Is it me, or is GN not so much fun as it used to be?

But Pompa it requires that sense of humour to be the same as the person making the "jest" and we don't all appreciate all types of humour. There are even some "jests" that the jester would put under the heading humour that the majority would not find funny. Declaring those who don't share your sense of humour as humourless is not really helpful it could even be seen as coercive or bullying I feel.

Personally I do feel emoticons do help. Let's face it you would get all the body language or facial expression if you were talking to someone. Like many others though I often forget to use them.

Oh for heavens sake, don't let's get serious on this thread as well.

If humour has to be dissected it stops being funny.

It could be that all that is needed is for some posters to have the ability to step aside from their own preoccupation with the weight of the subject and allow others to approach it with a light touch if they want to. If they don't see the funny side themselves, that is up to them, others can be laughing without losing sight of the point.

Gracesgran has a point. We can't always share, or even 'get', everyone else's sense of humour. It's not easy.

We can't always share someone else's enthusiasms or appreciate their attempts to reform our political, moral or religious thinking, either. Diversity is a great blessing. Vive la difference.

If we all have to be perfectly politically correct, this would be a boring forum.

Pompa this thread was serious from the OP. "Is it me, or is GN not so much fun as it used to be?" was not followed by the OP saying "How do we have more fun on GN, it seems to have got a little serious". "Dons tin helmet !" rather implies the thread was set up intending to be contentious rather than offer a solution.

Elegran, no one is dissecting humour but I was saying please don't call other people humourless if they don't share yours sense of it. That is more about personal remarks than dissecting humour.

Was it? I thought it was an invitation to lighten up!

Pheonix wasn't really going to 'don' a 'tin helmet' - that was a sort of joke

I see you didn't get that bit???

Oh dear... now my post sounds like I'm being patronising....it wasn't meant to be.

I think, although you may not actually share another's sense of humour, you really ought to be able to recognise it. To not be able to do that could make you seem a rather narrow minded person.

Or at least, a bit too "buttoned up".

Well as "Don's a tin helmet" fails to indicate a light hearted thread, I stand by what I said.
It does appear to be obvious that GN is not fun any longer. Many posters are afraid to say anything light hearted, in case it gets dissected word by word, and are either silent or have left.

Perhaps I should have said explained, not dissected.

I find emoticons useful, for example when texting or posting messages as intention possibly misunderstood when not "face to face" chatting. I have to admit tho that the smiley on here for "grin" scares me. It looks like someone baring teeth aggressively.......

Yes. It's horrible. They won't change it though.

I agree, Pompa. It does sometimes seem that we are condemned if we fail to be suitably solemn about everything. We have failed to recognise that the whole universe is going to hell in a handcart, and turned instead to frivolity and mirth. Well, I am sorry to disagree with that philosophy, but the only route to salvation in desperate circumstances is to laugh at something.

"A little fo-olly Is rather jo-olly,
A little levity can do no harm"

(sung to a Bach air, but I have never been able to find the excerpt since hearing it ages ago. There was something about J S Bach and G F Handel being born in the same year, but never meeting. It went on :-

"We will try to rectify
what surely is a scandal
and introduce without excuse
JS Bach and G F Handel"

and then had a kind of musical conversation between the two. Any enlightenment gratefully received)

Sorry about the diversion from the serious subject of fun.

It looks even scarier with a Christmas hat on

Absolutely Elegran

Anyone see the hamming up of Hamlet's soliloquy at the RSC?

Now that was fun and Shakespeare would surely have had a good laugh at it

I see the OP has not returned to join in the thread

If you want your sort of fun don't ask questions, provide it for yourselves, it is unreasonable to expect others to conform to any narrow view of what that is just to provide you with it.

Hear, hear, elegran!

One can always take the not bloody caring who 'condemns' one attitude as well. People who go in for that sort of thing are not the sort one would want as friends anyway. Speaking personally, they can condemn away for all they're worth for all I care. Fat lot of good or, more to the point, of persuading it'll do.

Hear, hear , also, gracesgran. You want your kind of fun? Provide it. That's to anyone and everyone and it applies equally to and other kind of posts one wants.

The best posters, imo, are those who can do serious and fun and who can take and give a bit of silly banter when needed too.

any other

Phoenix has been an excellent example in the past of how to produce humour when under the greatest of pressure, instead of whinging about her situation. Today she is probably not posting because will be at work, at the very suitable job she eventually found for herself after falling a second time into the "fire" that had caused her to name herself phoenix. Correction - she effectively created the job, by contacting everyone she could think of in her neighbourhood and suggesting how she could help them in their business.

"The best posters, imo, are those who can do serious and fun and who can take and give a bit of silly banter when needed too."

Well said ThatBags

Monday night is banter night for me, ladies (that's a joke for a start) v gents ( that's just a lie) at our uku group. My sides are aching by the end of the evening.