The confusing modern rules of telling a ‘joke’

The pace of outrage is such these days that before anybody has thought through any one outrage we are all expected to have moved onto the next one. So while everyone is still trying to work out the precise etiquette when female protestors carry out an orchestrated protest at a black tie event, perhaps readers will indulge me if I return to a previous outrage.

People with a long memory will remember the dispute from not much more than a week ago regarding the comedian Jo Brand and her comments on a BBC platform in which she jokily encouraged milkshake-throwers to upgrade to throwing acid at “unpleasant characters”. Reasonable people divided in a number of ways over this.  Some people said that Jo Brand was inciting violence. Others pointed out that by taking the words of a comedian literally these people were clearly trying to censor opinion. Still others were clearly engaged in that now commonplace form of political tit-for-tat whereby having watched someone make an insincere claim against a member of your own political tribe you lie in wait to make an insincere claim against a member of their political tribe.

Anyhow, one final aspect of this episode seems to me to be worth noting, specifically as it relates to the case of Jo Brand vs that of Carl Benjamin. Mr Benjamin – who also goes by the online name Sargon of Akkad – is a prominent YouTuber with a following that is in the high six figures. He is the sort of person who the internet has thrown up and who the non-internet world has trouble comprehending. But earlier this year Mr Benjamin stood as a Ukip candidate in the European elections, and so the two worlds met.

As somebody who only has a slight knowledge of his work, it was interesting watching this meeting.