I'd love to hear a joke that doesn't (even implicitly) victimize anyone. I suspect that even if you found one, someone else could find an interpretation that victimizes someone.
A chicken walks into a library, walks up to the circulation desk and says "Bok." The librarian is confused and looks around, the chicken says "Bok" again.
The librarian asks "You, want a book?"
The chicken replies "Bok."
The librarian grabs a book from the return pile and hands it to the chicken. The chicken puts it under its wing and walks away.
The next day the same chicken comes back in and says "Bok. Bok."
The librarian looks at the chicken and says "So, you want two books?"
The chicken says "Bok. Bok." The librarian hands the chicken two books and the chicken puts them under its wing and walks away.
On the third day the librarian decides to follow the chicken to see what it is doing.
The chicken comes in and says "Bok. Bok. Bok."
The librarian asks "So you want three books?"
The chicken says "Bok. Bok. Bok."
The librarian hands the chicken three books and the chicken puts them under its wing and walks away. This time the librarian follows the chicken over fields and valleys, through a forest to a large pond. In the middle of the pond is a frog on a lily pad.
The chicken takes one book from under its wing and throws it to the frog. The frog catches it, looks at the cover and says "Readit. Readit. Readit."
I'm medically handicapped. I sometimes go through periods where I struggle with neurological impairment.
During one such period, I complained to my son that putting my damn shoes on had become the hardest part of my day. He said "Shoes! How the fuck do they work?"
I died laughing and snickered about it for weeks. Some acquaintance had recently been a jerk to me about something I had said that they didn't get and had given me the pity treatment instead of laughing with me (not at me). My son's joke sympathized with my frustration without pissing on me and it was very, very welcome.
The is an expression in my language for "loving humor". I cant translate the jokes to English easily, but basically it is sort of similar to Chuck Norris jokes - those jokes make Chuck Norris cool. Sort of, it makes people laugh while makes target look more human and makes them like target.
Like, when you joke about someone and that person adopts a joke and brags about it afterwards, because what your joke make visible about him is what he likes about himself.
Basically, you will not joke about things that make target inferior, lesser, outsider or something like that. Your joke will extrapolate what target likes about himself, people like about him and he/she is not vulnerable or insecure about.
Being the butt of a joke and being a victim are not equivalent. Hence the distinction of "punching up" versus "punching down".
Of course it's really easy to get mixed about and think you're punching up when you're really punching sideways or slightly downwards (ie at your fellow, yet different, plebs).
"Up" generally refers to the more powerful, while "down" refers to the less powerful. I don't know what scale of culture you're referring to - if you're just pointing out that power is not fungible/transferable across subcultures, I had attempted to account for that in my original comment ("sideways").
