Twitter has, in the last 48 hours, played host to a spectacular hoax that actually reflects, in a series of 140-character communications, more about the modern media and our reactionary complaining culture, than it even perhaps intended to. Comedian Peter Serafinowicz tweeted yesterday afternoon (22 hours ago exactly, thank you Twitter) “Lots of you upset by my last joke. Have now deleted. I apologize again for any offense”.
Of course there was no joke, but the idea was immediately latched on to by sarcastic tweeters (Twits? Twitterers? Always unsure of the correct forms twitter-related words should take), who ran with the gag, tagging the comedian in mock-outraged complaints, hinting at the joke’s content and referencing various celebrities who had, apparently, been libelled. Piers Morgan himself played along on his official twitter, with outraged responses such as “@serafinowicz Apology not accepted. You crossed the line, you humourless imbecile”. And if this had been the extent of the joke, it would have simply been a clever in-joke, confusing those who, like myself, came late to the party and had to spend a furious twenty minutes scouring the Internet for an explanation. But some people’s reactions to the joke are very telling.
The general feeling on several discussion boards is that, while a large portion of complaints were simply sarcastic fans playing along with the joke, some were genuine outrage, people complaining about the content of a joke that never existed. It all rather calls to mind Sachs-gate – when the majority of complaints about Brand and Ross’s actions were from people who had never even actually heard the broadcast in question. It is even reminiscent of the small movements in America of parents trying to ban Harry Potter, without ever reading the novels themselves. And while it may just be a small, rather clever joke, the thing many people will take away from this is the fact that with one seventeen-word tweet, Peter Serafinowicz created a working model of the way reactionary censorship escalates – quickly, violently, and very often without anything resembling sense.
References:
http://twitter.com/serafinowicz
EDIT:
There is now a #jokegate hashtag. While the majority seem aware of the hoax, at least a third of the feed is made up of people either asking to be told the joke, or congratulating Serafinowicz on his bravery/standing up for a joke they have never read. The exact opposite of the sort of senseless outrage discussed above, but no less stupid. And a lesson in never commenting on something you know little about.
He’s an underrated comic genius. He also manipulated public opinion via Twitter to get a DVD release for his defunct show that had never previously been on the cards. He also rode the @Wossy leaving the BBC thing too and made himself appear a much bigger star than he was in fact at the time. He deserves to be huge. He and @RobertPopper are the kings of this sort of comedy. Long may they reign
Yeah man, he totally owned us all! What a pithy guy. *stifles yawn*
Thanks for the explanation.
I can see him in the pub, thinking the idea up. Nothing wrong with that. But the twitter hard on it has given him does nothing to endear him. It subsequently looks like nothing more than a calculated publicity stunt. And therefore unsurprising that Piers “Morgan” Moron got in on it. (As an aside, I stopped following Serafinowicz after a joke about Haiti, the night of the earthquake. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t make a deal of it, either.)
That’s the problem with the internet. It gives us not only a voice but also false impressions about the validity of that voice.
All of this reminds of a the backlash that 50cent got from homosexuals following his flippant tweet.
Obviously, whether he intended the joke to be a commentary on the nature of our reaction to such things/willingness to lash back without reason or not is completely down to personal interpretation. His intention is actually not important – although the views expressed here are mine, they’re valid, and this can be seen as commenting on the sort of backlash you’re criticising. More interesting than irritating in this case, no?
Not a fan of 50 Cent but I think he was referencing straight men who don’t go down on their partners.
People thought he was referencing a group of people who obviously wouldn’t do that sort of thing to women.
Anyone that doesnt get that the “outrage” is fake in order to draw in more people searching for the original really didn’t get the joke
But the ‘joke’ isn’t funny. Unless attention-seeking is the joke? I just really do not get it. Because it’s created a furore?
Also, the people still saying “your joke offended me so much that…” (knowing that the joke didn’t exist) are embarrassing themselves to the point that it’s actually making me cringe for them.
