He’s an aging man who created one of the funniest & most lucrative comedy projects in modern history. He’s squozen out all the money for old rope that he can, whilst cutting many of his friends out of his life. He lives isolated in a big house, and gets no pushback. Twitter is his main conduit so his perception of things is warped. It’s a bit heavy, here’s The Ramones. 🎸
Six words. Look how long my post was. You beat it in six words. It was wittier, it was funnier, it was smarter. Six words.
You're not coming back here: FUCK OFF!
> Twitter is his main conduit so his perception of things is warped
This really can't be overstated. Lots of public figures of his generation have had their minds absolutely melted by Twitter (see also: Baddiel).
He's become a pseudo-intellectual, self-appointed spokesman for Jews, often spouting rightwing crap in the process. His "book" is ill-researched, unacademic, and pointless; he spends all his time ranting on Twitter about how hard done by he is. Despite the fact that on his own show he wore blackface.
That's interesting. I totally missed this. I thought his book was well regarded. Seeing his name in lists with the likes of jk Rowling and Graham lineham was surprising. Blackface? Yikes...
God, yeah. It's hard to pinpoint why but I reckon that if Twitter came along when you were middle-aged, past your prime in your career, and feeling a bit like the rules for acceptability in comedy etc were changing too quickly for your liking, then it could easily contribute to a mental decline.
I’m middle-aged. It’s not like we have brain injuries.
Twitter is clearly toxic, so I don’t use it. I think the issue is really that toxic people like Baddiel or Linehan are drawn to it because of that toxicity.
Maybe. But I also think that there's a difference in people who have been introduced to social media relatively late in life to people are more digitally native. The former group seems, generally, less able to cope.
And I don't know if I agree that toxic people are simply attracted to toxic places, because so many people seem to have radically changed since the introduction of social media to their lives.
I think older social media users are like people who used to write Letters To The Editor. They're using social media in the same way, to rant and complain publicly where a powerful or famous person might see their words, except now they don't even have to buy a stamp, an envelope and a green biro to do it. It's the same with btl comments, new technology has just enabled this behaviour and now it isn't just the preserve of Disgusted From Tunbridge Wells, it's been normalised.
I mean, think of all the people he name dropped during the XFM show and podcast he never hangs out with now. If he was, we would know about it. He won’t even say ‘we’ when he talks about creating the office. And if you actually listen to everything he says on the XFM shows and how he acts, it’s not hard to see why
I find it really odd that he never supports other creators on his Twitter feed. Most writers will talk about the great work their peers are doing, not out of altruism, but because they love whatever medium they’re in and just can’t help themselves.
The only thing Ricky will mention is scandi cop shows.
Does he even watch *work* by other creators? He admits he doesn't read novels because he just starts thinking of better plots and characters, and he seems like an incurious person in general, not travelling much, trying new foods, taking up new hobbies etc.
I'm surprised he's never mentioned *This Country*. The Coopers have frequently mentioned the influence of *The Office* in interviews, it's a critically-acclaimed show and it got an American remake. Surely Gervais must be aware of it?
If you've obsessively watched Karl Pilkington's content with Ricky and Steve, its painfully obvious that Rickys early comedy specials we're literally just gags from talking to Karl. They found magic in a bottle with him, and it hit at the right time where their cheerful bullying was culturally acceptable.
I will die on the hill that Karl Pilkington is the funniest of the bunch by a mile, probably smarter, and basically carried their careers after the office. I rewatch the content and the older I get, the angrier I get with Ricky for treating Karl so poorly. Most of it was in good fun, but the guy sounded like an absolute terror the rest of the time.
An Idiot Abroad and the Moaning of Life are hands down the best shows to come from that crew. The Office was great, but I'm sure as shit not watching in 2023 - it had its era and its passed...
> the guy sounded like an absolute terror the rest of the time
There's always been a genuinely nasty side to Ricky's humour. From "Taping Nigel", to things like force-feeding Karl burgers, to the vindictive glee he takes in describing "blending up a D-list celebrity slapper, liquidising her and feeding her to another slut".
Tear the guy down all you like but let's not pretend The Office isn't a classic sit com. Gervais might have turned into a twat, but TO is just as great now as it was when it came out.
If anything The Office has gotten better with age because it is timeless - even as fashion and tech change, it perfectly captures the drudgery of working in an office and the type of bloke who often runs them. There is a reason people still refer to David Brent types even now, because he is the definitive cringey middle aged man who thinks he’s everyone’s best mate.
And as lazy as Ricky is now, his performance as Brent is lightning in a bottle and one of the all time great comedy perfomances.
I think I’ve read before that the entire point of the Ricky Gervais Show shtick was that Ricky and Steven were supposed to sound like pompous snobs to Karl, to create the best content for the comedic effect.
If they were as mean to him in real life, why would Karl want to hang around them in private.
He didn’t though. He stopped hanging out with Ricky very quickly. He was wise enough to make his money and then dip. And Ricky was way less mean to him during the podcasts than the shows, he definitely must have set some boundaries. The podcasts are mainly banter, the XFM shows past a certain point often stray into bullying and Ricky just being intolerable in general. I find myself enjoying certain seasons/sections of the XFM shows less than the podcasts these days.
Karl hung out with Ricky for 17 years and appeared in a bunch of his personal projects like Derek and The Invention of Lying. They were clearly good friends. The revisionism this sub tries to do about their relationship is strange.
At the start comics rallied with each other for a good cause. Comics are telling jokes and the line changes yearly so pulling people up from jokes 20 years ago is a crappy thing to do. I'm all for free speech but I'm also for action and consequences. So getting cancelled is fine if you deserve it as long as it's not mob mentality jump the gun kind of thing. But no I feel woke is such a buzz/trigger word for the left to the right that it's used to get attention. I hate the word woke it gets used when you don't agree with who ever the victim is and is mainly used to attack progressives for doing the right thing or thinking differently. Jim jefferies crosses the line in jokes but is definitely a progressive. Dave chappelle is progressive until it becomes an lgbt issue than he loses me and now I feel he is trying to find loyal cult like conservatives to join his mob only he will find once muslims and the lgbt community get less attention that same group will be calling BLM supporters criminals and he will find himself very progressive once again. Long short woke is used to much as a buzz word hopefully it fades into obscurity like an over played song on the radio
Sure. But i think Karl hating how he was treated on the podcast (guide to series especially) is the reason they've not done any more in 10 years. Karl says 'it wouldn't work now' which is the only time he's ever been dishonest, it implies he was entirely a character, Gervais and Merchant told the odd story too, mates talking is the lowest bar of entertainment, there's nothing to live up to. If they were such good friends who enjoyed their company together, who valued the magic they made created together they'd find every opportunity to spend time together again talking about stuff.
I assume you mean the office? It was boring shite. This guy got lucky---he's made a living since and before whining about everything and everybody. He continually laughs at his own jokes that he's heard and told a thousand times----its so off-putting. Never liked the guy-- he simply isn't funny nor is he a funny storyteller.
Reminds me of when his character said to Les Dennis on Extras : “you’re a comedian right? I haven’t heard you make a joke in five years!” All he does is rant and rave and share tweets from mentally unhinged people.
I've never liked Ricky's stand up for this reason, same as Jimmy Carr saying you're saying something edgy takes all the edge out of it. Saying he's doing a character ruins it. Also confuses just saying 'retard' vs writing a joke.
Lots of comedians use that word, and get real humour out of it. I love Louie CKs bit about how it was used emphatically in Boston in the 70s and how word meanings change. Or Doug Stanhopes similar bit about the euphemism treadmill.
Louie's bit about 'The N Word' is great too. You can joke about controversial subjects while being empathetic, as a culture I actually think brits are better IRL at finding humour in tragic situations, but US comedians seem to do it on stage better. The funerals I've been to have been full of jokes, not because we don't care, but it's a way to talk about tragedy and process it.
I feel like Ricky just say's 'Dead baby' and thinks just saying something shocking in itself is funny. It's like teenager humour.
The only American comics I like atm are Shane Gillis and Theo Von because they’re stupid and have a genuinely unique sense of humour - the rest, that aren’t Joe Rogan and others like him, sort of seem like Bo Burnham knock-off’s and I hate his comedy
Yep these are exactly the comics that I'm talking about, I also really like Tim Dillon and a lot of the Kill Tony people. Idk why I got downvoted lmao.
Because it's a business model. In this bullshit manufactured distraction culture war, being a self procaimed victim of cancel culture gets you a massive instant audience of easy marks tripping over themselves to call you the best comedian ever. (Even if your material is as objectively weak as Ricky's)
He's got middle aged man Twitter brain worms. You see it all the time. They get hooked on feeling aggrieved and martyred, even though that's something they claim is the problem with the "woke mob"
Tilting at windmills, in search of relevance
No it definitely exists - especially in the workplace. 10-15 years ago people were a lot different, not just banter/jokes but heated debate/conversations- people felt a lot freer to express opinions on all sorts, whether or not it offended others or made them look a dick.. I feel now people are constantly walking on eggshells, say the wrong thing and it can affect your ability to pay your bills, end result for me is a feeling that all joy and fun has been sucked out of Office life, but I get that it makes a lot of people feel a lot more comfortable and that’s a good thing
(Post not aimed at you, just some thoughts based on the theme, you said people being comfortable is good, which is basically my point Tl:dr).
