> I even worry that in trying to diagnose some of the alienation, boredom and despair that people in the UK were starting to feel, I actually might have added to the malaise.
That's usually how it goes with personal scale self-deprecating humor too. It was instrumental to my own misery, and I didn't quite notice this until I've let go of it for a while.
Another thing to ponder is the second hand effects. For the one making the joke it's a very different headspace to someone who sees it from the outside, and internalizes it as some sort of style. I'm fairly sure this kind of "saying a body, hearing a skeleton" game is how the author got to the point of seeing that site carrying the torch, but not really appreciating what he sees there. It's a kind of effect people making humorous content always seem to learn the hard way, like it was the case for e.g. idubbz, and countless others. Or like weakly racist jokes are to any odd fellow European.
Not to pass judgement though, I can see how overcorrections and the "puritanism" are definitely not any good either. But yeah, that's how these things tend to go.
I'd be vary of the author really hopping on that "they're cancelling us" bus. If he doesn't appreciate what he sees on that site, he's in for a world of hurt when he realizes where people who constantly play around with this topic right now will get him to. This is all a setup to the next chapter, where humorists will actually get unfairly censored, but then they won't be able to properly reach audiences with it anymore, as the memetic background for that has been appropriated and spent by then, by those actually malicious, a long time ago.
That's usually how it goes with personal scale self-deprecating humor too. It was instrumental to my own misery, and I didn't quite notice this until I've let go of it for a while.
Another thing to ponder is the second hand effects. For the one making the joke it's a very different headspace to someone who sees it from the outside, and internalizes it as some sort of style. I'm fairly sure this kind of "saying a body, hearing a skeleton" game is how the author got to the point of seeing that site carrying the torch, but not really appreciating what he sees there. It's a kind of effect people making humorous content always seem to learn the hard way, like it was the case for e.g. idubbz, and countless others. Or like weakly racist jokes are to any odd fellow European.
Not to pass judgement though, I can see how overcorrections and the "puritanism" are definitely not any good either. But yeah, that's how these things tend to go.
I'd be vary of the author really hopping on that "they're cancelling us" bus. If he doesn't appreciate what he sees on that site, he's in for a world of hurt when he realizes where people who constantly play around with this topic right now will get him to. This is all a setup to the next chapter, where humorists will actually get unfairly censored, but then they won't be able to properly reach audiences with it anymore, as the memetic background for that has been appropriated and spent by then, by those actually malicious, a long time ago.