I’m commenting more on the social implications of our reactions to the joke than its actual merit. Which I personally think began as a funny and rather clever bit of media manipulation (and endlessly succesful – look, we’re still discussing it!) and has now possibly outstayed its welcome. The fact that some people were commenting on a joke they believed to exist, but had in fact never read, is extremely interesting to me though.
Of course attention seeking is the joke. The people pretending offence are simply prolonging it. NONE of the outrage is or was for real.
I liked it. Wasn’t sure at first, but the follow on made it pretty clear it was a hoax joke.
Serafinowicz is an acquired taste, I think. I’ve acquired it. Find most of his stuff pretty funny. This one was good.
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It is clearly stated that this story is about the over-reaction to this non-existent joke. Yes it is clearly a sign of our times and I agree wholeheartedly. Perhaps in the world of micro-opinions such as we have created we have highlighted the fallibility of opening the web to all and sundry – me included LOL! Oh! what it is to be “Holier-Than-Thou”…
(It’s all a bit like sitting around a dining table opening up a conversation and watch it go horribly wrong as people get on their moral high-horses). Today’s over-reaction to most things – Road Rage fits into this category…
I know there was no joke. I know it was a wind up.
BUT I STILL WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT WAS!
G
There was a ‘joke’.
You are all part of a conspiracy to cover up Serafinowicz’s vile outburst.
Won’t someone think the children?
I like Serafinowicz on TV although this is rare, but his tweets are a stream of unfunny puns. He needs to be more like himself, more random.
No soap, radio!
…fodder for the cud-dlea public out in the cowflapping between milkings by
the royal stoolies and fleetsweets. dairy on!
Thanks for your interesting article, but why did you insert the adverb sic after the word “offense”? The spelling is correct.
My mistake, Americanised spellcheck highlighted it… edited!
Well up to a point, but the simple fact of upset having been caused to a lot of people might be sufficient for offence to be taken by a third party, without the particulars of what caused the upset being known. So if Serafinowicz says, as he did, that he has upset a lot of people, there will be some people who are offended that he has caused the upset, per se. That is not necessarily stupid, although (agreed) it may suggest a certain thin-skinned willingness to be offended, especially when the people caused upset are not close to you or even known to you. Similarly with Sachs, there will be some people who were offended that an old man was caused upset, without needing to know the sordid specifics of what caused the upset. Again, not necessarily stupid.
As much as I like your post and the thought of faux outrage I’m only commenting because you have amazing eyes!! (This shocking piece of misogyny was brought to you by idle-thumb-tom of idlethumb.com).
…tompoxt/l/i(Nauatl/verb/noun=be an idiot/fool/tom-fool=thumb! what!
well. a useful fool it is. what would suspenders be without thumbs, snooker?
mapilli(N)=child of the hand/ma(N)=hunt land/sea with net…hmmm,
baseball impossible without, bowling, cricket. yet, fool becomes thumb,
marbles(you lose them without thumb/mapilli(N)=ma(r)p/fil(letra)=
marfil(sp)=ivory=iueli(N)=powerful=i-u/v/be(a)r/l-i(letra)=bear=
ibearia/hibearnia/hiver/invierno/in-bear-ness(scotland).
ah, that’s it, to carve those little fat lady figgers, last one found in
chaminaua(N)=bricks4(chimney)chermney was 35k bc, you need
a tompoxtli tomfool thumb mapilli marfil chile/chielia/chietlia(N)=shield
child=pilli(N), no pilli(N)=my child=nop/billy noble thumb to play
chess and carve the gwen of the firedrill, tlatla(N)=flame tzol thea/teotl.
she can’t be venus of pillen-dorf=d/to(r)p-tli(N)=idol, because 35k bc,
venus=venison=gwendolyn=queen wendy/uentli(N)=offering=wind-
rolling=ollin(N)=holy was deer/deor(OE)/d/teotl(Nauatl/4water):
what have we learned? marble=marb/fil(sp)/pilli(N). ivory/marfil
does not make good marbles, but thumbs do. at last, a fool with his marbles!
