There’s super-offensive content making its way around the internet by someone who is NOT Indigenous and is NOT a comedian. I will not say her name. I will not identify her nor will I describe the content. If you think you know what I am talking about: good. And if you don’t: good. Let’s keep it that way.
I won’t amplify the profile or content of someone who is clearly farming outrage to max their profile. To drive engagement. To get views. To find her people.
Our loud offence, our horrified comments on socials – they don’t call injustice or hurt into line. They are what she wants. This was her wicked intention.
They just feed the beast. And the beast is the narcissism juggernaut where people use outrage to drive their algorithms, to find their audience, and to create a sense of authenticity that doesn’t belong to them. They couldn’t get it on their own terms, with intelligence or talent. They couldn’t get it with brilliance. They couldn’t get it with insight. They have no genius. They just have this aching need to be at the centre, but nothing to share when they’re there.
So they literally shat the bed. Or whatever the social media version of that is.
Now everyone is talking about them. Including me. Even while I try not to.
It’s a wicked problem. How do you speak out against what is unspeakable, if the very act of doing so finds an audience for hurt and hate?
Maybe it’s time we talked about the mechanism – and the failure of any regulatory systems, or general moral compass to keep humanity in check. And I want to make one thing clear.
This person I am talking about, is not Indigenous. As a non-Indigenous person I just feel shame when I see what she did. I feel shame that anyone needs attention that much that they are prepared to disrespect a culture they don’t understand. A culture, from my understanding, focused on community, not individual grandiosity.
And they are NOT a comedian.
The person posting this vile content calls themselves an ‘internet’ comedian. There is no such thing. A comedian stands in front of an actual audience and has the guts to survive the storm. Not hide in their bedroom and press ‘post’. I can video myself making a lamb roast, it doesn’t make me a chef.
This person hasn’t stood backstage at hundreds of gigs waiting to go on. They haven’t earned their cred. And I can tell you – anyone performing content, as per the outrage farmer I am referring to would be booed off stage. I don’t know a single audience who as a public group would tolerate such bigoted hate. Even in the most conservative communities people don’t appreciate that kind of regressive, racist rant.
This person is a racist. There’s nothing new in this. They’re just a white sheet away from being a Klan member. It’s not funny. It’s disturbing. The comedians I know don’t do this. Because they don’t need to hurt and offend people for attention.
She’s an outrage farmer. She hurts people for clicks. She kicks down for likes. She feeds on the argument about the pain she has caused.
That’s why I won’t say her name. I won’t comment on her videos. And I won’t share her content – even if it is to dissociate from her.
What she deserves is silence. No attention. A big empty vacuum.
She needs to have her devices taken.
Be banned from ever posting again.
She needs mandated cultural training.
She needs to be charged under hate speech laws. Shouldn’t they apply to her?
We’ve just had a royal commission into antisemitism. I wonder how this would have been received if it was anti-semitic content? She’d be in jail.
This is racism on steroids. Why do we permit it?
Mandy Nolan’s column has appeared in The Echo for almost 25 years. She is a writer, comedian and artist, and was the Greens candidate at the past two federal elections.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