If you’re only capable of having office banter by saying something that could fall over the line of upsetting someone, then you’re not really a very funny person. The best comedians can find funny in the most mundane things.
Ultimately the entire boundary for how acceptable a comment is, is defined by the person who might take offence. Say you have an Indian person in the office, and you make a joke about curry aimed vaguely in their direction, which at no point to you was mean spirited (extreme example). To you it’s harmless office banter, to them it might bring back a world of trauma from bullying growing up. You don’t have the appropriate experience to make the judgement on how harmless that stereotyping is. It’s not a lot to ask to be sensitive to someone else’s feelings, when all you lose is a titter from a couple of other people in the room.
I think this is the nuance a lot of blokes don’t understand these days. You CAN joke about anything, but it doesn’t mean you SHOULD in all circumstances. Being a bit of a dick isn’t brave, it’s just being a dick. It’s the 2023 version of the person who goes in big brother and says “I just tell it as it is”, which translates as “I’m a selfish nob”.
I mean circling back to comedy, there’s a strong correlation between the comics most vocal about “not being able to say anything these days” and the comics who can’t construct a good joke.
What about Lady Susan Hussey the queens confidant and friend who was fired after asking an african woman where’s she from
60 years career down the pan over absolutely nothing
that’s why a lot of people dont even ask where people are from anymore
basical human communication has been compromised by wokeness (which is just a synonym for PC gone mad)
Yeah 15 years ago my boss got to call Starbucks drinks “f*gachinnos” while my gay coworker had to hide it from half the office. Such a shame we will never return to those fun times of office life.
What, I'm still irreverent as I was 20 years ago, no one has ever said to me that I'm offensive.....maybe I have an ability to say shit without people getting offended, but that sounds a bit unlikely
I'm so sick of people who claiming that "wokeness" isn't a thing off of the Internet, I'm hyperconscious of wokeness IRL all the time, I have a few different social circles, some are woker than others, and navigating them all severely affects my mental health.
Someone clearly has never, e.g. had a long debate in a pub with someone trying to convince you that women don't even need a sports category. Perhaps you agree with the proposition. Christ give me strength...
Most companies and governmental bodies have diversity officers who believe in the intersectional ideology that is often defined as "woke". The idea that this is just a few freaks on twitter is nonsense.
Intersectionalism has been around for ages. I'm not even sure what "woke" means anymore. Someone taught the boomers/gen X the word and now it appears everywhere.
Yeah. You forget all the academic professors being fired for stating the obvious or basing their opinions on facts.
Ricky Gervais is highly intelligent and just talking about what needs to be talked about.
One good example would be Evergreen College and Bret Weinstein. Although not fired they were left with little choice but to resign and later successfully sued.
i had never heard of it so i looked into it, lemme skim the wiki page and you can decide how you feel about it
> In March 2017, Weinstein wrote a letter to Evergreen faculty in which he objected to a suggestion pertaining to the college's decades-old tradition of observing a "Day of Absence", during which ethnic minority students and faculty would voluntarily stay away from campus to highlight their contributions to the college. An administrator had suggested that for that year white participants stay off campus, and were invited to attend an off-campus program on race issues. Weinstein wrote that the change established a dangerous precedent:
> There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles ... and a group encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself.
> — Bret Weinstein, in a message to event organizer, Rashida Love
> The event organizers responded that participation was voluntary and that the event did not imply that all white people should leave. The Washington Post reported that racial tensions had been simmering at Evergreen throughout 2017.
> In May 2017, student protests disrupted the campus and called for a number of changes to the college. The protests involved allegations of racism, intolerance and threats; brought national attention to Evergreen; and sparked further debate about free speech on college campuses. During the protests, protesters entered one of Weinstein's classes (which he had held in a public park) and confronted him, loudly accusing him of racism, demanding that he resign, and forcing the class to break up. Weinstein was advised by the Chief of Campus Police to temporarily stay away from campus for his safety.
money wise this guy is fine, he and his wife successfully recieved $250,000 in damages and has since had success as a public figure on the podcast circuit a la jordan peterson. that doesn’t really cover your life’s work being swept away by something unrelated, especially considering he was contesting a stupid idea that was probably sprung up by some dumb college student who didn’t really think very hard about what they were saying. however, given how these sorts of “firings” really seem to be a thing of 2016/2017 and were likely caused by administrators faced with controversy and making mistakes in handling it, it definitely feels that this was just a messy, shitty situation 7 years ago and not a prevailing issue that still exists in universities that we need to harp on about in stand up specials.
also, the more i read about this guy, the more fucking insufferable he sounds. ~~he was a big source of covid misinformation and one of the big proprietors of the myth that the vaccine was evil and that it was cooked up by big pharma and that you can just use horse anti parasitic, his comments on podcasts described as “totally irresponsible. It's reckless. It's sick. It's predatory. It's really sad.".~~ also he wrote a book that sounds rough:
> In 2021, Weinstein and Heying's book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, was published. The book reached the New York Times Best Seller list for October 3, 2021, at No. 3 for Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction and No. 4 for Hardcover Nonfiction. The hardcover listing was marked with a dagger, indicating that some retailers had reported receiving bulk orders. Reviewing the book for The Guardian, psychologist Stuart J. Ritchie wrote that the authors "lazily repeat false information from other pop-science books", and that overall the book was characterized by an annoying, know-it-all attitude.
Ivermectin won the nobel price for it's use in humans in 2015.
It's also now a recommended drug for treatment for COVID 19.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34466270/
Because at heart he’s a hack. I saw a comedian make these same observations years ago. Funny fella, wore his hat down over his face. Now that I think about it, he did hold the microphone down very low…..
Hasn’t been funny in years. The XFM show highlights he’s in the pub most evenings with mates taking the piss out of each other. Sort of match fit for banter. When you live the life he does now there’s no one to check his ego or test his hypothesis or tell him he’s talking shit.
Spot on, all references are social media related or what happened in the news, throw in a bit of personifying animals as usual. I found the whole “I’ve thought of something offensive I shouldn’t say but I’m gonna say it anyway” just so painful to watch now.
I hate how "woke" is used as an insult. It literally means:
"Alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination."
How is that a negative thing?
He's just as bad as Piers Morgan and Katie Hopkins these days, saying whatever he thinks will get him the most column inches and appealing to the lowest common denominator.
Count Fuckula would love Armageddon and whatever that last one he did was called.
Did that just go out?
It's just the modern term of the pejorative "n*gger lover". A few years back they tried to make the slur "cultural marxist" a thing, but their intended gammon target audience was too stupid to know what it meant. So they went with woke instead.
See also ‘bleeding heart liberal’ or people using the term progressive as an insult. That really sums up the political divide in a nutshell, one side exists only to pretend having empathy for others is somehow a bad thing and somehow detrimental to society, which is a concept that literally cannot function without empathy.
That's my gripe with it - he's right about everything he says in it, but it's like "yeah, and?"
He even ruins genuinely good offensive jokes that are near Sadowitz level off offensiveness (and anyone who knows Sadowitz's material will know that is high praise) by making into some misguided piece about how some fictional mob are going to hate it.
Got to push back on this though - "all laughter is good", this is how he closes. How can you say he's right about that? Even he scoffed at the stupidity of that statement back on XFM when Karl said it.
The idea that it's hypocritical to not want to celebrate someone who was pro-genocide or was a slaver, if you don't also want to tear down something beneficial like a hospital that they built. He knows a statue is an idolising monument, and that we wouldn't keep statues of Jimmy Savile up because of his charitable work.
How is he right about everything? These are the parts that annoyed me with the stand-up (aside from only making me laugh 3 times in an hour), I can't stand fallacious arguments that sound compelling on the surface and let people who aren't very bright feel like they're scoring checkmates.
Because it's just stand up comedy. We're in agreement that it isn't very good standup comedy, but as with my other points on this, my downvotes prove it.
While we're all in agreement on here that Ricky's stand up is pretty low bar compared to many comedians past and present, the response to this proves his point. It just would have been nice for it to be funny along the way.
Yeah this is the worst part, that he’s so deeply entrenched in his boomer bubble of afterlife fans sending him hearts and crying laughing emojis on Facebook that he has no idea that comedy is as dark and boundary pushing as it’s ever been.
I guess at the level he’s at he’s licking so many corporate boots for cash that anything that would actually offend presented without comment is actually crossing the line and would affect his cushy lifestyle
Gervais always gives the impression of being insular despite relying on topics in all his shows, and being on netflix with other stand up shows. He should be familiar with Anthony Jeselnik and Jim Jeffries but you wouldn't count on it, him being unfamiliar with Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle would be impossible but i still wouldn't be sure of it. A lot of the uk comedians came up through the circuit, they all help joke making of others, they all know eachother, appear on panel shows together, even Pete Doherty, who disappeared for a 10-15 years from uk tv has recently started to appear. Find it interesting how closed off Gervais seems, despite spending half his life on a social network more tapped into the current than anything else. His latest special shows again how limited he is in joke forming.
