while distressing someone else. A fuller comparison must distinguish those who create the joke, those who circulate it, and those who encounter it, rather than treat victims as a group with a uniform response.
Second, laughter alone does not establish indifference. CG moved from the loss of context to the trivialization of suffering, and then to reduced public support and action. Each step needs explanation. People may laugh because they recognize an absurdity, and they may feel angrier afterwards. The relevant question is which jokes, in which circumstances of circulation, change whose judgment—and whether that change subsequently affects behavior.
This also matters when comparing alternatives. Serious advocacy may offer hope without being displaced by dark humor; humor may offer relief without meeting everyone’s needs. CG needs to establish that public attention or opportunities for expression are actually being crowded out. Opposition, in turn, must explain why the benefits of retaining humor deserve priority when these forms of expression do come into conflict.
Finally, what opposing dark humor would change in society should be clear from the outset. Opposition can mean personal disapproval or the establishment of a public norm; it may also be understood as platform restrictions or state prohibition. The mechanisms producing benefits and harms differ across these scenarios. CO’s self-censorship argument has an identifiable direction, but it still needs to explain how the particular form of opposition defended by Government would generate predictable social penalties, rather than treating different degrees of intervention as interchangeable.
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