Ok, but my opinion is that most of the time people are forgetting intent. And they’re doing it on purpose, to pass the message that “there’s no way this isn’t offensive” to shut down all discourse about that, while I feel intent is a big part of what makes a joke “wrong but innocuous” instead of offensive.
A stupid example: the good old “Sardinians are all shepherds who also love to have intercourse with sheep”. As I’m Sardinian, and I’ve been used this stereotype against me in all sorts of fashion when I was younger.
Is it offensive? Yes… but also no. If someone jokes on that because they actually believe it and use the stereotype as a way to insult me, suggest that I have less dignity than them, lessen my people’s worth in some way, then of course it’s offensive.
But if someone jokes on that because they know it’s a wrong stereotype, they’re not joking about me, they’re literally joking about the joke. If one doesn’t just stop at the stereotype but analyzes the intent, it’s often easy to understand whether using the stereotype was actually meant as a satire of the stereotype itself - and so the joke is at the expense of those who believe in the stereotype.
Now, people’s sensitivity differs. I love dark humor, politically incorrect humor, and I have loads of self irony. But some people don’t, so even if someone is joking on the stereotype, some people may be offended by it and that’s perfectly valid, but there’s a difference between this is offensive and this offends me. In the latter case, I apologize and move on, in the former case I’ll disagree.
But I’ve seen so many satirical comments (you’re Italian, you know Spinoza for sure) being misunderstood and mistaken for insults, to care about what the general public labels as offensive or not. Because most of the time they’re sadly lacking either the will or the skills to analyze in depth the intent behind the joke.
Maybe we should open a topic about this.