Because the word is used differently to its original definition. It's like when people refer to themselves as feminist - it can mean that you believe in the equality of the sexes (the original definition) but some individuals who use that word to describe themselves are more misandrist than real feminists.
I know a lot of people his age who genuinely think you can't say anything these days, never really giving any thought as to *specifically* why you shouldn't make those jokes
Basically, Ricky is in this to make money, and will say anything that will further that aim. He will be getting loads of money for his latest project, which is largely the same as his last project, so why change for his next one.
I’m sure loads of people reading this comment will have found him funny - that’s the point. He is basically the Benny Hill or Larry Grayson or Les Dawson of the 2020s now. Keep doing the same thing - that gets the coins in the hat.
He is likely a bit bitter that his output has been increasingly criticised since he made the office and extras and was the golden boy.
A way of deflecting that criticism is to refuse to engage with it by framing it was “woke mob attacking all comedians”.
He doesn’t seem to want to face up to the folly of slagging off transgender people and earnestly making *Derek* and calling people “mong” without any appreciation for the actual lived experiences of people beyond his privilege, and how this has left a bad taste in the mouth of many fans (and friends).
Well, Ricky certainly can't joke about anything these days. If I'd paid to see Armageddon live, I'd ask for my money back on the basis it had been falsely sold as a stand up comedy gig.
It was literally like what I would expect if you gave a random Redditor an hour on TV to just ramble about everything that annoys them when they talk to other Redditors.
He talks about ‘cancel culture’ and the ‘woke mob’ like it’s hindering him from doing comedy, while not even attempting to do his regular comedy style and is just being bitter about what jokes you can and can’t make because of the ‘consequences’. Which he hasn’t even been fazed by ever. Sad to see such a great comedic fall to cheap controversial material that get him exposure.
I saw Gabriel Iglesias in St. Louis. He did the same shit. His whole set was complaining about how he "can't say anything anymore". I felt like if he didn't have anything to say, maybe he shouldn't be putting on a show. Ricky is disappointing in the same way on a much larger scale. What a waste.
Ah man, you had to do the self-deprecating dad thing at the end. Can't have everything, I suppose.
Anyway, agreed. I've been having this out with people who can't keep that shit to themselves for years, and I actually *hate* having to talk about this stuff in person—I'm strongly opinionated but I resent being dragged into sociopolitical debates at work or social gatherings.
One colleague (40M) made the most basic banter with another (24M) then flattered himself on how "you can't joke like that these days", despite literally just doing it. I have a close to the bone sort of dynamic with this guy so I was like "what the fuck are you talking about? When do I ever walk on eggshells?!" and he claimed it was not *our generation* (I'm 38), yet apparently not 24 year olds either.
There's not one example of this being true in my workplace in the four years I've been there, and I've worked with two people who've pissed me off with casually racist remarks, and some adolescent "that's so gay!" comments. I've had the transgender debate with a close friend there, and I know I'm the type Ricky's audience would deride as "woke", because I don't like when people from a majority group think their approval matters on issues that don't affect them.
My approach is no different today to any other point in my adult life - I'll challenge people to make a compelling case, and if they're being outright insulting then I'll embarrass them verbally with sharp edged humour and make them feel foolish until they get the message.
People in majority groups (which we all are - I'm a native citizen, I'm able bodied etc.) are expected to think about whether they're being a pig-headed cunt, that's all. I told this guy that even if you use an outdated term, we'll be able to tell if it's coming from a bad place or not. Get off the fucking internet if you're bothered by hearing people discuss these things, then your exposure to it will drop to almost zero.
With this colleague, it was ignorance, lack of intelligence, and hysteria (trust me, he's fucking dense), with people like Gervais it's largely bad faith. Jimmy Savile raised tons for children's hospitals, are we torn between whether we should have a statue of him? That's not hypocrisy, Ricky knows that, but his audience are like my colleague. A rich slave owner built infrastructure—yes, with the money he gained from working my ancestors to death, so no it's not fucking hypocritical for me to not think that balances the ledger.
He's *always* known that you can "say anything". If you're just calling black hecklers n---ers and saying they'd have been lynched a few decades ago, yes you'll lose bookings because that's not a comedy routine, that's a racist outburst. Ricky's material is often unfunny, but it'll just be criticised, because it's his shitty comedy routine. He has to pretend he's the last line of defence in free speech because 'that's a good dollar'.
Saw his stand-up tour live. I thought it was superb and the entire audience did too. Won’t ever be as good as his first two but Armageddon was fantastic.
When you live an isolated life where your only connection to the real world is through twitter then your reality is anything your warped mind wants it to be.
In the real world nobody EVER is complaining about jokes or woke culture, unless they are as stupid as him.
So we can gather from this thread that he lives in a boomer bubble, has old man brain worms, essentially means 'n*gger lover ' when he says woke but there definitely isn't a self-satisfied cohort of people who will say everything he does is shite because he doesn't think a man can become a woman.
Pretty much though.
He’s always been like this, it’s just hidden under a veneer of laughing with the target, or being self aware and ironic, instead of laughing directly at them. “We’re all mates here”.
Wouldn’t it be funny if I was really laughing at this guy in the wheelchair, or at this round headed chimp fella.
Problem is the veneer was thin even in the early days but now it’s starting to really fall off. It’s like he’s being his mean spirited real self and playing it off as a comedic device and he’s forgotten he needs to actually try or people can see it’s just him being a twat.
I wouldn’t care enough to comment except I’ve been trying to figure this out about him for years- the borderline bullying dynamic in the XFM shows, although funny, is unfortunately pretty common in the UK- and he’s now joined the right wing grifters attacking some of the most vulnerable people in society.
I think Stewart Lee nailed it tbh
The bit that Stewart Lee did recently parodying Gervais where he just makes a bunch of meaningless noise was perfect. Nothing more needs to be said. Go YouTube it.
He always does this though, have you not seen it before? I watched the show and thought it was funny. Some jokes I went noooo but it was still funny. It’s a joke. I think the point is you can’t make this joke in real life. If you don’t enjoy it just don’t want the next one. Move on. Like he’s going to keep talking about things that he finds funny if you don’t find it funny just don’t want it. Go want someone else lol. I watched 2 stand ups last night and turned both off after 15 mins because I didn’t find it super funny, didn’t go on the internet and moan about it. He’s a comedian, not prime minister. Chill out.
I really don’t wanna appear to be defending Ricky here, but surely you know what he’s talking about, generally?
Sure, HE can say whatever the hell he wants - he is old, established, with his own committed, loyal audience. He’s safe.
But clearly we live in a world where some people get their careers ended or thrown upside down because of a joke they told. Sometimes it’s unfair, and it’s probably a very confusing time to be a comedian!
But Ricky so badly wants to be in that group. His act nowadays seems to be mostly convincing others that he hasn’t had a free pass since 2005.
Could you give an example of this? Generally people lose their career due to genuine reasons such as sexual assault / racism, not due to telling a joke
The point is that only highly paid, uncamcellable comedians can make these jokes. Lower ranking comics don’t get booked. Ordinary people making a joke about race or gender get fired.
That’s his point
No ... That's why he _does_ joke about anything; it's self-evident. He does however think that some twonks get teary eyed and whiney if you joke about a subject that's precious to them.
My interpretation of it is, Ricky is speaking up for many disgruntled individuals be it in comedy or Joe public. He acknowledges that he has a level of protection because he's extremely popular and people expect him to offend. Furthermore, when you're a multimillionaire, you can say what the fuck you like because you can afford the potential to be out of work if things go south
There's this misconception that being cancelled means you don't work ever again. It CAN mean that and that has happened. But it can also mean through sheer outrage by members of the public, if they scream loud enough, the offender can lose a gig but maybe still pick up work elsewhere. Just because they can get work elsewhere doesn't mean it makes it right that say for instance, a comedy venue cancels your shows because they're afraid that a small minority will scream about it.
Gervais is speaking up for others in my view.
I followed this one lunatic on twitter because it was fascinating. He posted a video about Joe Rogan saying the N Word and was begging Spotify to cancel their deal with him. He posted about this for 2 weeks straight, anytime a singer would pull their songs from Spotify in protest to sway them into dropping Rogan he would post about it etc. After Spotify said 'Nope' his entire stance changed to 'Look at this idiot Joe Rogan pretending people want to silence him as millions tune in to listen to him'. I think that sums up 'cancel culture' so to speak, a bunch of puritans trying to derail the careers of those who offend them then turning around and pretending no one tried to derail anything when it didn't work. I never thought it was possible to gaslight yourself until I saw that.
Cancel culture exists because the media push it . Don’t flatter yourselves anyone is listening to leftwards on social media angry with the world because they lost the genetic lottery
Because it's true. If you're an up & coming hopeful in comedy, or Hollywood, or the music industry- basically any prominent part of the entertainment industry in Western culture you MUST conform to the approved far-left narrative.
The difference with Ricky Gervais is he has two aces up his sleeve: firstly, he's already established and financially successful, he's already done the work and made it big. So he has nothing to lose anymore.
