9GAG, Funny or Provocative?

Recently, there is hype around the world on Asians. 9GAG is a popular humor photo sharing sites. In this site, people all over the world upload a funny photo of their creation and share it. If the photo is funny enough, the photo will stay on the trending site so that people can view it over and over again.
However, most of the funniest post stirs around provocative issues such as racial stereotyping, gender bias/stigmatization, religion issue or post that strive to humiliate others.

Funny or provocative?

According to Fitzmaurice et al. (2007), insults will be interpreted as jokes if the receiver shared the same culture and context with the sender. However, if the receiver did not share the same culture and context as the receiver, jokes will be interpreted as insults and this might hurt the relationship between the sender and the receiver. In 9GAG, most of the time, the people who saw the picture post feel the post is funny because internet has blurred the lines of culture thus making internet user to have the same cultural value. But, not all post are considered as funny even though they have the same cultural value. 

However, not all photos are provocative. Some are to create awareness and some inspirational.

Funny or not, 9GAG are here to stay. The popularity of 9GAG is spreading all over the world and we hope that when a provocative post did come up, there will be no World War III happening in the internet.


Sources.
Fitzmaurice, S. M., & Taavitsainen, I., (2007). Methods in Historical Pragmatics: Topics in English Linguistics. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter