The Contempt Economy: When Did Everybody Become a Fucking Comedian?
Being an arsehole doesn't make you a comedian. It makes you an arsehole who thinks they're funny.
And increasingly, I wonder whether we've forgotten the difference.
Everybody seems to have a punchline these days.
Somebody makes a mistake. Somebody looks a little different. Somebody expresses an opinion. Somebody does something mildly embarrassing.
And before they've had the opportunity to recover, there's somebody waiting to make a joke at their expense.
Not necessarily because the situation was particularly funny.
Because they've recognised an opportunity to get a laugh.
Or a reaction.
Or, increasingly, an audience.
We've always taken the piss out of each other. It's practically a national pastime here in Britain.
I grew up doing it. My mates did it. I've spent plenty of time in workplaces where taking the piss was practically a second language.
And I still enjoy a good bit of banter.
But there's a difference between sharing a joke with somebody and turning somebody into the joke.
There's a difference between being funny and being cruel.
And there's a difference between knowing how to make people laugh and knowing when you should keep your fucking mouth shut.
I don't think those distinctions are as widely understood as they once were.
And I suspect our increasingly relentless exposure to performative, provocative and often humiliating entertainment has something to do with it.
Not because comedians have suddenly become more offensive.
Because ordinary people have started adopting the behaviours of professional performers without necessarily possessing the social intelligence that makes those performances work.
Everybody wants the punchline. Nobody wants to learn the craft.
Jimmy Carr is extraordinarily good at what he does.
Whether you find his particular style of humour funny or not, there's no denying the skill involved.
The timing. The delivery. The expression. The ability to read an audience and anticipate a reaction.
The same applies to Ricky Gervais, Frankie Boyle and countless other comedians whose material depends on provoking discomfort.
They deliberately venture into territory most people avoid.
And they do it within a recognisable performance.
The audience understands that they're watching comedy.
The comedian understands that they're performing.
And there's an established social context that allows things to be said which would be inappropriate in an ordinary conversation.
It doesn't make every joke acceptable.
Comedians can misjudge situations, too. Buying a ticket doesn't mean you've consented to every conceivable humiliation.
But the existence of that performance context makes an enormous difference.
Now consider what happens when somebody watches hundreds of clips of professional comedians delivering brutal insults to audience members.
They see the punchline.
They hear the laughter.
They watch the person being roasted squirm in their seat.
They see the approving comments.
What they don't necessarily appreciate is everything happening beneath the surface.
The years of experience.
The sensitivity to timing.
The ability to recognise a receptive audience.
The understanding of when a joke has landed and when it's gone too far.
The awareness that the entire interaction is taking place within a particular social contract.
They see the result.
They don't necessarily understand the process.
And that's where I think things start to become interesting.
Because learning to imitate somebody's behaviour is considerably easier than learning the judgement that makes that behaviour appropriate.
You can copy the words.
You can copy the delivery.
You can even copy the confidence.
But you can't necessarily copy the emotional intelligence.
And without that, what looked hilarious on stage can become deeply unpleasant in everyday life.
Nobody bought a ticket to your performance
Imagine standing in a supermarket queue.
Somebody in front of you is struggling to find their bank card.
Perhaps they're elderly. Perhaps they're distracted. Perhaps they're simply having one of those days.
A perfectly ordinary inconvenience.
Now somebody behind them makes a sarcastic remark.
A couple of people laugh.
The person fumbling with their wallet looks embarrassed.
The amateur comedian feels rather pleased with themselves.
After all, people laughed.
But what exactly have they achieved?
They've taken somebody else's discomfort and turned it into entertainment.
The fact that other people found it funny doesn't necessarily make it harmless.
And the fact that the person being mocked didn't complain doesn't mean they appreciated it.
Now imagine the same interaction taking place between two close friends who've spent twenty years winding each other up.
The exact same remark could be absolutely hilarious.
That's the point.
Context changes the meaning of behaviour.
The relationship matters.
The setting matters.
The intention matters.
The response matters.
And the ability to recognise all those things simultaneously is part of what we call social intelligence.
Yet I increasingly encounter the attitude that if somebody intended a remark to be funny, everybody else should automatically recognise it as humour.
And if they don't?
Apparently, they're the problem.
