I’m going to cut to the chase. TikTok is bad. Like categorically
bad. It reels you in with harmless 15-second sketches and the next thing you
know you’ve scrolled 4 and a half hours of your life away and your brain feels
like Swiss cheese. While I acknowledge how this mass consumption of incredibly short
media affects my concentration levels, I can’t stay away. It’s like a car crash
you can’t help but watch. Of course, there are funny, original, and creative
videos on TikTok, there is an ecosystem of parasites growing on the site.
These parasites are self-proclaimed ‘dark comedians’. Oxford
Languages defines a parasite as; ‘an organism that lives in or on an organism
of another species (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's
expense.’ I feel like this is the perfect analogy for TikTok dark comedians.
They use minorities and oppressed groups as punching bags, making wildly
offensive statements thinly veiled as ‘jokes’, and when said groups retaliate,
they thrive off the sustenance that other people’s hurt gives them. They live
to hurt people.
Now you may be thinking, you’re being totally cynical about
a kid’s app. Perhaps, but let’s take a closer look at dark humour and what it
means today. Dark humour, as defined by Webster’s Dictionary is ‘humour that
regards human suffering as absurd’ and it ‘considers human existence as ironic
and pointless but somehow comic’. An example of dark humour could be in the
gallows speech of Georges-Jacques Danton. During the French Revolution, Danton
was captured and set to be executed by guillotine on April 5th, 1794.
Danton had survived smallpox in his lifetime which left him with nasty facial
scars, so his final words were reportedly "Don't forget to show my head to
the people, it's well worth it!". Ironic, twisted, but comical. But today’s
dark comedians take a different approach to sick humour.
It’s important to note that most of these ‘comedians’ are men,
and their material is almost exclusively just blatant misogyny, racism,
homophobia and transphobia. An incredibly niche branch of TikTok dark comedy is
domestic violence. These humourists absolutely crack up at violence against
women and girls. An alarming trend began where men would just talk about how
they would violently murder their date. No set-up, no punchline, no payoff, nothing.
So, it makes me wonder if these comedians actually know what a joke is. I’ll link
some images below of some examples of this new wave of dark humour, but just a
warning, some of it is a bit distressing to read.
Naturally, dark humour on TikTok has had a fair share of
critiques. Those in defence of dark humour are more often than not men. Men who
have never faced an ounce of systemic oppression in their life. Men who think that
calling people ‘snowflakes’ is hysterical and the peak of comedy. Men who claim
it’s just a joke. Great. But when you tell a racist joke, you’re still saying something
racist. It being a joke doesn’t absolve it of being racist. It doesn’t make it any
less insensitive just because YOU said it in good faith. Because these dark
humourists never make jokes about their own shortcomings, it is always at the expense
of people who have historically been oppressed. And this is what is known as ‘punching
down’. Women, gay people, black people, and trans people have all faced relentless
oppression for years, so to add insult to injury, you kick them while they’re
down and make jokes only oppressors find funny. And God forbid we retaliate. Drew
Affualo is a prime example. She uses her platform to call out misogynistic men,
whom a lot of the time are just ‘joking’. They’ll completely dehumanize and
insult women, as a joke of course, and Drew will call them bald or short. Completely
not comparable, but dark humourists hate the woman. This just goes to show these
men don’t actually value dark humour per se, they don’t value someone punching
up, it’s only funny when we can laugh at the oppressed of course!
Freedom of speech is important, obviously. But it’s strange to
me that people defend dark humour so passionately. Men will die on the hill
that dark humour is just a joke, and we should lighten up. Imagine if actual,
professional comedians were begging you to understand their comedy, I don’t think
Sarah Millican or James Acaster has ever had to ask the audience to ‘just take
a joke’. Because today’s dark comedy isn’t a comedy at all. If the only way you
can be funny is by making a joke with the sole intention of hurting a specific group
of people, then maybe you’re just not funny.
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