Abstract
This qualitative chapter uses digital ethnography to explore how aspirant Miss South Africa’s humorous old social posts were excavated by what I call Twitectives from social media ruining her prospects of participating and winning the pageant. This chapter illustrates how disparagement humour can be used for racist and body-shaming purposes usually with devastating consequences. I argue that within jokes are embedded some truths, beliefs and prejudices. Also embedded in these are superiority complexes where jokers feel superior to those that they make fun of. Schoombee’s jokes are anchored on privilege, either as a white woman or as someone society has categorized as beautiful, with advantages that accrue because of whiteness, able-bodied-ness and blessed with a slim, healthy figure. In the current world where the world is moving towards a woke society, that is, a society that critiques human behaviours and calls out inappropriate behaviours and cancels out those who transgress certain social norms and anti-racism and anti-body-shaming ethics, those who make insensitive jokes are likely to lose out on their livelihoods.
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Mpofu, S. (2021). ‘If Ever I Offended You I Am Sorry’: Disparagement Humour, Black Twitectives and the Dream Deferred. In: Mpofu, S. (eds) The Politics of Laughter in the Social Media Age. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81969-9_11
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