They can't take a joke.
They've got no sense of humour.
They're too sensitive.
Or, inevitably, they're woke.
It's a remarkable piece of social manoeuvring.
Somebody decides to make another person uncomfortable for the entertainment of others.
And when the person objects, the person making the remark presents themselves as the victim.
Suddenly, they're not somebody who misjudged a social interaction.
They're somebody whose freedom to make jokes is being attacked.
It's an extraordinarily convenient arrangement.
The difference between banter and bullying isn't imaginary
In July 2026, researchers from Nottingham Trent University published a systematic review examining how banter operates in social relationships.
They analysed 47 studies exploring the characteristics of banter, how people interpret it and where it begins to overlap with aggression.
One of the clearest findings was that positive banter generally involves reciprocal exchanges between people who share an understanding of the interaction.
In other words, both people are participating.
Both understand the nature of the exchange.
Both have an opportunity to respond.
And both recognise when it's time to stop.
That last part particularly interests me.
Because knowing when to stop is something I think an increasing number of people struggle with.
We've all encountered somebody who takes a joke too far.
The first remark is funny.
The second gets another laugh.
The third starts to feel uncomfortable.
By the fourth, everyone can see that the person on the receiving end has had enough.
Everyone except the person making the jokes.
They're still chasing the reaction.
Still trying to recreate the laughter.
Still enjoying their position as the centre of attention.
And if somebody eventually tells them to pack it in, they're offended.
They were only having a laugh.
Except the other person stopped laughing several minutes ago.
And I think that reveals something important.
Banter requires social awareness. Bullying can disguise itself as banter when that awareness is absent, ignored or deliberately overridden.
The researchers also identified circumstances in which behaviour described as banter crossed into aggression.
Including inappropriate repetition, jokes about subjects the recipient considered unacceptable, and situations where the people involved didn't share the same understanding of what was happening.
This doesn't mean every unsuccessful joke is bullying.
It doesn't mean somebody has committed an act of cruelty every time a sarcastic remark falls flat.
And it certainly doesn't mean we should demand that everyone constantly second-guess every word that comes out of their mouth.
That would be exhausting.
But there is a world of difference between accidentally offending somebody and repeatedly making somebody uncomfortable while insisting that your intentions excuse the consequences.
And I think that distinction deserves considerably more attention.
It's only a joke. Apparently.
Back in 2006, psychologists Justin Kruger, Cameron Gordon and Jeff Kuban published research investigating how people interpret teasing.
Their findings revealed something that should be familiar to anybody who's spent time observing human behaviour.
The person making the joke frequently interprets it as considerably more innocent than the person receiving it.
That makes sense.
You know what you intended.
You know whether you meant to be offensive.
You know whether you were trying to entertain, provoke or simply lighten the mood.
But the recipient doesn't have access to your intentions.
They experience your words.
Your tone.
Your behaviour.
And whatever emotional impact those things create.
You might believe you've communicated a harmless joke.
They might believe you've communicated contempt.
And both of you can walk away from the same interaction with entirely different understandings of what happened.
That's not a new discovery.
Human beings have been misreading one another since long before Facebook.
But I think the implications become more significant when we introduce an audience.
Because once people start laughing, something changes.
The person making the joke receives immediate social reinforcement.
The person receiving it may feel pressure to laugh along.
And the audience can make the distinction between humour and humiliation considerably harder to navigate.
Nobody wants to be the person accused of ruining the fun.
Nobody wants to look oversensitive.
Nobody wants to become the next punchline.
So they smile.
They laugh.
They pretend it didn't bother them.
And the person making the joke walks away believing it was a success.
But laughter isn't always evidence of enjoyment.
Sometimes it's embarrassment.
Sometimes it's a way of avoiding confrontation.
Sometimes it's simply the quickest way to escape an uncomfortable situation.
And just because somebody laughs at your joke doesn't mean they appreciated being the subject of it.
When the audience becomes more important than the person
This is where I think social media has introduced something genuinely different.
Historically, the audience for an ordinary joke was largely determined by the immediate social environment.
Your friends.
Your colleagues.
The people sitting around your table.
The strangers within earshot.
The social consequences were usually relatively contained.
Make an inappropriate remark and somebody might tell you to fuck off.
