A comedian has skewered the culture of perpetual offence-taking in a sarcastic video taking the contemporary social justice movement to task.
JP Sears, a sarcastic, hippie-looking figure who produces video guides to being “Ultra Spiritual”, mocked the archetypal activist in a three-minute clip:
He said:
I’ve been having life-changing results since I learned how to get offended.
Now when people don’t see things the way that I see them I just get offended and it teaches them how not to see things from their point of view.People have every right to see things from their perspective – as long as their perspective is the same as my perspective.
The skit, which has been viewed millions of times, shows him flipping out after innocuous conversations with people trying to be nice to him.
He avoids any actual hot-button offence-taking topics like feminism, race and censorship, and subs in absurd ones like drinking a glass of water – though he does take a swipe at the over-sensitivity around sexual identity.
Sears – who previously had a major video hit with If Meat-Eaters Acted Like Vegans – is dedicated to his comedy persona and toys with staying in character outside of the video series.
In an interview last year with the Sydney Morning Herald he referred to “everything that I parody in the videos” and events he attends “in character”.
However, when asked straight-up questions like whether he is actually a vegan, he blends the two: “I eat a vegan diet, but also I eat a meat-eater diet”.
Serious or not, his critique hits the mark.