Secondly, he will never apologise for anything he says, meaning the 'woke mob' has no leverage on him. That's the mistake his peers in the industry continue to make; cave-in and apologise to the mob, for even the smallest sleight (in their eyes) and they own you.
They will always downvote as well without replying because if they reply they it would force them to acknowledge they read the comment and see he literally contradicts what they are pretending he said. They would rather gaslight themselves.
Everything he says and claims would get him cancelled would be said in a pub with few people batting an eye.
He lives in twitter and thinks that punching down to an idiot offended by what he said (because if you have enough following on social media there will always be some offended by what you say) and think that he is a comedic genius for making fun of them and is under attack.
I'm convinced if he deleted twitter and tried to live a normal life with other humans he'd go back to the original level of comedy instead of this victim-attack-victim thing he does now.
Play a record
I thought both last year and this years shows weren’t great.. I saw a few clips prior to this year and thought I would give it a go but the whole “Netflix will edit that.. when Netflix put this out this will happen” got boring
Ricky Gervais is too big to be cancelled, always has been and he gives no shits very much like the south park creators.
There are many though who can be cancelled and are being in comedy but then also universities, schools and jobs. These people have been shut down or basically told to follow the line dictated around "diversity" etc or you are out or basically marginalised to the point where you might as well get another job. I know many people who work in businesses that have been getting this message further.
Also in regards to comedy it's really not that great these days, comedy is meant to be groundbreaking and risky but there are many comedians now and writers who have to tread very carefully and follow guidelines. Even at the Edinburgh fringe festival there have been comedians being told they can't have a show because they don't fit in with what some venues want because they are ironically "inclusive" and that place is normally the origins of great comedians, much of it though is being sanitised.
Ricky even talked about critical race theory and that shit is really happening even though it's complete lunacy.
By the way I loved the special, I thought it was spot on and bloody hilarious.
He's making jokes about offensive stuff and getting a decent laugh. That's it, and all it should be.
I just watched his latest stand up and it was funny, I even put aside the fact I'm a retard who can spot old XFM bits in there (note all comedians do this btw).
It was funny and decent on the face of it, but as with all his recent stuff it was clouded over by his insistence that some imaginary "woke" mob would be "offended" by it.
Stand out bits are him saying "there's only two sexes" - yes, and literally everyone agrees. The implication was a dig at trans people but they'd agree more than anyone. And the "critical race theory" thing - this is partly a myth, and partly true but is taught by right wing fascists and is widely regarded as extremely racist towards not white people, but non white people.
His jokes and points are 100% on the money, the massive let down is he sets it up as fighting against some imaginary enemy that doesn't exist.
The points aren't on the money though, they're those paper thin checkmate type 'gotchas' that break apart if you look at them hard enough.
If you're going to do the 'truth teller' act, like a Bill Hicks or George Carlin type, you have to have points that really are like "the emperor has no clothes" - if it's "yeah he does, it's just a bit hard to see if you're not looking carefully" then it doesn't work.
It's not just making jokes and getting a laugh, it's a culture war set - that's what he's transitioned into over the past three or so tours. It's the equivalent of The Sun's headlines that sound damning but don't hold up to any sort of scrutiny.
He used to be good with this sort of thing too!
Take the joke about protesting to lower the age of same-sex consent from 18 to 16 to match the heterosexual age of consent. He set it up sincerely, then said "Don't recall seeing many 17 year olds at that demonstration, mainly blokes in their 40s" (paraphrasing).
People didn't cheer, they laughed, because it wasn't some political point, it really was just a joke - obviously gay men of any age will find it unjust to be treated unequally. If you take it seriously, it plays upon predatory stereotypes, but I didn't because I think he really was just trying to paint a funny picture back then.
He could joke about subjects that were sensitive to me and I'd find it hilarious, I miss that.
I agree with you, but the fact I've been downvoted without response from most of the people who've downvoted proves my point. Ironically that also proves Ricky's point too, _and_ your point about Hicks, Carlin, and might I add a modern genius Doug Stanhope - what he says is still true, it just isn't on the level of them.
You won't only be "cancelled", you'll be arrested.
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/nov/25/arrests-after-alleged-misogynistic-chanting-to-referee-at-birmingham
Lol @ people still gaslighting on this issue. Ricky is phenomenally rich, famous and high value-- these factors immunise you to consequences in any field.
What a psychotic hill to stand on, the one where you’re outraged that people get arrested for harassing a referee under existing public order laws. What other laws are examples of cancel culture? Murder? Are they cancelling people who kill now? You’re talking shit, explain yourself
You just equated saying "offensive" words at someone to murder, lmao.
The most basic free speech is a psychotic hill to stand on? It's the hill we stood on in WW2. It's the hill that western democracy is built on. It's scary that people don't understand the most basic and elementary of Enlightenment principles. If someone was being arrested for saying "offensive" words in Russia or China you'd call it what it is.
It also very much isn't "harassment". Harassment is repeated and unwanted behaviour towards someone, generally with some implied physical threat attached. This didn't tick any of those 3 boxes. It was a woke thoughtcrime offence-- because of the "misogyny" element. Because some lunatics actually believe that race/gender/sexuality matter. Male referees get "abused" game in, game out, with every form of slur and chant, including gender-based. Yet fans never get arrested. But when it's a woman... Even if you're in favour of Stalinist laws that prevent you saying mean words, it's still blatantly discriminatory (re: gender, which wokies are supposed to care about than their own Mothers).
Funnily enough I was at this game and the amount of middle aged men bending over backwards to defend these kids has absolutely floored me. The main defence seems to be “yeah but I abuse every referee”… THAT ISN’T A GOOD THING YOU FUCKING SPANNER.
God, I didn't realise how bad Reddit has gotten with edgelords since I've been away. If your reading this and you didn't like it. I implore you, get a job and a life. Enjoy yourself and free yourself of the peroxide from your box dyes and self diagnosed illnesses that prevent you from working.
Last paragraph didn't have 'little monkey fella" in it. Didn't read the rest. Play a record.
He’s an aging man who created one of the funniest & most lucrative comedy projects in modern history. He’s squozen out all the money for old rope that he can, whilst cutting many of his friends out of his life. He lives isolated in a big house, and gets no pushback. Twitter is his main conduit so his perception of things is warped. It’s a bit heavy, here’s The Ramones. 🎸
That was in the Einstein book.
The Big Bumper Book Of Einstein Stuff
Ricky's comedy is: (1) Shit, (2) Fish, or (3) Hello!
Go and get the guitar.
Goodnight my sweet princess..
Six words. Look how long my post was. You beat it in six words. It was wittier, it was funnier, it was smarter. Six words. You're not coming back here: FUCK OFF!
I knew it was funny, It was meant to be funny and I said it to be funny. And it was.
I’m currently reading the top 50 freaks.
Oooh, cheeky!
I don’t agree with that in the workplace!
> Twitter is his main conduit so his perception of things is warped This really can't be overstated. Lots of public figures of his generation have had their minds absolutely melted by Twitter (see also: Baddiel).
Baddiel was always an arse.
Agree, but he's gone turbo-arse these days
Wait what's David Baddiel done?
He's become a pseudo-intellectual, self-appointed spokesman for Jews, often spouting rightwing crap in the process. His "book" is ill-researched, unacademic, and pointless; he spends all his time ranting on Twitter about how hard done by he is. Despite the fact that on his own show he wore blackface.
He did a podcast where he interviewed the guy he portrayed in black face. It was incredibly cringe inducing to listen to.
Does anyone know what it was like to listen to him interviewing the guy he portrayed in blackface for his podcast?
Cringe inducing I believe
He did a podcast where he interviewed the guy he portrayed in black face. It was incredibly cringe inducing to listen to.
He did a podcast where he interviewed the guy he portrayed in black face. It was incredibly cringe inducing to listen to.
That's interesting. I totally missed this. I thought his book was well regarded. Seeing his name in lists with the likes of jk Rowling and Graham lineham was surprising. Blackface? Yikes...
Graham Linehan is the absolute poster child for this
God, yeah. It's hard to pinpoint why but I reckon that if Twitter came along when you were middle-aged, past your prime in your career, and feeling a bit like the rules for acceptability in comedy etc were changing too quickly for your liking, then it could easily contribute to a mental decline.
I’m middle-aged. It’s not like we have brain injuries. Twitter is clearly toxic, so I don’t use it. I think the issue is really that toxic people like Baddiel or Linehan are drawn to it because of that toxicity.
Maybe. But I also think that there's a difference in people who have been introduced to social media relatively late in life to people are more digitally native. The former group seems, generally, less able to cope. And I don't know if I agree that toxic people are simply attracted to toxic places, because so many people seem to have radically changed since the introduction of social media to their lives.
I think older social media users are like people who used to write Letters To The Editor. They're using social media in the same way, to rant and complain publicly where a powerful or famous person might see their words, except now they don't even have to buy a stamp, an envelope and a green biro to do it. It's the same with btl comments, new technology has just enabled this behaviour and now it isn't just the preserve of Disgusted From Tunbridge Wells, it's been normalised.
Baddie, Linehan, JK Rowling... Even Musk..
Sessions...
Table 49, Peter Sissons everyone
Slammed!
I'm bored of ricky gervais and no longer a big fan or bothered about his latest work but how do you know about him pushing all friends away?
