If you were a visitor here over the last two years thank you for coming. However, in the end the visitor count stalled at low levels making the site unviable and pointless. Meanwhile, blunt satire (for example, on Twitter) has fared fairly well.

Inference
This moment in time seems to require a form of comedy that focusses heavily on pursuing a cultural or political point and deprioritises ‘wandering focus’ (stretching the internal logic of an idea for fun i.e. for its own sake).

Conclusion
Our experience at the moment is acutely anxious. In our instinctive search for clear cultural patterns and politico-ethical certainties we are increasingly luckless and nonplussed. Anything that can provide answers (patterns) quickly and confidently is therefore highly prized.

Some predictions
It is likely, indeed inevitable, that this arrangement will lose stability. Boredom will rise at the abundance of blunt satire, or comedy more broadly, on offer. How soon this will happen, and in what way appetites evolve beyond a moment of lassitude, is the interesting question. There are worrying possibilities: what little pleasurable diversion and for-itselfness there is now in comedy could disappear entirely, leaving a brittle culture of mutual antagonism and simmering violence. Alternatively, a more playful and experimental direction might take hold, and tensions release.

Full report

M Smith

March 2016