How much "humor" is too much?

There's a strange vibe amongst my friends this year. I'm sure this particular vibe has arisen in other years in other places, but I've really noticed it this year; the fact that I've noticed means I've more sensitive than previous times... or that it's really bad this time.

The issue is a certain type of humor I'm going to call "disingenuous irony", because I like naming things to give myself a better grasp. It's sweeping its way through a segment of my friends and acquaintances and I find it distasteful. This humor involves the teller knowingly saying a ironical statement in a serious tone of voice and deriving pleasure from catching people off-guard with what would otherwise be offensive or hurtful proclamations.

Obviously, this borders very closely to actual irony (not to be confused with sarcasm). The important difference is that humorous ironical comparisons are acknowledged by the audience as being ... well ... ironic. If I tell people that I slept with a man two days ago, but everyone already knows we were both rooming in a hotel room during a band trip, that's an ironic statement. If I tell people I won't sit next to Jill because she sleeps around a lot and might be diseased, that's just mean, even if Jill does move from bed to couch during the night to ease her back and she's currently suffering from the flu.

This disingenuous irony often seems to be a passive-aggressive way to say the statements that our poor id is busily writing at his home on Pituitary Street: sentences that otherwise aren't acceptable in everyday conversation or even acceptable to say about friends. This brand of humor has its own red-headed stepchild: non-ironic reversals. This is the "your mother is so fat" version of irony, in which the teller says some sort of objectionable statement ("I can't help it that you're a bitch"), then when the hearer reacts, the teller quickly follows with "Just kidding!". Bonus points are awarded if the teller "apologizes" in a shocked or affronted manner (often with pitch of voice raised and hands raised to ward off something), as though the hearer is overreacting to a "joke".

I'm not a fan. I know this entry sounds like a cross between an article from Emily Post and a psychological journal, but it's an important matter to me. Well-executed humor is one of the greatest pleasures in my life, whether it's me delivering the joke or someone else. So it vexes me to have people apparently attempting to be "witty", and just plain doing it wrong. Worse, it reflects poorly on them. In light of some interactions over the past couple of months, my initial impressions of people have been altered, simply because they use deceptive humor too liberally.

That brings me to an important point: everybody has the opportunity to laugh however they see fit. However, because humor is a significantly public pursuit, I believe it reflects poorly on tellers to bring down the audience. I practice an much more self-deprecating version, which strives to bolster the audience's comfort at the expense of me looking like an idiot.

For example, if I were asked, "Have you ever heard of Tcherpnin?" (a composer whose name is pronounced CHARP-nin), I'd invariably say "Isn't that what you do with dull pencils?". The hearer would smile wanly as a barely-passable acknowledgment of my attempt at humor, possibly even rolling their eyes a bit. In that situation, the irony and humor comes from the understanding that, in spite of what I just said, I'm smart enough to know what I'm talking about. That's the hope, anyway.

Those previously-mentioned warped methods of humor really bother me. Enough that when I hear this in a conversation:

A: Sorry I took the last close parking spot.
B: I still think you're a dirty whore.
A: What did you just say!?
B: I was kidding! Geeze.

it's a negative mark on the Social Clipboard under Person B's name. And there's a serious disconnection here, because no doubt Person B thinks they're being social.