"Cancer is Funny..."

"...Cause People Die."

Wait -- what?

Yeah, that's the name of a Facebook page that popped up on my feed this morning: "Cancer is Funny Cause People Die."

It certainly had me curious. As long-time readers know, I'm a big fan of cancer humor. So I tried to do a little investigating, to see just what was going on with this page. Is it some kind of twisted-humor "cancer support" page? Maybe a way of making people see the positive in a bad situation? Kind of an odd way of doing it, but whatever...

The "About" link on the page, where I would expect to find such an explanation, was blank.

A google search provided a little history, as well as some reactions: the page seems to have been set up by a "troll" -- someone who is deliberately offensive or provocative, who "trolls" for reactions. The internet, with its anonymity, makes it easier to do that without consequences. Apparently, the same person also has Facebook pages that make it clear that AIDS and battered women also tickle his funny bone.

I don't recommend visiting the page, especially if you are easily offended. It's basically a series of people using bad language to let the person know that they find the page offensive, and then other people using similar language to respond to them. There are a few comments that don't include the offensive language, but convey similar feelings -- written by people with cancer, or who have lost someone to cancer, who don't find either the Facebook page or the disease to be all that funny.

So, as I said, I'm a big fan of cancer humor. But let's be clear -- while cancer is funny, death isn't. There's a difference between laughing at the disease and laughing at its ultimate effects. Jokes about hair loss, radioactive bodily fluids, and gastric distress from Barium beverages? Funny. Leaving behind a family? Not so much.

But really, this isn't even about cancer (or AIDS, or battered women). It's about the intersection of information, attention-getting, and free speech.

On the one hand, we are all entitled to some level of free speech. The page itself isn't really going to physically harm anyone, the way the classic shouting of "Fire!" in a theater might harm someone. Emotionally scarring? Most definitely, for some people. But probably half of what is online will be offensive (if not scarring) to most people. It's rough out there. And if you are easily offended, the internet is no place to be, anyway.

But having that free and open forum that the internet provides is a necessity. Who would otherwise be the one to decide what is offensive? And what would the consequences be? There was a time -- not too long ago -- when no one talked out loud about cancer, because it made people sad and potentially offended them. Who wants to hear about cancer of the breast, the colon, the testicles? What if we lived in a world where the internet existed, but we weren't allowed to search for information about those things, because people didn't talk about those things? Where would we be?

Back in 1930, that's where. (That's before modern chemotherapy, by the way.)

So, we need to take the bad with the good. The free flow of information will result in some wonderful things. But it will result in a lot of crap, too -- misinformation, superstition, and trolling. In a world of 900 million Facebook users, a few of them are going to want to do something to stand out from the rest. Some will start pages like "HOPE for Lymphoma." Others will start pages like "Cancer is Funny...."

If you're feeling active, then search for the pages that are trying to shut down the "Cancer is Funny..." page. Join them. Let your voice be heard. Maybe Facebook will shut it down. My guess is, though, that the owner of the page will start a new one.

The other option is, of course, to ignore it.

And for the record, I'm not offended by it. I've seen dozens more offensive things on the internet. (In fact, I've seen a few of them in the last 24 hours.) It doesn't inform me, and it doesn't make me laugh. So why bother?