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Thou shall not crack this joke – how Vir Das deleting tweet shows what they say is not what matches in action

The cancel culture has out-cancelled itself, it seems.

Comedians in India have been complaining since May 2014 that they cannot crack jokes freely anymore. That ‘bhakts’ take an offence to their ‘jokes’ which they quite often like to crack on Hindu gods and goddesses. Other religions are usually off limits because no one really likes to be Charlie Hebdo’ed.

One such prominent figure has been ‘comedian’ Vir Das.

Earlier in January, Das had expressed his disappointment at how the ‘system’ was not only telling ‘comedians’ on what they can or cannot joke about but also telling people of India what they can laugh at.

Vir Das on ‘system’

He was amused how ‘Sanghis’ were quoting it.

You see, ‘comedians’ in India have an issue when it comes to taking criticism. If you find their ‘joke’, even if it is not on Hindu gods and goddesses, in bad taste or unfunny, you are a ‘Sanghi’ and don’t have sense of humour. The concept of you, as an audience, finding them ‘unfunny’ is lost on them.

Except, last night, Das got cancelled by the wokes themselves. The same wokes who just love to hate on ‘Sanghis’ and accuse them of being devoid of humour.

Here is what happened.

Vir Das’s now deleted tweet

At around 6:30 PM on Monday, Das took a seeming dig on ‘wokes’ who have pronouns in their profiles. Transgender, nonbinary people, who usually like to stay away from all things ‘Sanghi’, sometimes put their pronouns in their bio to help people to identify their gender.

So, ‘he/him’ is used by those who identify themselves as male, ‘she/her’ for female and ‘they/their’ for those who consider themselves ‘gender neutral’.

Das cracked a joke that his pronouns are ‘heh/huh’.

Those who do like to identify themselves with various such genders were not too happy with the said joke and accused him of ‘punching down on minorities’ amongst other things.

Sanghi-hating wokes were upset.

The ‘woke’ system took it upon themselves to teach Das what kind of jokes he can crack. As a ‘woke’ comic, cracking jokes on those who put pronouns in profiles is a no-no.

So much that in less than an hour he deleted his tweet.

Vir Das deletes his tweet

Das then claimed people misunderstood his ‘joke’ and were upset and hence he deleted his joke. You see, the ‘woke system’ got him to delete his ‘offensive’ ‘joke’. But the wokes were still not happy.

Wokes unhappy

Das was being informed by the ‘woke system’ on what kind of jokes he could crack and also those who weren’t too offended by his ‘joke’ on what kind of jokes they could laugh on.

Despite ‘Sanghis’ being offended, none of these jokers have deleted the offensive tweets. In fact, some of them tweet offensive stuff just to trigger the ‘Sanghis’ so that they can play victim. Let’s not forget the jokers who had to apologise to the ruling party leaders in Maharashtra (Shiv Sena, Congress and NCP) for a joke on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, but will still blame the ‘Sanghis’ for taking an offence. The ‘truth to the power’ tripe works only if the ‘power’ is Narendra Modi.

You see, the real ‘establishment’ is not the ‘Sanghi’ establishment. It is this ‘ecosystem’ that has been controlling your ideas on what should be offensive, what should not be offensive and what kind of offence deserves an apology. They will tell you what is attack on freedom of speech (‘Sanghis’ finding the jokes unfunny) and what is ‘respecting other people’s views’ (neon-haired, pronoun-loving, ‘Sanghi’-hating wokes).

The cancel culture has out-cancelled itself, it seems.

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Nirwa Mehta
Nirwa Mehtahttps://medium.com/@nirwamehta
Politically incorrect. Author, Flawed But Fabulous.

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