June 25, 2014
'Cards Against Humanity' Co-Creator: I 'Regret' Anti-Trans Card
Jason St. Amand READ TIME: 2 MIN.
One of the co-creator behind the hilarious popular card / drinking game "Cards Against Humanity" apologized for a transphobic card last week, saying he regrets including it.
Max Temkin took to his Tubmlr and reblogged an image set of someone burning a "Cards Against Humanity" card that reads, "Passable transvestites." The post also has the text, "DEATH TO TRANSPHOBIA."
Temkin added to the post, "I regret writing this card, it was a mean, cheap joke. We took it out of the game a while ago."
"Cards Against Humanity," like a politically incorrect "Apples to Apples," was created about three years ago by a group of college friends. It was developed with a successful Kickstarter and has since become a popular party game, touting the tagline: "A Party game for horrible people."
"Cards Against Humanity was just a thing that me and a bunch of nerd friends made," Temkin told Fusion.net. "We put it on the Internet and it caught on and developed a cult following.... It was always a shock to us that this was desirable and people wanted it."
He added: "We were writing jokes for ourselves and we weren't really thinking about how it would affect other people. But when you have something that starts to be part of pop culture, you can't help but see how it makes people feel and feel some sense of responsibility for that."
Since creating the game, Temkin says he and his co-creators have grown up and are more aware of social issues, including jokes about transgender people and rape.
"It's embarrassing to me that there was a time in my life that that was funny," Temkin told the website. "Making jokes about rapes, making jokes about trans people, they don't have the same cultural power" as making fun of celebrities and other powerful figures.
