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Comedian Ricky Gervais explained in an
interview with
The Wall Street Journal this week why nothing should be off limits when it comes to comedy, adding in a second interview that he wants to "try and get canceled."
Gervais, 60,
told Heat that he wants to push his new stand-up comedy show to the absolute limits, saying,
"I'm treating it like it's my last one ever.""It won't be, but I want to put everything into it. I want to try and get cancelled," he added. "No, I just want to go all-out there."When asked by
The Journal if there was anything he should not joke about, Gervais responded, "No."
"There's no subject you shouldn't joke about," he said. "It depends on the joke. As a journalist, there's nothing you wouldn't write about. It depends on your angle, right?
I think a lot of this pious offense comes from people mistaking the target of the joke with the subject. You can joke about anything, but it depends on what the actual target is. If you use irony and people see that at face value and think you're saying one thing but you're actually saying the opposite. Even the critical thinkers, if it's a subject that's personal to them, they can't see the wood for the trees, they can't see objectively. People laugh at 19 of the terrible subjects I joke about, but not the 20th because that affects them."
Comment: It seems unlikely that education, in the way they're referring to it above, will lead to any improvements. Perpetrators of 'sextortion' likely know that what they're doing is wrong and immoral, but they do it anyway. It seems it would be much more beneficial to teach people how to protect themselves, to not be vulnerable to such attacks, rather than trying to reach the perpetrators.
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