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Comment by jeffgreco | Hacker News Reader

They have a pretty interesting "Deprecated" section to document games that they no longer recommend. Some are because of changing cultural mores, but others are because of danger to self and property!

> Toilet Roll: This scene must be completed before a burning length of toilet paper reaches the player’s pants.

https://www.learnimprov.com/teaching/deprecated/

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Thanks for pointing that out. It was interesting and a little disheartening to see the reasons (changing cultural mores) for some of these deprecations. I feel like humor is always going to be somewhat overlapped with lack of propriety, so it's unexpected to see a humor-focused site do that.

I guess you can say that improv is meant to teach you fast reactions rather than "funny" ones.

"Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves: Deprecated. A story from Arabia interpreted by a French colonialist and profiteered by Disney."

"Blind Dubbing: Deprecated as we no longer need to use the term blind. Replaced with Reversed Dubbing."

"Blind Stalker: Title of Blind Stalker has been Deprecated because it is insensitive. A fish net stocking may be funny, but stalking is not."

"Corridors: Deprecated because of unnecessary and outdated language: pimping, and slut shaming."

"Deaf Translation: Deprecated due to ableist shenanigans."

Improv grew up especially gross, there's a lot of baggage to get rid of. It wasn't gross in a "this isn't PC" kind of way, it was gross in a "the people who were largely responsible for the rise of improve were abusive" kind of way.

The thing about the games is that they're used as both warmups and short form entertainment. There are much more entertaining games than most of the ones that were replaced because they're racist or creepy.

But also, Big Booty is hilarious and still very common in Chicago.

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