Embarrass a friend and you might have to apologise.
Repeatedly behave like an arsehole and people might eventually stop inviting you out.
There were natural feedback mechanisms.
Not perfect ones, obviously.
Bullies have always attracted audiences.
Cruel people have always found other cruel people willing to laugh along.
And some workplaces and social groups have always normalised behaviour that should never have been acceptable.
But now there's another audience.
An enormous one.
One that doesn't necessarily know the person being targeted.
One that has no relationship to protect.
One that may never witness the consequences.
And one that can provide extraordinary levels of approval for behaviour that would otherwise have been challenged.
Think about the videos that circulate online.
Somebody makes an offensive remark to a stranger.
Somebody humiliates a colleague.
Somebody deliberately provokes another person until they react.
The clip gets shared.
People laugh.
Other people join in.
And the entire experience becomes entertainment for people who weren't even there.
The original interaction may have lasted thirty seconds.
The audience can continue growing long after it ends.
And here's the question that bothers me.
When somebody receives more social approval from strangers than social disapproval from the person they've humiliated, which response are they most likely to remember?
I'm not suggesting everyone will prioritise applause over decency.
But some undoubtedly will.
And the existence of that incentive could begin influencing behaviour long before anybody actually presses record.
People can start approaching ordinary social interactions as opportunities to perform.
An argument becomes an opportunity for a clever comeback.
An awkward moment becomes an opportunity for humiliation.
A disagreement becomes an opportunity to deliver the most devastating insult possible.
Because somewhere, consciously or unconsciously, there's an imagined audience.
And that imagined audience changes the interaction.
The other person is no longer simply somebody you're talking to.
They've become somebody you're performing against.
The joke doesn't even have to be particularly funny
There's an aspect of all this that I find almost comical in itself.
A surprising amount of what passes for humour online isn't especially clever.
It's simply offensive.
Someone makes a personal remark about another person's appearance.
Someone mocks an insecurity.
Someone finds a way to turn another person's embarrassment into an opportunity for ridicule.
And the response is predictable.
People celebrate how brutally somebody has been put in their place.
But there's a difference between creating humour and provoking a reaction.
A loud noise provokes a reaction.
That doesn't make it music.
Insulting somebody can provoke laughter.
That doesn't automatically make it comedy.
And being willing to say something outrageous doesn't necessarily demonstrate confidence, intelligence or wit.
Sometimes it simply demonstrates that you have fewer inhibitions than the people around you.
Psychologists Peter McGraw and Caleb Warren explored the circumstances in which violations of social expectations become humorous.
Their research developed the idea that something can be funny when it's perceived as simultaneously wrong and acceptable.
The violation creates tension.
The sense that it isn't genuinely threatening allows the tension to become amusement.
Of course, there's considerable variation in what different people consider acceptable.
And that's precisely why context matters.
A joke can feel harmless to one person and threatening to another.
The comedian who understands the audience is better positioned to navigate that distinction.
The person who simply believes that the more offensive something is, the funnier it becomes, may not be.
And I wonder whether our consumption of entertainment increasingly rewards the appearance of boldness without requiring the underlying judgement.
Because being willing to offend somebody is easy.
Knowing how to be provocative without being unnecessarily cruel is considerably harder.
We've started confusing confidence with social competence
I think this might be one of the most interesting consequences of what we're seeing.
We admire confidence.
We admire people who speak their minds.
We admire people who aren't frightened of challenging accepted thinking.
I certainly do.
Some of the most important progress in society has come from people willing to say things others were uncomfortable hearing.
But there's a distinction between having the confidence to challenge an idea and having the confidence to humiliate another person.
One can demonstrate courage.
The other can simply demonstrate a lack of consideration.
Yet in an environment where provocative remarks attract attention, the two can begin to look remarkably similar.
Somebody delivers a vicious insult.
The audience laughs.
The person appears confident.
The comments celebrate their fearlessness.
And suddenly behaviour that might otherwise be recognised as unpleasant becomes associated with strength.
But is it strength?
Or is it simply a willingness to sacrifice somebody else's dignity for a moment of social approval?
I don't think confidence should be measured by how comfortable somebody is making other people uncomfortable.
Sometimes the more socially intelligent person is the one who recognises a potential joke and deliberately chooses not to make it.
