Maybe it’s a joke, and it’ll turn out that Dapper Laughs was actually trolling us all. Maybe his name is actually Earl and he’s an incredibly talented American character comedian. If you’ve never heard of Dapper, then count yourself lucky – this guy became a star off the back off his insanely popular Vine feed where he basically walks around being a tosser.
From telling girls they’re ‘proper moist’ to pretending disabled people are chasing him to making fun of gay people, his brand of humour is bewilderingly crude. Bewildering because, at last count, he has over 579,000 followers on Vine and over one-and-a-half million Facebook followers.
Which, of course, means he got a TV show. Dapper Laughs: On The Pull airs on ITV2, and it has been being critically slated as ‘unpleasant sexism dressed up as “banter”’. Here’s everything you need to know about the show everyone with a brain hates, without having to actually put yourself through watching it.
Who is Dapper Laughs?
Surprisingly, his name isn’t actually Dapper. It’s Daniel O’Reilly, he grew up in Woking and comes from Clapham Common. He used to work as a cruise ship entertainer. He set up a Vine account under the name Dapper Laughs, where he goes around havin’ a laugh. Things like, y’know, Vining himself at the British Museum going up the escalator into the Earth’s crust and likening it to going into his mum’s vagina.
Why do people like Dapper Laughs if he’s as offensive as you’re saying?
Because he’s that guy you met at uni who everyone called a legend, but was actually a total douchecanoe. He puts on a rudeboy accent and plays the part of a Jack-the-lad, a bantersaurus who probably still does Gap Yah impressions and uses words like ‘lash’.
His Vines include light homophobia (‘Everyone that works on planes are SO STRAIGHT...’), sequences of him sneaking out of girls’ beds while they’re still asleep (Sunday stealth mode). The tone would be jokingly ironic, a satire of hopelessly pathetic lad culture – except it’s not.
Choice quote: ‘First date. What you say: “Do you come here often?”, “What do you do for work?”. What you want to say: “Is it bald?”, “Do you give head?”, “Do you like girth?”’ (705,156 loops) (And no, I won’t be embedding it here).
What’s Dapper Laughs: On The Pull about?
‘Y’alright? I’m Dapper Laughs. You might recognise me, especially from your lady, because I can be a bit of a hit with the women…’ and so begins episode one of Dapper showing off his love-guru credentials. ‘What I don’t know about [women] probably isn’t worth knowing,’ he continues. I refer you to the above choice quote, for context.
This is set up as prime thigh-slapping, giggly trash, with him sending up his sexist banter-style – all warmly lit, romantic violin music and tinkly sound effects – because he’s here to help the lonely people innit. He wants to help you lot find a date, the naughty little scamp. Unfortunately, it’s neither a funny satire or funny. And he’s definitely not a scamp. It’s just boring and sexist.
‘Clothes are important ’cos girls are into fashion and that type of shit,’ he says, wisely. ‘Don’t treat them like a mate!’ he adds, in case any men were thinking of dating a girl they could also be friends with. Girls love clothes and shit, and aren’t your mates! What insight! What intrigue! What the hell is the point of this being on TV!?
READ MORE: Think Sexism Is Bad In The UK? You Should See Australia
He seems harmless, just a bit of a chump
Sure, but it’s this harmless chumping, this dressing up of his quite blatant sexism in ‘Aw, but it’s just a larf’, that makes it actually quite harmful. He likes to yell ‘She knows!’ at women and then laugh so they feel confused. You know, because it’s funny to watch girls feel powerless and unnerved, isn’t it? Aren’t girls silly! They don’t understand our ladjokes!
It may be harmless in isolation, but it’s just contributing to this overriding feeling that girls are stupid, they’re to be ‘pulled’, they don’t want meaningful relationships (‘Don’t treat them like a mate’) and they love clothes and shit.
As Grace Dent puts it: ‘He’s that lad who lads think are really funny, until the years pass and they have a daughter of their own and suddenly they think, “Oh my God, I have brought a little girl into a world where looking for ‘consent’ before sex is thought of as chivalrous.” He’s the sort of lad that former lads’ mag editors have long nights of the soul over. “I aided and abetted that predatory dickhead,” they think.’
It’s not Dapper Laughs who’s the problem really, is it? It’s the people who find him funny. They’re contributing to a pretty uncomfortable and, at the very least, moronic attitude.
So women hate it and men find it funny?
Nope. People with brains hate it, and morons find it funny. Comedian Lee Kern (who is a man) penned a brilliantly incisive and expletive-ridden open letter to Dapper, and everyone who was involved in the TV show called, ‘You Helped Create A Rapist’s Almanac’.
‘You’ve made a show that contributes to a society that already doesn’t treat women by default as human beings with brains and imaginations and thoughts and ideas and humour and anger and beliefs and flaws as is the birthright of men – but you have reduced them to pussy,’ Lee writes.
‘In doing so you despise your mums. You despise your daughters. You despise your sisters. You despise your wives. You despise women everywhere if you have helped play a part in allowing this rat-tousled, fuck-spiv to have a platform to pump shit into British society. I understand you have to pay the rent but for fuck’s sake.’
So, in a word, no. More words: no, it’s not just women who hate it. In the meantime, good ole Dapper isn’t letting the haters get him down – he’s loving life and continuing to put out the sort of witticisms we’ve come to expect from the ‘comedian’.
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Picture: Getty
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.