Well, I'm also a fan of testing boundaries. For me comedy can serve as a safe space in throwing wild and outrageous shit around without actually offending someo

Well, I'm also a fan of testing boundaries. For me comedy can serve as a safe space in throwing wild and outrageous shit around without actually offending someone. A rhetorical splatter fest. Over the years I found myself to be in the (vocal) minority. And the taste has indeed shifted, this kind of shameless boundary testing has slipped into the now revolting underground. The article also goes into this: >And what about the contemporary panic about "cancel culture" in comedy? For McGraw, this is not such a unique moment in history. "This phenomenon has been happening ever since there has been stand-up comedy," he says. As the two jesters from Richard I's court demonstrate, comedy has always been risky, and the power has always ultimately rested with the audience. "What is wrong and what is OK is determined not by the teller, but by the audience member, by the receiver, and by their mood, the context they're in, the number of drinks they've had, their culture, their identity," continues McGraw. If the power rests with the audience, the comedian has a tricky task in pleasing them. Stand-up comedian Catherine Bohart knows this pressure well. "The psychology of an audience is really interesting because [if] you seem fine, they are willing to trust you," she says. "But if you are being vulnerable, they can sniff out that anxiety and vulnerability." In our current times (in western society (vocal middle class)) free speech isn't actually valued as much as say 50 years ago. Since the beginning of multiple apparent crises (massive wealth inequality, Trump, Covid, Ukraine ...) freedom of expression gets (carefully) weight against other things which are perceived as more important. Historically (i.e. in practice) once "lines" get drawn this fine thread evolves into an ideological battlefield. To appreciate free speech in its fullest requires the leisure of meta-reasoning, unfortunately once insights are established they also suffer from a decay rate (proportional to the magnitude of disruptions into the cohesive fabric of societies) - if not activley reinforced - and then have to be relearned (the hard way) after the turbulent times of societal changes subside. Because "fake news" is put in new convincing and startling clothes when narratives taken for granted crumble, to cancel something is then just burying it mindlessly, it doesn't at all address the underlying issues. As I'm reading "The Sleepwalkers" (1932) by Hermann Broch anew this isn't something peculiar to our times as the book covers three time periods (1888, 1903, 1918) in then Europe/Germany elegantly intertwining the recurring motive of sleepwalking into deeply uncertain and unsettling times. Lucidity is few and and far between and mostly if at all acknowledged after the fact (which is a carefully constructed cue to the observant reader of 1932).