A great piece of advice from The System.
I know that looks like a cartoon about bicycles, but it’s not exclusively about bicycles. It’s about any situation where someone is mad or defensive.
It’s like Yoda, man. On a bicycle.
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Rachel Hartman 
Actually, I think that’s pretty terrible, and possibly dangerous, advice. But then I think Yoda’s philosophy is full of crap, too.
I think this is the part where I look confused. I seem to recall that was one of the options. 🙂
It’s dangerous to… try and defuse anger with humour? Is that what you’re saying? Because I really am kind of confused, except about Yoda, who I admit is kind of full of crap. He’s always wrong, for starts. If you go there, help them you could, but you will destroy all for which they have fought and suffered? (or whatever; too lazy to look it up). Wrong, little green guy! Didn’t happen!
Several of the options aren’t humorous, just passive aggressive, or so it seems to me. (Slow clap being the worst of them.)
Ah, okay. I wasn’t considering the options to be the “advice” portion of the cartoon. I was considering them merely possibilities, the implication being that there are as many ways of not answering anger with anger as the reader can think of. It’s true that answering anger with sarcasm or passive aggression is usually also counter-productive. I guess I wasn’t inclined to take the examples literally as the best possible options, merely as what the cartoonist happened to pull out of his ear. Of COURSE I’d do something actually funny. That goes without saying. 🙂
You and I are a lot alike (well, I know I am), so of course using humor to deflect anger or lighten up a tense interaction appeals to us…. but (and maybe this is still taking it too literally) I feel that when somebody yells at you from their car nothing good can possibly happen from turning a passing moment (ha!) into an interaction. They’re at the wheel of a moving vehicle; the last thing you want to do is something unexpected that has them looking in their rear-view mirror wondering what the heck you’re doing or thinking about anything except for keeping their eyes on the road. That’s what I mean by dangerous.