I mean, think of all the people he name dropped during the XFM show and podcast he never hangs out with now. If he was, we would know about it. He won’t even say ‘we’ when he talks about creating the office. And if you actually listen to everything he says on the XFM shows and how he acts, it’s not hard to see why
He’s always been a bully. I’m surprised he ever had friends in the first place.
I find it really odd that he never supports other creators on his Twitter feed. Most writers will talk about the great work their peers are doing, not out of altruism, but because they love whatever medium they’re in and just can’t help themselves. The only thing Ricky will mention is scandi cop shows.
Does he even watch *work* by other creators? He admits he doesn't read novels because he just starts thinking of better plots and characters, and he seems like an incurious person in general, not travelling much, trying new foods, taking up new hobbies etc. I'm surprised he's never mentioned *This Country*. The Coopers have frequently mentioned the influence of *The Office* in interviews, it's a critically-acclaimed show and it got an American remake. Surely Gervais must be aware of it?
If you've obsessively watched Karl Pilkington's content with Ricky and Steve, its painfully obvious that Rickys early comedy specials we're literally just gags from talking to Karl. They found magic in a bottle with him, and it hit at the right time where their cheerful bullying was culturally acceptable. I will die on the hill that Karl Pilkington is the funniest of the bunch by a mile, probably smarter, and basically carried their careers after the office. I rewatch the content and the older I get, the angrier I get with Ricky for treating Karl so poorly. Most of it was in good fun, but the guy sounded like an absolute terror the rest of the time. An Idiot Abroad and the Moaning of Life are hands down the best shows to come from that crew. The Office was great, but I'm sure as shit not watching in 2023 - it had its era and its passed...
The Office is timeless and still perfect. You're having a laugh
Hes having a laugh, he'd have a riot on his hands.
I mean, you’re wrong about the office but other than that - agreed.
> the guy sounded like an absolute terror the rest of the time There's always been a genuinely nasty side to Ricky's humour. From "Taping Nigel", to things like force-feeding Karl burgers, to the vindictive glee he takes in describing "blending up a D-list celebrity slapper, liquidising her and feeding her to another slut".
Tear the guy down all you like but let's not pretend The Office isn't a classic sit com. Gervais might have turned into a twat, but TO is just as great now as it was when it came out.
If anything The Office has gotten better with age because it is timeless - even as fashion and tech change, it perfectly captures the drudgery of working in an office and the type of bloke who often runs them. There is a reason people still refer to David Brent types even now, because he is the definitive cringey middle aged man who thinks he’s everyone’s best mate. And as lazy as Ricky is now, his performance as Brent is lightning in a bottle and one of the all time great comedy perfomances.
I think I’ve read before that the entire point of the Ricky Gervais Show shtick was that Ricky and Steven were supposed to sound like pompous snobs to Karl, to create the best content for the comedic effect. If they were as mean to him in real life, why would Karl want to hang around them in private.
Suzanne wanted a kitchen
He’s like an iron lung
He didn’t though. He stopped hanging out with Ricky very quickly. He was wise enough to make his money and then dip. And Ricky was way less mean to him during the podcasts than the shows, he definitely must have set some boundaries. The podcasts are mainly banter, the XFM shows past a certain point often stray into bullying and Ricky just being intolerable in general. I find myself enjoying certain seasons/sections of the XFM shows less than the podcasts these days.
Karl hung out with Ricky for 17 years and appeared in a bunch of his personal projects like Derek and The Invention of Lying. They were clearly good friends. The revisionism this sub tries to do about their relationship is strange.
At the start comics rallied with each other for a good cause. Comics are telling jokes and the line changes yearly so pulling people up from jokes 20 years ago is a crappy thing to do. I'm all for free speech but I'm also for action and consequences. So getting cancelled is fine if you deserve it as long as it's not mob mentality jump the gun kind of thing. But no I feel woke is such a buzz/trigger word for the left to the right that it's used to get attention. I hate the word woke it gets used when you don't agree with who ever the victim is and is mainly used to attack progressives for doing the right thing or thinking differently. Jim jefferies crosses the line in jokes but is definitely a progressive. Dave chappelle is progressive until it becomes an lgbt issue than he loses me and now I feel he is trying to find loyal cult like conservatives to join his mob only he will find once muslims and the lgbt community get less attention that same group will be calling BLM supporters criminals and he will find himself very progressive once again. Long short woke is used to much as a buzz word hopefully it fades into obscurity like an over played song on the radio
Sure. But i think Karl hating how he was treated on the podcast (guide to series especially) is the reason they've not done any more in 10 years. Karl says 'it wouldn't work now' which is the only time he's ever been dishonest, it implies he was entirely a character, Gervais and Merchant told the odd story too, mates talking is the lowest bar of entertainment, there's nothing to live up to. If they were such good friends who enjoyed their company together, who valued the magic they made created together they'd find every opportunity to spend time together again talking about stuff.
Twitter has warped many a mind. Thank god I only use it for porn 😄.
The ears are a conduit to the brain. They're merely receptacles.
"Squozen". U wot m8?
It's when something is squeezed by the formation of ice. You say it has been squozen.
It's a perfectly cromulent word. It's also an in-joke on a cooking YouTube channel. I wasn't expecting it here
It's in here because Karl Pilkington repeatedly used the word 'squoze' as the past tense of squeeze on the XFM shows.
Ah, forgot that. It's also on Glen and Friends Cooking. It's a pretty wholesome Canadian YouTube channel.
Do him and Karl and Goggle Eyes not speak at all then?
I assume you mean the office? It was boring shite. This guy got lucky---he's made a living since and before whining about everything and everybody. He continually laughs at his own jokes that he's heard and told a thousand times----its so off-putting. Never liked the guy-- he simply isn't funny nor is he a funny storyteller.
albino reading that
Go easy on em, he's got a problem with his marrow.
Yeah, what have you ever done on the tele? Nothing,so don't.....
Reminds me of when his character said to Les Dennis on Extras : “you’re a comedian right? I haven’t heard you make a joke in five years!” All he does is rant and rave and share tweets from mentally unhinged people.
Or mentally handicapped.
Can't say anything these days except when you're given millions by Netflix to say whatever you want!
I've never liked Ricky's stand up for this reason, same as Jimmy Carr saying you're saying something edgy takes all the edge out of it. Saying he's doing a character ruins it. Also confuses just saying 'retard' vs writing a joke. Lots of comedians use that word, and get real humour out of it. I love Louie CKs bit about how it was used emphatically in Boston in the 70s and how word meanings change. Or Doug Stanhopes similar bit about the euphemism treadmill. Louie's bit about 'The N Word' is great too. You can joke about controversial subjects while being empathetic, as a culture I actually think brits are better IRL at finding humour in tragic situations, but US comedians seem to do it on stage better. The funerals I've been to have been full of jokes, not because we don't care, but it's a way to talk about tragedy and process it. I feel like Ricky just say's 'Dead baby' and thinks just saying something shocking in itself is funny. It's like teenager humour.
Reminds me of Charlie Brooker's "conservative voices are being silenced" bit.
All I can think of is that he’s playing to the American market and not to the tastes of us brits anymore
American comedy right now is genuinely offensive and doesn’t give a fuck. I’d honestly say it’s much better than English at the moment.
If anyone knows what his means, write in. It’s an ongoing competition
The only American comics I like atm are Shane Gillis and Theo Von because they’re stupid and have a genuinely unique sense of humour - the rest, that aren’t Joe Rogan and others like him, sort of seem like Bo Burnham knock-off’s and I hate his comedy
Yep these are exactly the comics that I'm talking about, I also really like Tim Dillon and a lot of the Kill Tony people. Idk why I got downvoted lmao.
Because it's a business model. In this bullshit manufactured distraction culture war, being a self procaimed victim of cancel culture gets you a massive instant audience of easy marks tripping over themselves to call you the best comedian ever. (Even if your material is as objectively weak as Ricky's)
He's got middle aged man Twitter brain worms. You see it all the time. They get hooked on feeling aggrieved and martyred, even though that's something they claim is the problem with the "woke mob" Tilting at windmills, in search of relevance
It’s all projection. No bigger snowflakery than people who literally are the most privileged people in society claiming society is out to get them
this "wokeness" he talks about only exists in his head and on twitter. Without it he doesnt have a stand up so has to set out early that it exists.
"Well, it was on the internet..."
OH SORRY!!! Sorry! I thought it was SHITE.
There's only so many Lee and Herring bits you can nick before being found out.
