If you haven’t heard or told a 9/11 joke, I am going to assume you died on or before Sept. 10, 2001. 9/11 jokes have become deeply rooted in youth culture and especially comedy. This seems to intrinsically make sense to most people. Whether they justify the jokes by acknowledging that Gen-Z doesn’t remember the event for various reasons, or through a lack of belief in the morals of the youth, people accept this as the way the world is. The same understanding is not held for jokes about the Epstein files. Jokes about the events or implications of the release of the files have been met with mixed responses from Gen Z and older people combined.
This kind of inconsistent reaction to horrible news may seem at first to be a sign of moral failure in an individual, but it is a more natural response than it would first appear.
We have all laughed at an inopportune moment: in a church service, in the middle of a performance, or, worst of all, at a funeral. The immediate internal reaction to your outburst might be shame or anger at yourself. You’re a good person after all. You would never intentionally laugh at something so awful. So what happened?
The reason you laughed at something objectively terrible is because laughing is a great method of coping. This kind of reaction is called incongruous emotional display, and it occurs when one’s reaction doesn’t sit properly within the context. Because of how strong negative emotions can feel, especially if one is experiencing multiple at once, laughter can involuntarily rise to relieve some of the negative emotions. This same concept follows into why some people make jokes about terrible events.
One kind of “dark” joke, or joke about something awful, that is mostly accepted is joking about one’s own trauma, especially in a therapeutic context. This is because therapists recognize that joking about one’s experiences allows them to relieve stress. It is also true that these jokes can be a method of processing one’s emotions, with each joke containing a fragment of truth. That is in the nature of jokes: to reveal truths which one is unable to seriously verbalize in the moment. They reflect one’s thoughts and feelings about a topic. That is why jokes are often encouraged in therapy.
Now, making jokes about Jeffery Epstein seems very different than making jokes about one’s own trauma, at least on the surface. The victims of Epstein are seen as the only people who have license to make any jokes. This undercuts the true impact of Epstein’s actions on the broader world. The actions of Epstein will guide how our political environment, international relations, and our elites behave for an indeterminate amount of time. The world has been forever altered by Epstein, in a similar way to how 9/11 impacted Americans. We can all recognize 9/11 as a national tragedy. The victims of 9/11 were both those who died in the towers, the Pentagon, and the field, and those who experienced a terrorist attack on their country.
While I believe there should be a space made for jokes about the situation, those jokes do still have lines. To joke about the effects of Epstein on the world is very different from joking about the victims. I truly hope this doesn’t need to be said, but rape, assault, child murder, and most of the actions of Epstein and his associates were not funny. Calling the Epstein files the Trump files because of how many times President Donald Trump is mentioned in them can be funny. Everything depends on context. So take this as a sign not to go out making jokes about Epstein, but to understand that those who are joking about, not making a joke out of, Epstein are likely trying to comprehend how such events could happen.
