British humor.

The other week I was emailing my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair), and he made this comment in an email going off of something that I had said –

I heard an artist on the radio saying something similar: the best music is produced in the early years.

-- to which I replied --

But what about Mozart and Beethoven?

-- to which he replied --

I don’t know enough about their musical biographies to comment. they did produce music in a different time (way back when) so maybe things were different then.

-- to which I replied--

Are you saying the world is getting worse?

-- to which he replied--

not qualitatively but quantitatively, yes.

-- which I interpreted to be not so much a continuation of the conversation or an actual response, but rather an opportunistic joke, meaning that people are just as good or just as bad as they’ve always been, but there’s just more of them, now.

. . .

British humor can be so odd.