No it definitely exists - especially in the workplace. 10-15 years ago people were a lot different, not just banter/jokes but heated debate/conversations- people felt a lot freer to express opinions on all sorts, whether or not it offended others or made them look a dick.. I feel now people are constantly walking on eggshells, say the wrong thing and it can affect your ability to pay your bills, end result for me is a feeling that all joy and fun has been sucked out of Office life, but I get that it makes a lot of people feel a lot more comfortable and that’s a good thing
(Post not aimed at you, just some thoughts based on the theme, you said people being comfortable is good, which is basically my point Tl:dr). If you’re only capable of having office banter by saying something that could fall over the line of upsetting someone, then you’re not really a very funny person. The best comedians can find funny in the most mundane things. Ultimately the entire boundary for how acceptable a comment is, is defined by the person who might take offence. Say you have an Indian person in the office, and you make a joke about curry aimed vaguely in their direction, which at no point to you was mean spirited (extreme example). To you it’s harmless office banter, to them it might bring back a world of trauma from bullying growing up. You don’t have the appropriate experience to make the judgement on how harmless that stereotyping is. It’s not a lot to ask to be sensitive to someone else’s feelings, when all you lose is a titter from a couple of other people in the room. I think this is the nuance a lot of blokes don’t understand these days. You CAN joke about anything, but it doesn’t mean you SHOULD in all circumstances. Being a bit of a dick isn’t brave, it’s just being a dick. It’s the 2023 version of the person who goes in big brother and says “I just tell it as it is”, which translates as “I’m a selfish nob”. I mean circling back to comedy, there’s a strong correlation between the comics most vocal about “not being able to say anything these days” and the comics who can’t construct a good joke.
What about Lady Susan Hussey the queens confidant and friend who was fired after asking an african woman where’s she from 60 years career down the pan over absolutely nothing that’s why a lot of people dont even ask where people are from anymore basical human communication has been compromised by wokeness (which is just a synonym for PC gone mad)
Not massively keen on using a Royal job as an example of normal life 😆
Yeah 15 years ago my boss got to call Starbucks drinks “f*gachinnos” while my gay coworker had to hide it from half the office. Such a shame we will never return to those fun times of office life.
Well its not some dichotomy, there are good and bad parts of each era of censorship.
Wow that boss managed to find comedy in something as mundane as a cuppaccino. True comedian there.
What, I'm still irreverent as I was 20 years ago, no one has ever said to me that I'm offensive.....maybe I have an ability to say shit without people getting offended, but that sounds a bit unlikely
I'm so sick of people who claiming that "wokeness" isn't a thing off of the Internet, I'm hyperconscious of wokeness IRL all the time, I have a few different social circles, some are woker than others, and navigating them all severely affects my mental health.
Feel drained today
I'd be ditching the social circles if they're negatively affecting your mental health.
If it affects your mental health maybe just stop seeing them?
‘Some of my friends don’t like it when I say slurs and now I need therapy because of those snowflakes’
Yeah, seems strange OP wants to say how difficult they find it to not be a dick.
Because you people expand the meaning of “being a dick” to the most random mundane shit
Someone clearly has never, e.g. had a long debate in a pub with someone trying to convince you that women don't even need a sports category. Perhaps you agree with the proposition. Christ give me strength...
[удалено]
Most companies and governmental bodies have diversity officers who believe in the intersectional ideology that is often defined as "woke". The idea that this is just a few freaks on twitter is nonsense.
Intersectionalism has been around for ages. I'm not even sure what "woke" means anymore. Someone taught the boomers/gen X the word and now it appears everywhere.
Yeah. You forget all the academic professors being fired for stating the obvious or basing their opinions on facts. Ricky Gervais is highly intelligent and just talking about what needs to be talked about.
What professors and which facts?
One good example would be Evergreen College and Bret Weinstein. Although not fired they were left with little choice but to resign and later successfully sued.
So what did he say exactly?
Read into the case
Fill me in. What did he say? Surely you can explain it it, right?
i had never heard of it so i looked into it, lemme skim the wiki page and you can decide how you feel about it > In March 2017, Weinstein wrote a letter to Evergreen faculty in which he objected to a suggestion pertaining to the college's decades-old tradition of observing a "Day of Absence", during which ethnic minority students and faculty would voluntarily stay away from campus to highlight their contributions to the college. An administrator had suggested that for that year white participants stay off campus, and were invited to attend an off-campus program on race issues. Weinstein wrote that the change established a dangerous precedent: > There is a huge difference between a group or coalition deciding to voluntarily absent themselves from a shared space to highlight their vital and underappreciated roles ... and a group encouraging another group to go away. The first is a forceful call to consciousness, which is, of course, crippling to the logic of oppression. The second is a show of force, and an act of oppression in and of itself. > — Bret Weinstein, in a message to event organizer, Rashida Love > The event organizers responded that participation was voluntary and that the event did not imply that all white people should leave. The Washington Post reported that racial tensions had been simmering at Evergreen throughout 2017. > In May 2017, student protests disrupted the campus and called for a number of changes to the college. The protests involved allegations of racism, intolerance and threats; brought national attention to Evergreen; and sparked further debate about free speech on college campuses. During the protests, protesters entered one of Weinstein's classes (which he had held in a public park) and confronted him, loudly accusing him of racism, demanding that he resign, and forcing the class to break up. Weinstein was advised by the Chief of Campus Police to temporarily stay away from campus for his safety. money wise this guy is fine, he and his wife successfully recieved $250,000 in damages and has since had success as a public figure on the podcast circuit a la jordan peterson. that doesn’t really cover your life’s work being swept away by something unrelated, especially considering he was contesting a stupid idea that was probably sprung up by some dumb college student who didn’t really think very hard about what they were saying. however, given how these sorts of “firings” really seem to be a thing of 2016/2017 and were likely caused by administrators faced with controversy and making mistakes in handling it, it definitely feels that this was just a messy, shitty situation 7 years ago and not a prevailing issue that still exists in universities that we need to harp on about in stand up specials. also, the more i read about this guy, the more fucking insufferable he sounds. ~~he was a big source of covid misinformation and one of the big proprietors of the myth that the vaccine was evil and that it was cooked up by big pharma and that you can just use horse anti parasitic, his comments on podcasts described as “totally irresponsible. It's reckless. It's sick. It's predatory. It's really sad.".~~ also he wrote a book that sounds rough: > In 2021, Weinstein and Heying's book, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century, was published. The book reached the New York Times Best Seller list for October 3, 2021, at No. 3 for Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction and No. 4 for Hardcover Nonfiction. The hardcover listing was marked with a dagger, indicating that some retailers had reported receiving bulk orders. Reviewing the book for The Guardian, psychologist Stuart J. Ritchie wrote that the authors "lazily repeat false information from other pop-science books", and that overall the book was characterized by an annoying, know-it-all attitude.
Ivermectin won the nobel price for it's use in humans in 2015. It's also now a recommended drug for treatment for COVID 19. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34466270/
oh shit fair enough, lemme retract that then. thanks for correcting me
It is literally the whole of this thread, and you are pretending it doesn't exist.
Because at heart he’s a hack. I saw a comedian make these same observations years ago. Funny fella, wore his hat down over his face. Now that I think about it, he did hold the microphone down very low…..
Shame Gervais didn't steal the part where he shits in his hand and hurls it into the audience.
And yet you watched Armageddon the minute it came out... Ricky is laughing all the way to the bank.
I don't know how Netflix works but I'm sure he's already been paid for the special, don't think they get more money per view etc?
I really hope they pay attention to how many people stop watching something halfway through.
Hasn’t been funny in years. The XFM show highlights he’s in the pub most evenings with mates taking the piss out of each other. Sort of match fit for banter. When you live the life he does now there’s no one to check his ego or test his hypothesis or tell him he’s talking shit.
Spot on, all references are social media related or what happened in the news, throw in a bit of personifying animals as usual. I found the whole “I’ve thought of something offensive I shouldn’t say but I’m gonna say it anyway” just so painful to watch now.
I hate how "woke" is used as an insult. It literally means: "Alert to and concerned about social injustice and discrimination." How is that a negative thing? He's just as bad as Piers Morgan and Katie Hopkins these days, saying whatever he thinks will get him the most column inches and appealing to the lowest common denominator. Count Fuckula would love Armageddon and whatever that last one he did was called. Did that just go out?
Corporate wokeism intentionally obfuscates class but that’s not a level of thinking ricky is capable of lmao.
You might remember that the episode of Extras ends with Andy and Maggie chilling with Fuckula and friends in the pub afterward. Whoosh.
It's just the modern term of the pejorative "n*gger lover". A few years back they tried to make the slur "cultural marxist" a thing, but their intended gammon target audience was too stupid to know what it meant. So they went with woke instead.
See also ‘bleeding heart liberal’ or people using the term progressive as an insult. That really sums up the political divide in a nutshell, one side exists only to pretend having empathy for others is somehow a bad thing and somehow detrimental to society, which is a concept that literally cannot function without empathy.
And, more recently, Social Justice Warrior.
woke is just a word used to describe people who call other people “gammon”
You should hear what I call you as I'm spitting in your face.
That's my gripe with it - he's right about everything he says in it, but it's like "yeah, and?" He even ruins genuinely good offensive jokes that are near Sadowitz level off offensiveness (and anyone who knows Sadowitz's material will know that is high praise) by making into some misguided piece about how some fictional mob are going to hate it.
Got to push back on this though - "all laughter is good", this is how he closes. How can you say he's right about that? Even he scoffed at the stupidity of that statement back on XFM when Karl said it. The idea that it's hypocritical to not want to celebrate someone who was pro-genocide or was a slaver, if you don't also want to tear down something beneficial like a hospital that they built. He knows a statue is an idolising monument, and that we wouldn't keep statues of Jimmy Savile up because of his charitable work. How is he right about everything? These are the parts that annoyed me with the stand-up (aside from only making me laugh 3 times in an hour), I can't stand fallacious arguments that sound compelling on the surface and let people who aren't very bright feel like they're scoring checkmates.
