Summary of You Can't Joke About That By Kat Timpf: Why Everything Is Funny, Nothing Is Sacred, and We're All in This Together

By Willie M. Joseph

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This book does not in any capacity mean to replace the original book but to serve as a vast summary of the original book.

Summary of You Can't Joke About That By Kat Timpf: Why Everything Is Funny, Nothing Is Sacred, and We're All in This Together

 

IN THIS SUMMARIZED BOOK, YOU WILL GET:

• Chapter astute outline of the main contents.
• Fast & simple understanding of the content analysis.
• Exceptionally summarized content that you may skip in the original book

Kat Timpf's book, You Can't Joke About That, argues that we should not censor ourselves out of fear of alienating our loved ones. She argues that sensitive subjects are the most important to joke about, and that humor can help us find healing through topics like traumatic break-ups, cancer, being broke, Dave Chappelle, rape jokes, aging, ostomy bags, religion, body image, dead moms, religion, the lab leak theory, transgender swimmers, gushing wounds, campus censorship, and bad Christmas presents. It is the best book on free speech and comedy in a generation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Willie M. Joseph
• Release date: May 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223428459

Willie M. Joseph

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Book preview

Introduction

The narrator started working for Fox News in May 2015, six months after their mother, grandma, and boyfriend died. In June, their family dog, Axel, was found dead in a puddle of his own blood-vomit. The narrator cried while filming their first man-on-the-street comedy video in Times Square with Joanne Nosuchinsky. The narrator has been asked how they managed this job while their own life was depressing. This book is about why sensitive subjects are the most important to joke about, not just for the author, but for all of us. It argues that we should not take sensitive topics too seriously and create unnecessary conflicts when we should feel like we're all in this together.

Discovering the Power of Comedy

The most important details in this text are that the author had a summer internship at Fox News' Los Angeles bureau and was accepted into Columbia University School of Journalism. They planned to use the housing stipend for two months to rent a room on Craigslist and live with their college boyfriend for two weeks before breaking up and moving to New York City alone. However, the plan didn't work out that way and the author ended up moving to New York City alone and going to Columbia. College Boyfriend is now one of the author's best friends and was one of the thirty guests at their wedding. He decided to unenroll from Columbia University and instead work at Boston Market, where he had already been employed as a cashier to make some extra money during the internship.

He found higher-paying work as a waitress and another internship where he could keep learning broadcasting skills. He was also obnoxious about meeting as many people as possible and trying to learn as much as possible from all of them, such as asking the women working there if they could teach him how to do radio. The most important details in this text are that the narrator made an awkward relationship with two of their friends, who helped them get an internship at KFI Radio in Burbank. During this time, the narrator was still living with their boyfriend, who had bought a real bed for them. The narrator and the boyfriend were struggling to make ends meet, and the narrator decided to name the kitten Sgt. Pepper as a surprise.

After six months, the narrator's mom told the narrator that they were too young and convinced him to move in with some of their family in the area without the narrator. The narrator had moved in with the boyfriend completely nonconsensually in the first place, and the burden of the burden was falling on him unexpectedly. The narrator experienced a difficult time in their life when their boyfriend ended their nearly four-year relationship via text. Despite their pleas, he just broke up with them more. Despite this, the narrator decided to go to open mics and tell jokes about their dumpster-fire life on stage.

This became their means of connection and gave them power over the things that were making them feel powerless. For a while, their schedule was grueling, as they had to drive from their trash apartment in Long Beach to the Fullerton Airport, where they would report on the traffic from a helicopter until 9 a.m. The narrator had a difficult time finding a job after breaking up with their ex-boyfriend. They eventually replaced their diner job with a California Pizza Kitchen job, but it was not enough to get a little more sleep. They also lost their traffic reporting job, car, and apartment, forcing them to move in with a Colombian bartender guy and his family.

The arrangement was a disaster, except for the fact that the narrator was fluent in Spanish. The narrator recently found an old video of them performing a stand-up set at the Belly Room in the Comedy Store in September 2011. The narrator was a scrawny, lost twenty-two-year-old, wearing a cheap bow in her hair and a deep, raspy voice. The juxtaposition between her appearance and her voice made the first joke work, but the rest of the jokes were not funny. The narrator is struggling to understand why people from California have more money than they do, and how they try to be cool about it.

The most important details in this text are that the speaker is a stand-up comic, and that their jokes were not their best. They needed them to write, tell, and laugh, and the crowd actually laughed. However, many of the jokes they joked about in that set would probably be on the list of things you Can’t Joke About now. Looking back and rewatching the set more than ten years later, the speaker feels a little sad for how we are losing the ability for people to heal in the same way that they had been learning to heal. The most important details in this text are that the Left is more intolerant when it comes to speech than the Right, and that the Left is not immune to claiming that certain things are grounds for cancellation or at least not okay to say or to joke about.

The author argues that societal policing of levity and humor limits