My Morbid Sense of Humour

[Jacob]

As for the original question...

That kind of ironic event is at the core of a certain type of humour.

There's another kind of humour where the punchline is, essentially, that someone got hurt.

Seperate from that, different people have different levels of empathy with people in dire straits. The more empathy you feel for someone in a particular situation, the less likely you'll find the situation a good subject for humour.

The problem you ran into was that your level of empathy with the subject was at a level that while you acknowledge sympathy for the victims, it's still okay to make the joke; your audience obviously had more sympathy. This is perhaps compounded by the fact that you might have come across as thinking the death was the cause of the humour, not the irony.

If you enjoy that kind of dark ironic humour and want to share it with others, you're generally safer to make those cracks about things where you are the victim. Then people will think you have strength of character, laughing at your own misfortune. Laughing at other people's misfortune is generally not well thought of (outside the internet at least), even if there is a humorous element to it. Unless the victim is really thought to have deserved it, you'll be the jerk who laughs at other's misfortune.

[derspiess]

I have a tendency to laugh at the wrong things & can certainly be a heartless SOB.  But as much as I've tried to see the humor in this case, it just doesn't resonate with me.