The Freedom of a Joke

I find it mind boggling that you can feasibly be arrested these days for simply having a different opinion of something than the guy standing next to you. This concerns the recent spate of arrests of people posting things on social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook, and in the process offending someone. Let me give you a few examples…

A guy called Matthew Wood, aged 20, from Lancashire, made a joke about missing girl April Jones in October of last year. This action led to his arrest, apparently because the communication was ‘grossly offensive’. The BBC reported on this, but failed to include the joke which apparently caused so much offense.

Next up is Olympic swimmer Tom Daley who, after coming fourth in the platform event, received various abusive tweets from an unnamed 17 year old who was then promptly arrested. He mentioned Daley’s dad, who had died the previous year from cancer, and generally said he’d let everyone down. The BBC once again failed to include the tweets, but reported anyway.

The final one I’m going to include is courtesy of the Guardian –  a twitter joke from China, a country famous for allowing its citizens freedom of speech. A blogger posted a joke on twitter about the Communist leadership congress and immediately got arrested. Chinese citizens have rallied round him, but I doubt it’s going to do much good.

Okay, so from these three examples we basically have two jokes and someone being mean to someone else. Oh the horror. The last one I’m going to discount because it’s China and what did the blogger really expect. Concerning the other two, I’m just going to give you my thoughts. There may even be some jokes in there – if you believe these may offend you, I couldn’t really care less.

So, this joke about the missing kid. Yes it was insensitive, yes it was in bad taste, but in no way was it illegal. Even the insinuation that making a joke could be illegal is mind-boggling – have our police forces got nothing better to do then track down social media jokes just in case they offend someone? I remember the slew of jokes that appeared when the Madeline McCann story hit the headlines, and I have to say some of them I laughed at. Yes, I’m an inherently bad person for laughing and all that jazz, but you can’t arrest me for my sense of humour. It brings into question the whole concept of ‘free speech’ – you can have as much free speech as you want as long as you don’t infringe on anyone else’s right to not be offended. Any joke you make could offend someone.

“What’s brown and sticky? A stick.” This joke offends me greatly, it’s not clever or a bit dodgy or even toilet humour. It’s just a bit of a naff joke. But then again not quite naff enough to be hilarious. Are you going to go and arrest anyone who retells this joke because it offends me? Of course not. There is a fantastic sketch by comedian Steve Hughes, where he talks about people being offended by things, and he sums up my feelings pretty damn well. Check it out.

Okay, so it’s the subject matter that is questionable in this case. This poor 5 year old was missing (presumed dead by the time the joke was posted I believe) and someone decided to use this very sad event for a bit of light relief. There was a comedian (who I unfortunately can’t recall the name of at present) who said that his favourite type of joke is one that makes the audience laugh but then a few seconds later either wince or groan. You feel bad for laughing, but you know it’s still funny. This is true of a lot of comedians: Frankie Boyle, Jimmy Carr and Daniel Tosh to name just a few. Now I’m not arguing that the joke was in bad taste, just like some of the jokes performed by the example comedians, but I will wholeheartedly argue that the guy who posted it should not have been arrested, nor should the story really have made the news.

Moving on to the second example. Poor little Tom Daley got bullied over Twitter after coming fourth in the diving. Let me point out early on that the comments made to Daley weren’t racist, sexist, homophobic or anything else that could be construed as hate language. The tweeter was just a bit mean to him, and yet there was a pubic outcry and the lad ended up getting arrested.

Going back to the Steve Hughes video above: “When did ‘stick and stones may break my bones’ stop being relevant?” People are mean to each other every single day, I encounter at least three people every morning being dicks on my commute to work. I somehow manage to get over it. How pathetic exactly have we become as a society when we believe that we are that entitled that no one should be mean to us? Even if you’re against being cruel to another person, you can’t possibly agree with this lad being arrested for it. The mind boggles.

So… this post doesn’t really have a point. Just, the next time you’re about to complain about something offending you or someone is being mean, take a minute to ask if it’s worth it.

“Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.”

~ Robertson Davies