Here are some tests and some thoughts about inappropriate humor:
It all makes sense, but I still dont understand why I can laugh about terrible things that dont directly affect me. Just because I have never been a prostitute doesnt mean that I should think the words “chunks of dead hookers” is funny, but I do.
I see you trying to attribute motivations to me. Please stick to things you actually know about and don’t, effectively, try to put words in my mouth or tell me what I care about or whether I’ve thought about things. Thanks.
You seem to assume that if one questions things, one has to:
You also seem to assume that if one decides to play CAH, that no questioning has occurred because, of course, if one properly questioned things, there is only one acceptable answer (and that is to not play). I live in a more diverse world than that.
I’ve played and enjoyed CAH before, but I think what’s problematic is that CAH allows discussion but it doesn’t actually prompt it most of the time. There’s this illusion of engaging with taboo or controversial topics but really, most players connect to them in the most superficial way possible.
Like, a player placing a set of cards can think “I’ve made a comment about racial inequality!” when really the cards did the work for them, and it reduces really troublesome issues into a sound bite that’s forgotten two seconds after it’s read and judged by the group. Yes, it brings these topics into the light and our forward consciousness, and with often clever juxtaposition, but it’s not like this really ever compels the audience to think about the topic other than “oooooh, no they didn’t!”
I resent that card combination! Some of my best friends are _______________.
The tone of boingboing has definitely changed in recent times. In particular, there is a fairly large and consistent pushing of feminist propaganda, with those who might disagree with the points raised getting dogpiled and censored. The first comment on this piece was someone saying they where tired of getting preached at, and its gone, which illustrates the problem nicely.
I went through boingboing from May 2010, about the only thing remotely close to this kind of article was one called “Turn a Super Boy spray into a Super Girl spray”. It was presented as a neat and fun trick. I liked the article then, I like it now.
In the first week of this month alone:
Can you please stop with Cards Against Humanity
Asian stereotypes in the otherwise excellent Daredevil
Joss Whedon on claims that feminists chased him off Twitter: “Horseshit”
Jeremy Renner insists that Black Widow is a slut
“Kill the Faggot” game removed from Steam
I did’nt see any articles in 2010 calling out “problematic” media, it was more of a tone of “hey look at this awesome stuff”.
i.e. Less preachy
And then in the more plain old straight up one sided propaganda line:
Baby clothes show how early sexism begins
Londoners reject sexist “beach body” ad with creative protests
This kind of article was completely absent in 2010.
So in one week of 2015, we have an average of 1 preachy article a day. In 2010, one a month (and really not the same kind of piece at all).
In May 2010 there was even an article on scholarly study of video games that completely omitted the terms “patriarchy”, “misogyny” etc. Which seems almost unthinkable for boingboing now 
Maybe the contributors views have not changed. And certainly there is no evidence you where ever against shaming those with opinions you did not like, and browbeating those with incorrect tastes. But it was a hell of a lot less obvious. I would guess most of the critics of the new tone miss coming to boingboing for awesome stuff, and being uplifted, rather than coming to boingboing for awesome stuff and coming away having been browbeaten and preached at.
For the fans of the older boingboing, I recommend picking a month a few years ago and reading (here where may 2010 starts http://boingboing.net/page/3081 ). I was a happier place, and re-reading brought back that old feeling of wonder I used to enjoy more regularly here, with a lot fewer culture war downers.
Ultimately boingboing is not mine, and I cannot and would not tell you guys what to write. But the pretense that nothing has changed does not pass muster.
I don’t think it has. But even if it did: Have you ever stopped and wondered what progressive actually means?
No idea where you are coming from 
I didn’t use the term, Rob didn’t use it in the comment I replied to. I think you are projecting something onto me, and I’m not quite sure what.
You have an unreliable memory, and many not be the target market for this site.
Conventional persons with socially conservative 50s-era views on women are not happy mutants.
BB and its predecessors have always been “feminist propaganda” at its finest, interspersed with all the weird world and novelties.
You’re the outlier, sean.
I was actually referring to when they had the side scrolling Defender ship and the helicopter. Unless that’s a different site I’m thinking of. It was a long time ago. Cory certainly stands out in my mind as bringing a more activist voice to BB. But I welcome that.
Not in May 2010. Good thing I don’t have any conservative 50’s views on women, I’ll just keep on happy mutanting. Likewise you feel free to keep on imagining what my views are.
Nostalgia is one hell of a drug.
Call me nostalgic, but there was a time when the only people who would lecture you on what you were thinking in your mind as you read something, then paint you with the ugliest of broad-brushes, were trolls. Now we have “Managing Editors” to do it. Used to be this was saved as my home page and I read it multiple times a day when I worked in front of a computer. Now I go weeks or even months without checking. C’est la vie.
And perhaps that is the message they’re trying to get across, but to me it came across as arrogant. Aside from the discussion of whether the game is offensive, the discussion of game mechanics and whether the game is fun came across to me very much as “We are board game enthusiasts and we decide what games are and are not to be enjoyed”.
I admit that I am not much of a board gamer. My opinion of board games was largely ruined by a poor Risk experience many years ago. But I have many friends who are and who have been trying (and slowly succeeding) to convince me that there is a new wave of board games which are much, much, better than Risk. Reading reviews like this just makes me feel like “if the board game community is going to be full of people like this, telling me that I am enjoying the ‘wrong’ games, then why would I want to be part of the board game community?”
Did you ever consider that the overall discourse on misogyny and the rights and roles of minorities in society has shifted in the last five years? People are discussing these issues more, which is a good thing, I think.
I would agree that it has shifted, in both good and bad ways. I consider an article about a card game that finds the gender and skin color of the games designers and the gender and skin color of the players to be relevant points would not fall under the good way side of things. I definitely see that as a huge backward step.
It did. Quite a lot it did. 
Becoming a self-righteous caricature of Tumblr, in those new preachy facets, perhaps?
Yes. The gentle, dripping, slowly eroding kind that works steadily and gets the job done, without the holier-than-thou aura, and without alienating half the intended audience.
…and now I am regretting my lack of sentiment-analysis relevant datamining skills. Because memories on all the sides are more fallible than computer analysis of existing archives.
That’s, like fairly recent for a publication with a history dating to the late 1980s, and the website to 1995 [1].
And, uh, you know for much of that online history it’s been benignly dominated by a rather outspokenly progressive Marxist and public intellectual, who joined up in March, 2001?
You’re not confusing BB with Free Republic, are you?
Here’s something from 2004 calling out problematic media – literally the first archive link in the 2000s that I clicked. Granted, the first 5 months of archives from 2000 had nothing like this.
I agree (and I still play CAH) but I also see their points.
I bet you’d save yourself a lot of time if you didn’t click-through to the comments.
Sure, but that’s just tone driving trollies about degrees^. Feminism still ran strong.
^Maybe people now are just too gosh darn sensitive to Feminist aims and goals now.
