Bring on AI and the super-comedians-I don’t see how they can be any worse than the real ones…

Being originally British and a beneficiary of the fine and outstanding tradition of British comedy, I was conducting a little search for “British Comedy” last night on Youtube for something fresh or fairly recent to have a giggle at. The conclusion of my search was that BC is both dead and buried. Not one to want to say that whatever occurred in the past was always better than what goes on now, I must reluctantly admit without any hesitation that in the case of BC the past was better. “Better” may not really be the correct word to use here: it assumes various levels of “good”.

Of course, it wasn’t always good, it wasn’t always funny, and it certainly was sometimes pathetic. But now on a scale from “hilarious and uplifting” to “pathetic, sick and putrid”, the laugh-ometer is definitely pointing very close to the latter. Why anyone can find a string of “f” words so gut-rumblingly funny is completely beyond me. Of course, the same thing goes on in the US, but at least once in a while Hollywood manages to produce some real laughs for real people…

One of the strengths of British comedy was self-effacement and the willingness of the purveyor of humour to make himself or herself the butt of the jokes. But what’s now called “comedy” is mostly designed to attack, to denigrate, to humiliate and to shame someone else, and to brainwash an audience of cabbages unable to think for themselves into believing in a certain politically-correct way, and to accept things that people would not normally accept: it’s the old bitter pill wrapped in sugar trick.

Comic irony has become vilification, propaganda, and hate-speech for the twenty-first century. I suppose it had to happen that once the four-letter word barrier was broken and all the taboos trashed, the sights of the wanna-be funny guys would be turned on the enemies of the day: the Donald Trumps of the world. Yes, lets all humiliate someone who isn’t here to defend themselves or set the record straight.

The saddest, most inexplicable part of it all is that these “comedians” and their producers manage to find an audience willing to hoot, howl and shriek with what on the surface could be called “laughter”. Can hate really be expressed in laughter? I personally can’t do it myself, but I’m convinced that many can, and do.

The death of comedy and natural, hate-free fun has to be another sign of the near-death state of the Western world.

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