Not because they're frightened.
Because they understand the situation.
They've read the room.
They've considered the other person.
And they've decided that getting a laugh isn't worth the possible consequences.
That's not weakness.
That's judgement.
And I'd argue it's a considerably more valuable quality than being the loudest person in the room.
What are we teaching children about being funny?
As a father, I find myself thinking about this increasingly.
Children learn enormous amounts about social interaction by watching other people.
They observe adults.
They observe their friends.
They observe the way other children behave.
And increasingly, they observe a constant stream of people performing for audiences they will never meet.
Some of that content is brilliant.
Creative.
Imaginative.
Genuinely hilarious.
But some of it consists of people being rewarded for embarrassing, provoking or humiliating others.
And children don't necessarily possess the experience required to understand all the social distinctions involved.
They might recognise that a remark makes people laugh without fully understanding why it was acceptable in one situation and inappropriate in another.
They might recognise the approval without recognising the discomfort.
They might learn how to deliver the insult before learning how to judge whether the insult should be delivered at all.
That doesn't mean children are incapable of understanding humour.
Of course they are.
Nor does it mean that children never bullied one another before social media existed.
I grew up in the eighties and nineties. Kids could be absolute little shits long before they had internet access.
But the environment in which they're learning about human behaviour has changed enormously.
They're no longer learning predominantly from the relatively small number of people they interact with in person.
They're observing countless examples of behaviour from people around the world, many of whom are deliberately presenting the most provocative versions of themselves.
And those examples can be repeated over and over again.
I think it would be extraordinary if that had no influence whatsoever.
The important question is what kind of influence, on whom, and under which circumstances.
Because exposure doesn't determine behaviour.
But it can contribute to what people perceive as normal, admired or socially rewarded.
And those perceptions matter.
The most convenient defence in the world
There's something I want to address because it seems to sit beneath so many of these interactions.
The belief that objecting to an offensive remark automatically means somebody lacks a sense of humour.
I think this is bollocks.
I can find Jimmy Carr hilarious and still recognise that somebody making a similar remark to a stranger at work is behaving inappropriately.
Those positions aren't contradictory.
They're perfectly compatible.
Because I understand that comedy is contextual.
I can enjoy a film in which somebody commits a crime without believing that crime is acceptable in real life.
I can enjoy a violent action film without wanting to recreate it in the supermarket.
And I can appreciate an offensive joke without believing that being offensive automatically makes somebody funny.
Yet we've developed this peculiar tendency to frame objections to unpleasant behaviour as evidence of ideological weakness.
Some people absolutely do overreact to humour.
Some people interpret every uncomfortable joke as a personal attack.
And some people attempt to impose their own boundaries on everybody else.
That deserves challenging too.
But it doesn't follow that everybody who objects to a joke is unreasonable.
Sometimes a joke is simply badly judged.
Sometimes it's cruel.
Sometimes the person making it has misunderstood the relationship.
And sometimes somebody is using humour as a convenient excuse to say something they know would otherwise be unacceptable.
The ability to recognise those distinctions shouldn't require a political label.
It should simply require a reasonable degree of social awareness.
You don't have to be offended by a joke to recognise that somebody is being an arsehole.
The part I can't prove
I want to bring this back to the observation that started the entire investigation.
For years, people consumed provocative comedy within particular contexts.
Now they're exposed to it repeatedly through social media, often in fragmented clips selected precisely because they're likely to generate reactions.
At the same time, increasingly sophisticated recommendation systems can surround people with similar forms of entertainment.
And we know from research that people don't always interpret teasing in the same way, that positive banter depends on shared understanding and that online environments can encourage behaviour people might otherwise inhibit.
John Suler described the last phenomenon as the online disinhibition effect back in 2004.
His work explored why people sometimes express themselves more intensely online than they would face-to-face.
That provides another potentially relevant piece of the puzzle.
But none of those findings, individually or collectively, proves that repeated exposure to provocative comedy is making ordinary people less socially considerate.
And I don't intend to pretend otherwise.
What interests me is the possibility that we're examining a much bigger relationship through research that wasn't necessarily designed to investigate it.
Repeated exposure.
Imitation.
Social reinforcement.
