Just Get Better Jokes: Clout, Comedy, and Cancel Culture

Editor's note: This is a response piece to an editorial submitted by a valiant and brave anonymous writer entitled Implying Slavery In Pursuit of Clout.

Let's begin with the title in and of itself, because it speaks to the stunning lack of self-awareness the writer will proceed to portray throughout the rest of the editorial. What the author is attempting to do is to portray anybody who has even a slight criticism with tired, racist jokes as a clout-chaser just doing it for attention. Unfortunately this logic doesn't hold up on several points: chief of them being that everything is done for clout on social media. 

Whether you post a piece of artwork or some form of commentary, you are doing it for attention. Why else tweet out whatever inane thought you have in your head to the masses? On some base level everything put out into the world is done for validation, whether it be through retweets, likes, or comments. And AnontheAnon's picture paid that validation out in spades, with the total likes coming in at over 3,000. In two weeks it's gotten almost as many likes as a post he actually put a considerable amount of effort into, his The Producers parody. It took five months for that to hit 5,000 in comparison.

If anything, Anon himself has gotten the most clout out of the proceedings, and has done it by purposefully being controversial. It's a bit disingenuous to imply that "the eBiL essjaydoubleYOUS" are the cause of the pic's popularity. This is not some silly little image tweeted out by a 3 follower account or a shitpost uploaded anonymously to Derpibooru. Anon is an incredibly talented animator whose works have reached widespread popularity in the fandom, to the tune of some 5,000 followers. Before there was even any substantial push-back on the image it was well on its way to 1,000 likes, and those in favor of the humor were already preemptively attempting to mitigate the oncoming drama. The post below was made before I ever even laid eyes on the artwork.

The author next claims that it was mostly the complainers who were starting a "crusade" and "dragging in outsiders" to criticize the work. I have to ask: What exactly where you expecting? Should every single person who laid eyes on the art have fallen to their knees in hysterical laughter, wiping tears from their eyes and screaming, "based and red-pilled," to the heavens? Let me remind you that this was posted on Twitter, one of the largest social media sites on the planet. At this point the author isn't offering any substantive defenses: He simply hates the fact that some people found the joke unfunny. It's an affront to him that anyone couldn't have liked such a masterclass in comedy as "Applejack owns slaves and blacks like watermelons." Please laugh.

And as for those "other people dragged into it?" Surely the author means anybody who possesses a pair of functioning eyeballs, right? When you post artwork it enters the public sphere, and it has the chance to go outside of your personal ring of edgy shitposters on your marepussy Discord server. If you believe your art has enough merit to share with the world, you must also accept the fact that it won't be loved by everyone. This includes show producers like Jim Miller. Much like the BABSCon Sieg Heil and the guy who asked Celestia VA Nicole Oliver about Princess "Molestia," bronies have a bad habit of showcasing their total lack of social awareness directly to the people that create the content they enjoy. Nobody was "dragged into" reacting to that picture, the very act of posting it dragged his 5,000 followers into the drama. (Of course, having stonetoss retweet the art out to his 50K followers doesn't count, because reasons.)

And contrary to the author's claims that an outraged mob was calling for Anon to be beaten and his artwork deleted, most complaints simply amounted to "wow this is shitty." Even my own complaints were along the same vein, explaining that such tired tropes without a point or any wit or subversion was stale. It's almost as if he wanted everyone to fall to their knees in hysterics, wiping tears from their eyes while loudly proclaiming "based and red-pilled." If you don't like something they do, well you're obviously just an *insert whatever flavor-of-the-month insult you want here* who needs to just get with the epic memes. These people don't want freedom of speech, they just want to never have their ideas and beliefs challenged in any capacity.

Which leads us to the author's penultimate point: Everyone who complains about the artwork has skeletons in their closets as well. I mean yeah, no shit. Got any hay leftover from that straw-man to make pancakes for Twilight? I'm on record as saying Sweetie Belle's flank looks "like a double-wide surprise" and I would like her to "do a Robin Williams on my disco stick." Does my opinion on porn invalidate my opinion on comedy? Or is that simply a weak defense that detractors themselves don't even believe in? For example, Stuten Pimmel (who runs the BadBronyAlarmv2 account that attempted to """"expose"""" my awful deeds) doesn't actually give a shit about foalcon or pedophilia.

The same goes for many people gathering spicy screen-caps to attempt to display my apparent hypocrisy. None of these people actually give a damn about any of this, and it shows clearly. You can't beat a genuine concern about racism with a disingenuous gotcha about porn, and doing so minimizes the threat actual predators in this fandom pose to children. Equivocating two entirely different genres of media is a sloppy gamble at best. At worst its a desperate hail-mary throw to lob out when you've run out of arguments. Of course, these reactionaries who screech all day about how bad cancel culture is will immediately turn around and toss around pedophilia accusations like candy. Anybody with a brain can see the accusations are performatory, a twisted inversion of cancel culture suited to right-wing needs, and multiple people have even straight out admitted it.

So if phony claims of pedophilia and whataboutism don't hold up, what's left of the argument? Well it all comes down to the old standby that all hack comedians turn to when nobody's laughing at their room-killing humor: cOmEdY is SuBjEctIvE. Now in all seriousness that is true to some extent, but the implication in its usage here is that there are no rules to comedy and literally anything and everything is funny (or not). It's a bit insulting to the comedy greats to even casually imply that there's no objective way to say what is good comedy and what isn't. Its just a cop out, a way to deflect when people don't find edgy "jokes" as gut-bustingly hilarious as the author apparently thinks. Contrary to popular belief I enjoy racial humor as well, if its done properly. Jargon Scott's Twiggie comics are a great example of edgy jokes done well. There's usually actually a punchline, and excellent narrative and comedic timing. In comparison, AnontheAnon's """joke""" was overwhelmingly bland and lacked any substance whatsoever.

Nobody's trying to cancel you or destroy comedy or take your penis or whatever the fuck. Just get better jokes, especially if you're a content creator with a large audience. Once you take your shitposting outside of your cringy My Little 1488 group chat, you lose the right to claim that you're a victim of "cancel culture" just because other people dared to insinuate that showing a zebra gobbling down on a watermelon might not exactly make you the King of Comedy. Racist humor without any actual wit or a punchline is just racist. Put in a little more effort. I know you can do better.