This is proof that trolling is a art.
….a virtual mob mentality
I am pretty sure if the tone of your article would have been decorative for him, just a few supporting comments would have made him a star…..again hinting at the debatable subconscious belief that ‘majority is right’ and social media is way truer.
I saw the tweets, wondered what was going on and after looking around for a little while decided I didn’t really care. But now that I have seen this, I do find it quite funny. I love the idea of people being offended by imaginary tweets.
I *was* offended by the Ross/Brand/Sachs thing, though, because only Basil Fawlty should be mean to Manuel. Or possibly Cybil.
Hahaha! That’s hilarious!
Good on you for being aware of and bringing to light instances of things like this. Subtle, somewhat counter-intuitive public acts are increasingly difficult to identify in the mass of garbage we have to deal with these days.
I think the real value of instances like these is that they highlight the fact that people constantly have unexamined or faulty thought processes and/or behavioral triggers directing their actions. Any and all ‘outrage’ that occurred three or more times removed from the original tweet was at best a sort of intellectual hearsay.
It is no wonder, in light of this, that people are willing to believe so many things without examination and are often LED (willingly) astray.
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I don’t think many people were geninely offended – I think his faux-joke and the collaboration of mock outraged fans create a working model of the sorts of situations when people are genuinely annoyed. As in, the joke as a whole, not just his part of it.
But you had heard the broadcast after the fact. Many people hadn’t ever heard what they were meant to be annoyed about; objecting to rudeness as a general principle is admirable, but I’m discussing objecting to specific statements or pieces of writing without being properly aware of their content. Which did happen with many of the complaints then, and applies to the other example I cite, that of parental groups and Harry Potter bashing.
If people were objecting on the general principle that we should not be rude to one another, whether in public or private, then not only should they have complained about Ross and Brand, but about every broadcaster who has ever been less than polite. Which I imagine would be the majority of them.
I do understand what you mean, but in this situation I do think the comparison I make is accurate.
There’s such a deluge of sarcasm on his twitter that there’s no definitive evidence. The majority certainly weren’t offended; I still think, however, that as a simulation or model of how we react to things like this, the point still works. I doubt that he intended to create anything other than publicity for his twitter and a bit of fun, but it can definitely be used as such.
As far as my edit goes – people definitely were tweeting their support for his joke without having read it, on the general principle of being anti-censorship. Which is all well and good, but I’d be wary of giving my support to or voicing my displeasure with something I hadn’t read, which is the point I’m trying to make here. Perhaps I should have included quotes – next time!
I perhaps wasn’t careful enough to point out – I highly doubt he intended anything other than free publicity and a bit of fun. But whether it was his intention or not, it does illustrate quite well the process of censorship and reaction.
But I don’t object to rudeness. I think it’s a necessity of many aspects of comedy. Without it we wouldn’t have Jimmy Carr, or Bill Hicks.
But they weren’t being rude. They were actively bullying somebody.
You can always ignore what people say. You can’t always ignore what people do. It wasn’t a case of them saying something offensive, they did something offensive. At that point, I don’t have to witness it to be outraged.
Once again – I can’t, and wouldn’t try to, condone their actions. But I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on everything else. I see the point you’re making: that their actions were bullying, and it was the action you object to, whether you witnessed it or not. Which I can respect, really, I can. But my personal stance is that if you’re complaining to the BBC, you’re complaining about the content of a broadcast. Which personally I wouldn’t do if I hadn’t heard said broadcast.
Thanks for your comments! I think the actual coincidence is that my name’s really Moriarty, and I’m a massive Holmes fan – the title just seemed to work, and comes from my Holmes fandom rather than my surname. Thanks for reading, I look forward to seeing yours when you get it set up