Horemheb's Musings

Media narrative and pop culture zeitgeist for the past several weeks have been dominated by one single topic – the obscene content of India’s Got Latent, a comedy show by Samay Raina and particularly a lewd joke/questions asked by Ranveer Allahabadia who runs the Beer Biceps podcast. Every single media outlet is obsessed about the topic, the standup comedy crowd are petrified into silence and people are outraging on both sides of the argument. The sheer scale of outrage and specifically actions of certain state governments make me feel that all this is a subterfuge to dominate the popular narrative so that certain more critical events get overshadowed. While I am sure certain axes are getting ground to intimidate stand up comedians podcasters the timing and scale is suspect.

The show itself was not for public consumption. It was behind a paywall and I am assuming that the live audience were also subjected to consent for adult content. It was not a Youtube clip for public consumption. The episode in question was recorded months ago and thus the timing of the outrage is suspicious. I wont bother to delve into the morality or lack thereof of the joke as I do not think it is about the joke at all. The best way to punish a bad joke is to not laugh at it and not respond to it.

If a parallel has to be drawn All India Bakchod was a much bigger platform than India’s Got Latent could ever dream of. Due to their success it was natural for their enemies to use the opportunity to destroy them. Ranveer Allahabadia’s BeerBiceps is certainly big and has a large assortment of enemies – mainly from the standup comedy community. Standup comedians of India are generally afflicted by the left liberal woke mind virus and I have heard so many of them being openly vitriolic against Ranveer for his success, supposed right wing tendencies and fascination with occult and pseudo science. Samay Raina is amongst the microscopic minority of stand up comedians who did not dismiss “Kashmir Files” as a lie or propaganda. The fact that these two “right wing” content creators were targeted for the attack and not any of the stringently woke and leftist comedians is striking.

Nothing Samay or Ranveer said has horrified me as much as Daniel Fernandez’s anti semitism at a stand up comedy show I attended a few months back. This gentleman was openly anti-semitic, calling for holocaust of Jews and complaining that Palestinians of Gaza would not have suffered if only Adolf Hitler had succeeded.

There was no outrage towards Daniel Fernandez but so much outrage towards an unoriginal unfunny joke ( copied from OG Crew) said in an unoriginal show ( Kill Tony)

I disagree with the notions of censorship discussed supposedly to “save” children from obscene content. Children with smartphones have access to content far more vile than any of the content creators can dream of. Censorship cant be an alternative to parental control. Failure of parents in regulating children cant be blamed on comedians or video games. A smart child raised by discerning parents would not be tempted to incest because of a poor joke.

One hypothesis I have about this manufactured controversy is that it is a ploy to make Samay and Raina the posterboys of the freedom of speech crowd hitherto dominated by the woke left liberals. I was surprised Ranveer even went to a standup comedy show, it was like walking into a den of your enemies. And now all the free speech advocates are silent, in fact the most stringent opposition to the government attack is coming from supposedly right wing content creators ( I do not include mainstream media here). I was at a stand up comedy show of Sorabh Pant recently where he was struggling to defend Samay Raina without defending Ranveer Allahabadia too.

So if my first theory is true in a few months we may see the likes of Modi or Amit Shah appearing in BeerBiceps thus boosting their own “free speech” credentials.

The longevity of this outrage also makes me wonder what is it a smokescreen for? Mainstream media is never this organic and spontaneous to an insignificant event. I can understand the excessive reaction of Maharashtra government but why would an Assam Government led by one of the smartest contemporary politicians Himanta Biswa Sarma conduct the farce of sending Assam Police to Mumbai and Pune to arrest a comedian show is currently in US if not to perpetuate the charade?

So what might it really be? What are they trying to hide? President’s rule in Manipur? Gold reserve crisis in Bank of England and Fort Knox?

Whatever the true reason is I never take media at face value. I stopped watching TV News channels since I saw the horrifying coverage of 26 November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai. All algorithms can be manipulated and the mainstream media is the easiest to. If something is too good to be true then chances are it is. All epidemics and memes have a point zero or R0 from where it radiates until it acquires critical momentum. However when you have multiple simultaneous points of momentum that indicates artificiality and a deliberate script. The whole outrage and controversy surrounding Samay Raina, Ranveer Allahabadia and “India’s Got Latent” smells artificial and scripted