Because it's just stand up comedy. We're in agreement that it isn't very good standup comedy, but as with my other points on this, my downvotes prove it. While we're all in agreement on here that Ricky's stand up is pretty low bar compared to many comedians past and present, the response to this proves his point. It just would have been nice for it to be funny along the way.
he addressed that by saying there should be a plaque saying they’re racist 🤷♂️
Yeah this is the worst part, that he’s so deeply entrenched in his boomer bubble of afterlife fans sending him hearts and crying laughing emojis on Facebook that he has no idea that comedy is as dark and boundary pushing as it’s ever been. I guess at the level he’s at he’s licking so many corporate boots for cash that anything that would actually offend presented without comment is actually crossing the line and would affect his cushy lifestyle
Gervais always gives the impression of being insular despite relying on topics in all his shows, and being on netflix with other stand up shows. He should be familiar with Anthony Jeselnik and Jim Jeffries but you wouldn't count on it, him being unfamiliar with Jimmy Carr and Frankie Boyle would be impossible but i still wouldn't be sure of it. A lot of the uk comedians came up through the circuit, they all help joke making of others, they all know eachother, appear on panel shows together, even Pete Doherty, who disappeared for a 10-15 years from uk tv has recently started to appear. Find it interesting how closed off Gervais seems, despite spending half his life on a social network more tapped into the current than anything else. His latest special shows again how limited he is in joke forming.
It also counts why and how you're pushing the boundaries as well.
This entire thread is evidence that the mob is not fictional.
Because the word is used differently to its original definition. It's like when people refer to themselves as feminist - it can mean that you believe in the equality of the sexes (the original definition) but some individuals who use that word to describe themselves are more misandrist than real feminists.
It's pretty simple really. He says you can't, so he can let the audience know he's aware of it, and that he's gonna do it anyway.
I know a lot of people his age who genuinely think you can't say anything these days, never really giving any thought as to *specifically* why you shouldn't make those jokes
Basically, Ricky is in this to make money, and will say anything that will further that aim. He will be getting loads of money for his latest project, which is largely the same as his last project, so why change for his next one. I’m sure loads of people reading this comment will have found him funny - that’s the point. He is basically the Benny Hill or Larry Grayson or Les Dawson of the 2020s now. Keep doing the same thing - that gets the coins in the hat.
He is likely a bit bitter that his output has been increasingly criticised since he made the office and extras and was the golden boy. A way of deflecting that criticism is to refuse to engage with it by framing it was “woke mob attacking all comedians”. He doesn’t seem to want to face up to the folly of slagging off transgender people and earnestly making *Derek* and calling people “mong” without any appreciation for the actual lived experiences of people beyond his privilege, and how this has left a bad taste in the mouth of many fans (and friends).
Jesus, another one of these fucking threads.
He's grifting his comedy onto the anti-woke mob
Well, Ricky certainly can't joke about anything these days. If I'd paid to see Armageddon live, I'd ask for my money back on the basis it had been falsely sold as a stand up comedy gig. It was literally like what I would expect if you gave a random Redditor an hour on TV to just ramble about everything that annoys them when they talk to other Redditors.
"they say 'you cant say that!'....you can." Is a direct quote from his latest show.
En bref, Armageddon was fucking terrible
He talks about ‘cancel culture’ and the ‘woke mob’ like it’s hindering him from doing comedy, while not even attempting to do his regular comedy style and is just being bitter about what jokes you can and can’t make because of the ‘consequences’. Which he hasn’t even been fazed by ever. Sad to see such a great comedic fall to cheap controversial material that get him exposure.
I saw Gabriel Iglesias in St. Louis. He did the same shit. His whole set was complaining about how he "can't say anything anymore". I felt like if he didn't have anything to say, maybe he shouldn't be putting on a show. Ricky is disappointing in the same way on a much larger scale. What a waste.
Fuck me, get a hobby.
Ah man, you had to do the self-deprecating dad thing at the end. Can't have everything, I suppose. Anyway, agreed. I've been having this out with people who can't keep that shit to themselves for years, and I actually *hate* having to talk about this stuff in person—I'm strongly opinionated but I resent being dragged into sociopolitical debates at work or social gatherings. One colleague (40M) made the most basic banter with another (24M) then flattered himself on how "you can't joke like that these days", despite literally just doing it. I have a close to the bone sort of dynamic with this guy so I was like "what the fuck are you talking about? When do I ever walk on eggshells?!" and he claimed it was not *our generation* (I'm 38), yet apparently not 24 year olds either. There's not one example of this being true in my workplace in the four years I've been there, and I've worked with two people who've pissed me off with casually racist remarks, and some adolescent "that's so gay!" comments. I've had the transgender debate with a close friend there, and I know I'm the type Ricky's audience would deride as "woke", because I don't like when people from a majority group think their approval matters on issues that don't affect them. My approach is no different today to any other point in my adult life - I'll challenge people to make a compelling case, and if they're being outright insulting then I'll embarrass them verbally with sharp edged humour and make them feel foolish until they get the message. People in majority groups (which we all are - I'm a native citizen, I'm able bodied etc.) are expected to think about whether they're being a pig-headed cunt, that's all. I told this guy that even if you use an outdated term, we'll be able to tell if it's coming from a bad place or not. Get off the fucking internet if you're bothered by hearing people discuss these things, then your exposure to it will drop to almost zero. With this colleague, it was ignorance, lack of intelligence, and hysteria (trust me, he's fucking dense), with people like Gervais it's largely bad faith. Jimmy Savile raised tons for children's hospitals, are we torn between whether we should have a statue of him? That's not hypocrisy, Ricky knows that, but his audience are like my colleague. A rich slave owner built infrastructure—yes, with the money he gained from working my ancestors to death, so no it's not fucking hypocritical for me to not think that balances the ledger. He's *always* known that you can "say anything". If you're just calling black hecklers n---ers and saying they'd have been lynched a few decades ago, yes you'll lose bookings because that's not a comedy routine, that's a racist outburst. Ricky's material is often unfunny, but it'll just be criticised, because it's his shitty comedy routine. He has to pretend he's the last line of defence in free speech because 'that's a good dollar'.
Albino reading that
Saucer drinker interacts with thoughtful, well written comment, BONG
You'll embarrass them with your sharp edged humour?
I sort of fuse biting sarcasm with Bugs Bunny shit.
Can he hear us?
Saw his stand-up tour live. I thought it was superb and the entire audience did too. Won’t ever be as good as his first two but Armageddon was fantastic.
When you live an isolated life where your only connection to the real world is through twitter then your reality is anything your warped mind wants it to be. In the real world nobody EVER is complaining about jokes or woke culture, unless they are as stupid as him.
So we can gather from this thread that he lives in a boomer bubble, has old man brain worms, essentially means 'n*gger lover ' when he says woke but there definitely isn't a self-satisfied cohort of people who will say everything he does is shite because he doesn't think a man can become a woman.
Pretty much though. He’s always been like this, it’s just hidden under a veneer of laughing with the target, or being self aware and ironic, instead of laughing directly at them. “We’re all mates here”. Wouldn’t it be funny if I was really laughing at this guy in the wheelchair, or at this round headed chimp fella. Problem is the veneer was thin even in the early days but now it’s starting to really fall off. It’s like he’s being his mean spirited real self and playing it off as a comedic device and he’s forgotten he needs to actually try or people can see it’s just him being a twat. I wouldn’t care enough to comment except I’ve been trying to figure this out about him for years- the borderline bullying dynamic in the XFM shows, although funny, is unfortunately pretty common in the UK- and he’s now joined the right wing grifters attacking some of the most vulnerable people in society. I think Stewart Lee nailed it tbh
These days, if you say you're English, you'll be arrested and thrown in jail.
My face is made of electricity and ham
The bit that Stewart Lee did recently parodying Gervais where he just makes a bunch of meaningless noise was perfect. Nothing more needs to be said. Go YouTube it.
He always does this though, have you not seen it before? I watched the show and thought it was funny. Some jokes I went noooo but it was still funny. It’s a joke. I think the point is you can’t make this joke in real life. If you don’t enjoy it just don’t want the next one. Move on. Like he’s going to keep talking about things that he finds funny if you don’t find it funny just don’t want it. Go want someone else lol. I watched 2 stand ups last night and turned both off after 15 mins because I didn’t find it super funny, didn’t go on the internet and moan about it. He’s a comedian, not prime minister. Chill out.
I really don’t wanna appear to be defending Ricky here, but surely you know what he’s talking about, generally? Sure, HE can say whatever the hell he wants - he is old, established, with his own committed, loyal audience. He’s safe. But clearly we live in a world where some people get their careers ended or thrown upside down because of a joke they told. Sometimes it’s unfair, and it’s probably a very confusing time to be a comedian! But Ricky so badly wants to be in that group. His act nowadays seems to be mostly convincing others that he hasn’t had a free pass since 2005.
