CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
A fading intellectual who once used to smoke pot and listen to TISM, while discussing a range of alternative economic and political theories with his flatmates in university, has today given up on the concept of political correctness.
After several failed publishing deals and a couple of messy divorces, Vernon Bogaine (55) never quite got around to writing that Australian classic he had envisioned for himself.
Instead, he nows works as a copywriter for a range of industry magazines, and spends his time on the internet DESTROYING feminists and other progressive social commentators with his ten dollar words.
But, even he, as someone who claims to know the clear boundaries between poor manners, and full blown bigotry and sexual assault, knows he must be careful in this day and age.
Because, according to the millennials he has stumbled across on YouTube, you can get ‘cancelled’ for almost anything.
“Cancel culture is getting out of control” says Vernon, as though he is some sort of high profile Hollywood executive who actually has a public profile that might be compromised by an online pile-on.
Cancel culture (also known as call-out culture) describes a form of boycott in which someone is thrust out of social or professional circles – either online on social media, in the real world, or both for social and political gaffes. When this happens, they are said to be “cancelled”.
While the fear of this form of cultural policing is hysterical amongst middle aged white men and boomers, at time of press the only two people on Earth to actually be cancelled as a result of online lynch mobs is Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. Two men who are accused of raping over 150 women between them and will likely die in jail.
“Yeah but what about Chris Lilley” says Vernon, who hated everything about Chris Lilley when Chris Lilley was big.
“You can’t just erase history because it doesn’t align with today’s standards”
“Chris Lilley will probably have to wait at least 18 months to get another show with HBO or Netflix”
While Vernon’s real fears of cancel culture appear to be part of a bigger picture that someone is going to remember the time he groped a couple of interns and threatened to fire them if he they ever told anyone during his days on the Latham campaign.
However, it doesn’t matter what he’s done, because ‘they’ will find a reason to destroy you, he says, intentionally muddying the water between the felonies he has committed and the gaffes he might have made on social media over the last ten to twenty years.
“At first they came for the comedians and I said nothing”
“Then they came for the indie Melbourne band bros and I said nothing, and then they came for the darlings of Screen Australia and I said nothing”
“And then when they came for me, there was no one left to speak for me, except the opinion columnists in the NewCorp newspapers and the Nine Radio Network.”
