A large part of what makes sick jokes funny is the shock value. You're not supposed to find these things funny, and that makes it funnier than it is, in a weird way. I think kids of my generation first got a taste of this with the space shuttle Challenger jokes that were going around. But at the age I was then, I wasn't yet sophisticated enough to understand the level of irony that made it funny.

Sarah Silverman is one example of this. And I don't actually care for her much as a comedian. But for people that like her - the reason her material "works" is because it's so BLATANTLY offensive, she can't possibly mean any of it. Holocaust jokes, rape jokes... it's appalling to basically everybody. So it becomes not just a racist joke, but a joke about racism. It's ironic and shocking and funny on its own merits. "South Park" also does this stuff all the time with Cartman's distinct brand of offensiveness. I just posted a similar kind of joke in my FTR poker blog, about Columbine. Tasteless? Yes. That's the point.

All that stated... I don't know if I get that vibe from Muxy. That irony. Maybe I'm wrong but it kind of looks like he just thinks it's funny to mock a dumb kid that killed himself. And maybe it IS funny... I honestly don't know. It's hard to find that thin line between ironic meta-tastelessness and genuine tastelessness, and even harder to figure out if that distinction really means anything. It's humor, it doesn't have to be smart or ironic to make you laugh. Maybe it's just my latent adult sorta-liberal sensibilities bothering me. I can see both points of view on this one.