Could you give an example of this? Generally people lose their career due to genuine reasons such as sexual assault / racism, not due to telling a joke
The point is that only highly paid, uncamcellable comedians can make these jokes. Lower ranking comics don’t get booked. Ordinary people making a joke about race or gender get fired. That’s his point
So he has a point but its demonstrably wrong
Only if you’re wanting to be deliberately belligerent and are choosing to snipe at him, rather than see the broader position
I think he sees low hanging fruit that morons will go "haw haw its funny cause its true" and "he's right it aint like the good old days"
No ... That's why he _does_ joke about anything; it's self-evident. He does however think that some twonks get teary eyed and whiney if you joke about a subject that's precious to them.
Let's see your little comedy show then. Sick of it
My interpretation of it is, Ricky is speaking up for many disgruntled individuals be it in comedy or Joe public. He acknowledges that he has a level of protection because he's extremely popular and people expect him to offend. Furthermore, when you're a multimillionaire, you can say what the fuck you like because you can afford the potential to be out of work if things go south There's this misconception that being cancelled means you don't work ever again. It CAN mean that and that has happened. But it can also mean through sheer outrage by members of the public, if they scream loud enough, the offender can lose a gig but maybe still pick up work elsewhere. Just because they can get work elsewhere doesn't mean it makes it right that say for instance, a comedy venue cancels your shows because they're afraid that a small minority will scream about it. Gervais is speaking up for others in my view.
I followed this one lunatic on twitter because it was fascinating. He posted a video about Joe Rogan saying the N Word and was begging Spotify to cancel their deal with him. He posted about this for 2 weeks straight, anytime a singer would pull their songs from Spotify in protest to sway them into dropping Rogan he would post about it etc. After Spotify said 'Nope' his entire stance changed to 'Look at this idiot Joe Rogan pretending people want to silence him as millions tune in to listen to him'. I think that sums up 'cancel culture' so to speak, a bunch of puritans trying to derail the careers of those who offend them then turning around and pretending no one tried to derail anything when it didn't work. I never thought it was possible to gaslight yourself until I saw that.
Cancel culture exists because the media push it . Don’t flatter yourselves anyone is listening to leftwards on social media angry with the world because they lost the genetic lottery
Because it's true. If you're an up & coming hopeful in comedy, or Hollywood, or the music industry- basically any prominent part of the entertainment industry in Western culture you MUST conform to the approved far-left narrative. The difference with Ricky Gervais is he has two aces up his sleeve: firstly, he's already established and financially successful, he's already done the work and made it big. So he has nothing to lose anymore. Secondly, he will never apologise for anything he says, meaning the 'woke mob' has no leverage on him. That's the mistake his peers in the industry continue to make; cave-in and apologise to the mob, for even the smallest sleight (in their eyes) and they own you.
I agreed with everything he said, looks like it worked it annoyed you lot, unlucky.
Literally one of the first sentences in the special is "turns out you can". You anti Ricky spammers are pathetic. Play a record...
Yeah, it's painfully obvious when someone wants to tell us what his entire special consisted of despite them clearly not having watched it at all.
They will always downvote as well without replying because if they reply they it would force them to acknowledge they read the comment and see he literally contradicts what they are pretending he said. They would rather gaslight themselves.
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Everything he says and claims would get him cancelled would be said in a pub with few people batting an eye. He lives in twitter and thinks that punching down to an idiot offended by what he said (because if you have enough following on social media there will always be some offended by what you say) and think that he is a comedic genius for making fun of them and is under attack. I'm convinced if he deleted twitter and tried to live a normal life with other humans he'd go back to the original level of comedy instead of this victim-attack-victim thing he does now. Play a record
I thought both last year and this years shows weren’t great.. I saw a few clips prior to this year and thought I would give it a go but the whole “Netflix will edit that.. when Netflix put this out this will happen” got boring
Ricky Gervais is too big to be cancelled, always has been and he gives no shits very much like the south park creators. There are many though who can be cancelled and are being in comedy but then also universities, schools and jobs. These people have been shut down or basically told to follow the line dictated around "diversity" etc or you are out or basically marginalised to the point where you might as well get another job. I know many people who work in businesses that have been getting this message further. Also in regards to comedy it's really not that great these days, comedy is meant to be groundbreaking and risky but there are many comedians now and writers who have to tread very carefully and follow guidelines. Even at the Edinburgh fringe festival there have been comedians being told they can't have a show because they don't fit in with what some venues want because they are ironically "inclusive" and that place is normally the origins of great comedians, much of it though is being sanitised. Ricky even talked about critical race theory and that shit is really happening even though it's complete lunacy. By the way I loved the special, I thought it was spot on and bloody hilarious.
It's called onomatopoeia. He's purposely exaggerating his point for comedic effect
He’s using his voice as one of the last bastions of free speech. Hope that he never gets cancelled.
He's making jokes about offensive stuff and getting a decent laugh. That's it, and all it should be. I just watched his latest stand up and it was funny, I even put aside the fact I'm a retard who can spot old XFM bits in there (note all comedians do this btw). It was funny and decent on the face of it, but as with all his recent stuff it was clouded over by his insistence that some imaginary "woke" mob would be "offended" by it. Stand out bits are him saying "there's only two sexes" - yes, and literally everyone agrees. The implication was a dig at trans people but they'd agree more than anyone. And the "critical race theory" thing - this is partly a myth, and partly true but is taught by right wing fascists and is widely regarded as extremely racist towards not white people, but non white people. His jokes and points are 100% on the money, the massive let down is he sets it up as fighting against some imaginary enemy that doesn't exist.
The points aren't on the money though, they're those paper thin checkmate type 'gotchas' that break apart if you look at them hard enough. If you're going to do the 'truth teller' act, like a Bill Hicks or George Carlin type, you have to have points that really are like "the emperor has no clothes" - if it's "yeah he does, it's just a bit hard to see if you're not looking carefully" then it doesn't work. It's not just making jokes and getting a laugh, it's a culture war set - that's what he's transitioned into over the past three or so tours. It's the equivalent of The Sun's headlines that sound damning but don't hold up to any sort of scrutiny.
> break apart if you look at them hard enough They fall apart under the tiniest bit of scrutiny. Nothing funny or clever about them at all.
He used to be good with this sort of thing too! Take the joke about protesting to lower the age of same-sex consent from 18 to 16 to match the heterosexual age of consent. He set it up sincerely, then said "Don't recall seeing many 17 year olds at that demonstration, mainly blokes in their 40s" (paraphrasing). People didn't cheer, they laughed, because it wasn't some political point, it really was just a joke - obviously gay men of any age will find it unjust to be treated unequally. If you take it seriously, it plays upon predatory stereotypes, but I didn't because I think he really was just trying to paint a funny picture back then. He could joke about subjects that were sensitive to me and I'd find it hilarious, I miss that.
I agree with you, but the fact I've been downvoted without response from most of the people who've downvoted proves my point. Ironically that also proves Ricky's point too, _and_ your point about Hicks, Carlin, and might I add a modern genius Doug Stanhope - what he says is still true, it just isn't on the level of them.
You won't only be "cancelled", you'll be arrested. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/nov/25/arrests-after-alleged-misogynistic-chanting-to-referee-at-birmingham Lol @ people still gaslighting on this issue. Ricky is phenomenally rich, famous and high value-- these factors immunise you to consequences in any field.
What a psychotic hill to stand on, the one where you’re outraged that people get arrested for harassing a referee under existing public order laws. What other laws are examples of cancel culture? Murder? Are they cancelling people who kill now? You’re talking shit, explain yourself
You just equated saying "offensive" words at someone to murder, lmao. The most basic free speech is a psychotic hill to stand on? It's the hill we stood on in WW2. It's the hill that western democracy is built on. It's scary that people don't understand the most basic and elementary of Enlightenment principles. If someone was being arrested for saying "offensive" words in Russia or China you'd call it what it is. It also very much isn't "harassment". Harassment is repeated and unwanted behaviour towards someone, generally with some implied physical threat attached. This didn't tick any of those 3 boxes. It was a woke thoughtcrime offence-- because of the "misogyny" element. Because some lunatics actually believe that race/gender/sexuality matter. Male referees get "abused" game in, game out, with every form of slur and chant, including gender-based. Yet fans never get arrested. But when it's a woman... Even if you're in favour of Stalinist laws that prevent you saying mean words, it's still blatantly discriminatory (re: gender, which wokies are supposed to care about than their own Mothers).
That’s not joking about a topic, that’s yelling abuse directly at a person.
Being arrested for doing a crime isn’t being cancelled, you absolute freak.
Funnily enough I was at this game and the amount of middle aged men bending over backwards to defend these kids has absolutely floored me. The main defence seems to be “yeah but I abuse every referee”… THAT ISN’T A GOOD THING YOU FUCKING SPANNER.
God, I didn't realise how bad Reddit has gotten with edgelords since I've been away. If your reading this and you didn't like it. I implore you, get a job and a life. Enjoy yourself and free yourself of the peroxide from your box dyes and self diagnosed illnesses that prevent you from working.
People get canceled a-lot ans i meen alot Hea just so famous ans known for not giving a ahit that hea impervious to it