Reduced inhibition.
Changing perceptions of acceptable behaviour.
They're different mechanisms.
But they don't exist in isolation.
And I suspect their combined influence may be more consequential than we currently appreciate.
Perhaps the person who makes a cruel remark to a stranger hasn't consciously copied anybody.
Perhaps they've always been inclined to behave that way.
Perhaps social media has simply given them an audience.
Or perhaps years of repeatedly watching similar behaviour being celebrated have gradually made it feel more acceptable.
Those explanations aren't mutually exclusive.
And I think that's precisely why the subject deserves deeper investigation.
Not everybody needs to be the entertainment
I love humour.
I love laughing with people.
I love the sort of conversation where somebody says something so unexpectedly inappropriate that you nearly choke on your drink.
I don't want society to lose that.
But I do worry that we're becoming increasingly comfortable with humour that depends on somebody else being uncomfortable.
And I worry that we're confusing the ability to entertain people with the ability to treat people well.
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Some of the funniest people I've ever encountered are also among the most considerate.
They understand timing.
They understand boundaries.
They understand their audience.
And they understand that sometimes the funniest thing you could say is better left unsaid.
That's not censorship.
That's emotional intelligence.
It's recognising that other people don't exist simply to provide opportunities for your entertainment.
And that not every thought deserves an audience.
We live in a world where almost anybody can publish their opinions, broadcast their behaviour and attract an audience.
That's an extraordinary development.
But having access to an audience doesn't automatically make you a performer.
Getting a reaction doesn't automatically make you funny.
And making somebody the subject of a joke doesn't mean they've agreed to participate.
I wonder whether we've spent so much time celebrating people for saying whatever they like that we've forgotten to appreciate the people who know when not to.
Because the ability to make somebody laugh is a wonderful thing.
The ability to recognise when that laughter comes at somebody else's expense is arguably even more important.
Nobody bought a ticket to your performance.
And the rest of the world isn't obliged to be your fucking punchline.
Independent research and sources
1. Betts, L. R., Buglass, S. L., Abell, L., Steer, O. L., & Balaos, A. (2026). Understanding Banter: A Systematic Review of Literature to Conceptualize the Behaviors That Characterize Banter. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology.
A systematic review of 47 studies examining reciprocal humour, shared understanding, social boundaries and the distinction between banter and aggressive behaviour.
https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.70127
2. Kruger, J., Gordon, C. L., & Kuban, J. (2006). Intentions in Teasing: When “Just Kidding” Just Isn't Good Enough. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90(3), 412–425.
Research demonstrating how people delivering teasing remarks often perceive them as more innocent than the people receiving them.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.3.412
3. McGraw, A. P., & Warren, C. (2010). Benign Violations: Making Immoral Behavior Funny. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1141–1149.
Experimental research exploring how violations of social expectations can become humorous when simultaneously perceived as benign.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610376073
4. Suler, J. (2004). The Online Disinhibition Effect. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 7(3), 321–326.
An influential account of psychological mechanisms that can lead people to express themselves differently online than in face-to-face interactions.
https://doi.org/10.1089/1094931041291295
5. Lewis, I. (2024). How Viral Crowd Work Clips Are Remaking Standup for the Social Media Age. The Guardian.
Reporting on how comedians use audience interactions as short-form digital content, how clips are selected and edited, and how this changes audience expectations.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/article/2024/jul/02/comedy-crowd-work
Research gaps and questions for further investigation
- Longitudinal evidence examining whether frequent exposure to insult-based comedy influences young people's interpretation of acceptable social behaviour.
- Research distinguishing imitation of professional comedians from pre-existing aggressive tendencies, peer influences and wider cultural changes.
- Studies examining whether repeated consumption of humiliation-based entertainment affects empathy, inhibition, social judgement or willingness to challenge bullying.
- Investigation into how audience size, laughter, likes and public approval influence the behaviour of people delivering offensive jokes.
- Research examining how the loss of original performance context affects people's interpretation and imitation of short-form comedy.
- Evidence connecting online reinforcement of mocking behaviour to observable changes in real-world interpersonal interactions.
These are open research questions. The essay's proposed relationship between repeated exposure, imitation and social behaviour remains an interpretation rather than a demonstrated causal conclusion.