Be honest: Am I an idiot for not understanding this joke?

The whole sentence seems like nonsense. Certainly not funny. However I didn’t necessarily read rape into it. Maybe it’s because he said “for her.” But I wasn’t there to hear the inflection.

He’s just an aquantience, and he responded by replying on Facebook “Please pedal your thinly veiled agenda elsewhere.” Strange to say the least.

Yes!

My guess is he was trying to make the point that he’d do anything for a chance with her. He could have said “I’d walk on broken glass for her”, or “I’d go to the ends of the earth for her”. I don’t think he was meaning he would literally break laws for her, and I don’t think he meant it as a rape joke. However, I can quite see why you might interpret it that way, and you know the context surrounding the remark. Said with the right tone, it could be a rape joke.

I can see why you misunderstood him and I can also see why he was offended.

I don’t understand what he meant about your thinly veiled agenda.

So he said he would murder, cheat, smuggle, or steal to be with Halle Berry, and you took it as a rape joke.

I think you owe him an apology and admit you were too dense to get his joke.

@zenvelo

He kept going on about how beautiful she is, and his tone came off extremely creepy as well.

He should be embarrassed at his awful joke

@rockfan: I guess if you want to salvage your friendship with him, you should have a discussion about it.

You mentioned he responded on Facebook. Is this an online friend or an acquaintance? Do you know him in person and does it matter to you whether he’s upset or not that you viewed his joke as distasteful? If he matters, I agree with @jca. If he doesn’t, forget it.

This is one of the amazing things about today’s social media: It’s all written.

Tweets
Fluther quips
Facebook posts
Comment boards on all kinds of other presentations, etc.

All kinds of forums in all kinds of arenas of life, on media that’s pretty much available to anyone in the world … all kinds of verbal communication, and nearly all of it in writing. (That’s aside from the stuff on video, which is at least somewhat open to interpretation sometimes, because context cues are available, and because spoken language by its very nature often lends itself to some ambiguity.)

But in general, yeah, all of this written-word communication, and shared so widely, too.

And … the ironic kicker here … it seems like no one can write any more. And even fewer can read, I think.

Isn’t that a curious thing? @zenvelo made a great pick on a good interpretation: Your friend has stated, in writing, that he would break “nearly all of the laws of men” for Halle Berry. That’s a pretty clear statement, and @zenvelo picked up that this guy has pretty much declared that he’s open to perform murder, grand theft, kidnapping, fraud, extortion and blackmail, treason, you name it … “for Halle Berry”. And you took it only as “a bad rape joke.”

It seems like your interpretation is a lot more generous than what he actually said.

Look, your friend wasn’t making a joke, and he wasn’t declaring himself open to committing all of the crimes that are documented in thousands of pages of law books (in this country alone). He was writing hyperbole, badly, but still, that’s all that it was. And your interpretation might have been a little harsh, but yeah, he left it out there.

Simple everyday hyperbole. You hear it all the time. “I’d walk a mile for a camel”

Or….“I’d cut off my right arm to have Trump thrown out of office…..”

No, wait….bad example…...I probably would do that….

I still don’t get it, at all, in any sense.

He said something vague, forcing you to interpret it. Then he got mad at you for interpreting it in a way that he didn’t like even though your interpretation is a sensible one. No, you’re not an idiot. No, you don’t owe him an apology. At most, you owe him a “well, I guess I misunderstood you.”

I didn’t get it when I first read it either. It just means he’d go out of his way to impress Hally Berry… even break the law.

Re Halle Berry, I can’t disagree with his original statement.
And it is not a rape joke.
It is sort of the same as saying I would move heaven and Earth for Halle Berry
Why you so touchy?

The problem is she seems to have about a five year limit on her relationships so I would be moving heaven and Earth for short term gains.
But I could settle for that.

Thats a pretty common saying. I would have taken it as a thinly veiled agenda as well because it’s so common. The fact that you equated that with rape indicates a certain bias regardless if it is really there or not.

In reading your description of the events, @rockfan, you said “He was talking very fast” but then you said you responded on Facebook. That indicates what he said was when you were together in person.

Did you write this on his wall? If you had a question about something he said in person, I hope you didn’t put it out on his wall. It’s more appropriately handled either via personal message, text, email or a phone call. If you wrote it on his wall, I can see why he’d be mad.

Sometimes a funny line requires hearing the iflections, and understanding the relationship between the two people involved in the joke.
I don’t see a rape reference here, but depending on your past discussions, it could be there.

You guys..he heard the tone and the context. We haven’t. I’m going with his instincts.

I have a story to tell you. Once my boyfriend and I went out with his best friend and his wife. We went to Red Lobster. The guy ordered lobster. He added a bunch of stuff to it and was kind of mashing it up. It was taking him quite a while.
At one point he said, “Getting it ready is best part.”
All by itself it doesn’t mean anything. But ending it with a “Isn’t that right, Murph?!”
along with a wink and a leer meant a whole other thing. And I think he thought it was a joke only the men would “get.”
Men don’t usually think of attractive women in a non-sexual manner.
I agree. @rockfan should trust his instincts.

I just realized that it was the ‘laws of men” that made me think it was rape joke