Chris Brown’s been a prick again. No surprise there, right? This time, it’s a case of spewing exactly the sort of thing you’d hear from a UKIP member or just any lurking out-and-out racist. Tweeting about ebola, he lolled:
The most important thing he said there: ‘I don’t know.’ After given some flack, he replied:
Before going on to upset a few more people with this one:
He then tweeted a Vine of a little Asian girl saying ‘suck my ass’ to prove that he was just doing an impression of a little Asian girl instead of just summoning one in his mind. As he dug and dug himself deeper and deeper into a pit of his own idiocy and failure to understand Ebola as a pretty life-threatening virus that’s already killed thousands, he wasn’t alone.
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Because it seems as if ebola’s become something to joke about. For some reason In fact, we’re apparently so un-phased by looming epidemics that could see us dead within days that we’re looking to make jokes about it – take a look at Twitter or Instagram’s tweets about #ebola and tell us otherwise.
Now, it’s not for us to be the moral arbiters of humour, nor would we normaly feel the need to deconstruct a joke to explain to you exactly why and how it's not funny, but when it comes to something as serious as ebola – something that will now be screened for in UK airports, and now has a 70% death rate – these probably aren’t the lols the world needs to hear.
And most ebola ‘jokes’ doing the rounds are incredibly base and unfunny anyway, like a photo of a shoe in protective medical gear, along with the caption, ‘Nike Air Ebola’. Or people talking ill selfies (illfies) in bed to show just how unwell they are (with flu) along with the caption ‘ebola’.
The more sophisticated jokes doing the rounds are where people are taking the piss out of others for freaking out about ebola. And we get that, some people are being ridiculous when they think just one singular sneeze from someone in northern Europe is a sign ebola’s landed here. But then there are some out-and-out offensive memes, supposing that ebola is just another relatable fact of life to take the piss out of – for example the still from Michael Jackson’s Thriller, where zombies are dancing in the backround, with overlaid titles saying, ‘When the whole squad got ebola… but you still trying to turn up.’
It’s a bit strange how social media adapts and changes; a few months ago, people were happily pouring buckets of ice on themselves to raise money for a disease that, propotionally, very few people develop (ALS). However, now, when there is an actual risk of people getting the illness everyone’s talking about, social media users are less about fundraising, more about self-preservation. What better way to suggest you don’t give a crap about something by laughing at it? Ebola’s such a piddling matter to them, they’re joking about it. All the while, the death toll rises…
To donate to the Red Cross’s Ebola Outbreak Appeal, please visit redcross.org.uk/ebolavirus
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Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.