Description: Karma’s a bitch, ain't it?
Mouseover: MAJOR LEAGUE SWAGOUT! MAJOE LEAGUE SWAGOUT!
Originally Published: 6/24/2018
What The Comic Is: A man expresses his disbelief at conservatives and their agenda of cancelling people's careers over offensive jokes. In the second panel, Sam Hyde gazes silently, looking more at the man's hands or lower lip than at his face because StoneToss can't be bothered to correctly line up sight lines.
What StoneToss Actually Believes: Sam Hyde was a victim of cancel culture, and that cancel culture is a liberal tool devised by/for liberals against conservatives.
Why It's Fucking Stupid: There's a bit to unpack in this one. Actually, there's a fucking lot to unpack, but let's start with Sam Hyde. Even if you're not familiar with the ballad of Same Hyde, it's likely you may have heard of at least one of his antics or controversies before. Foremost, let's begin with 2016. Hyde, along with his co-partners, was part of a new show on Adult Swim called Million Dollar Extreme Presents: World Peace (normally known shorthand as 'World Peace'). The show featured Hyde and some buddies, under their comedy troupe the Million Dollar Extreme (or MDE), doing random stupid shit and skits, though with the typical hyper-absurdism and surreal nature of typical Adult Swim fashion; so less Whitest Kids You Know and more Tim and Eric, as one way of putting it. Anyways, the show was well received but never got picked up for a second season after rumors floated around that Hyde was involved with the alt-right and was sympathetic of white supremacist plights.
It is worth noting that Hyde tends to be a very aloof character. Kind of like Sacha Baron Cohen (the Borat guy), only a bit tone deaf and slightly douchey, so there's some plausible deniability whenever he's doing something vaguely alt-rightish or bigoted. Instances such as when he attended a comedy club and then, when at the mic, read off a list of anti-gay "facts" until members of the audience started to leave; or when he Tweeted that he believed fellow actor/comedian Patton Oswalt killed his late wife. Hyde has claimed he doesn't have anything against homosexuals in interviews (while doubling down on his stance on Oswalt's wife, claiming Oswalt must have done something to 'piss him off' that caused him to believe there was foul play involved). Hyde has defended himself by likening his 'irl trolling' and character performances to Sarah Silverman's ill-received black face routine, pondering why only his past actions have come back to bite him. (Which is funny, considering Silverman had to apologize for the jokes she made and was even recently fired from a film production when the producers discovered the 2007-era blackface photos).
Hyde might be able to deny being homophobic and that his stunt at the comedy club was just offensive humor and performance art, but his doubling down on shitty things like Tweeting conspiracy theories over Patton Oswalt's dead wife or his financial support of Andrew Anglin (founder of The Daily Stormer, a firmly white supremacist publication) are not things that bode especially well for someone trying to appeal to very liberal avenues such as, you know, Adult Swim. Hyde defends himself as a battered comic that was turned on by the hounds of his own industry, when in reality the dude has just done shit that has lead to repercussions for himself down the line. Mentioned earlier was Sacha Baron Cohen, the "Borat guy". Cohen and Hyde are very similar in that they're both hardcore character actors who push boundaries and can sometimes get very offensive. However, there's a reason why no one wants to cancel Cohen. Pro tip: It's not because Hyde is randomly being picked on by the comedy world, or because Tim Heidecker (the 'Tim' half of comedy duo 'Tim and Eric') doesn't like him. It's because Hyde has done shitty things and even if some of them truly were for ironic comedy, they didn't land very well for lack of the kind of nuance a master like Cohen is so adept at. Also, because asserting that Patton Oswalt murdered his wife and then doubling down and saying "he must have pissed me off!" is incredibly childish.
Okay, now that you're all studied in the history of Sam Hyde; what the fuck does this have to do with the comic? Well, now that we've firmly established that Hyde did enough damage to himself to justify the cancellation of his show, we can easily throw StoneToss' stupid use of the comedian aside. Hyde was not the victim of "liberal cancel culture", he was a dickhead who got the "alt-right sympathizing conspiracy theorist..." part down, but forgot about the "...played as a visibly ironic character without past shitty actions to lend any legitimacy to it" part.
As for the rest of the comic, StoneToss is trying to mock liberals and their criticism of conservative's post-Trump cult-think. Hyde is StoneToss' stand-in for people who are ruined by "liberal witch hunts", as a representation of liberal hypocrisy. It's true, witch hunts happen in all ideologies, but when you really look at it, the takeaway is that conservatives have plenty of Sam Hydes and that conservative 'cancel culture' is mostly just old fashioned muckraking, rumor-milling and desperate attempts to dig up any kind of dirt on someone that they can in order to play the coveted Uno reverse card on the liberals; trying to fight fire with fire, basically. We saw this with Rudy Giuliani's bizarre attempt to throw mud on Hunter Biden with the convoluted laptop lie. We saw it when Trump attempted to coerce a foreign nation into providing information about a rival political family. Does liberal cancel culture sometimes go too far? Occasionally, yes. Do right-leaning individuals often dig themselves into holes and then blame 'pc cancel culture' for their comeuppance? Gee, I dunno; do bears shit in the woods?
TL;DR: Sam Hyde made his own bed and StoneToss is a fucking idiot.
Description: Warning: This may be illegal to view in the UK.
Mouseover: OI MATE, YOU GOT A LOISONCE TO VIEW THIS HIDDEN TEXT?
Originally Published: 6/31/2018
What The Comic Is: James Smith posts online that he just got done reading the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, commenting on how crazy it would be if thought-crimes were real. Tom Jenkins replies with a highly racist sentiment, before submitting gibberish in his next post. It is revealed that a meme police officer is detaining him for lack of a racism license.
What StoneToss Actually Thinks: Racism is free speech.
Why It's Fucking Stupid: Prior to this comic, StoneToss did a few of these "oi mate" meme jokes. All the previous ones are just harmless jokes with no subtext and while this one might look no different, you have to remember this is StoneToss we're dealing with. StoneToss loves to misdirect and make himself look harmless, disguising bigotry and deeper context within comics that can pass as plausible deniability.
This comic was published on the ass end of July 2018, which was at the height of (one of) the UK's possible copyright law changes that may have vaguely made it illegal to make memes. Political commentary was rife all across the world on the issue, and it seems StoneToss was no exception. While most agree the proposed law in 2018 was over-reaching, some of the more unhinged theorists suggested that this would be the beginning of the end of "free speech", and that pretty soon you could even be arrested for racism online (StoneToss seemingly unaware that you could be arrested for hate speech online in the UK for years before 2018). Because get it?? Making it illegal to say racist things is exactly like 1984's "thought-crimes"!!!!!11
The comic in general is a great example of StoneToss' crafty nature. He calls racism what it is, hides a deeper subtext behind a meme he had been using the past month in his comic and dresses the narrative of the comic up enough that it's harder to read between its lines. Most people would see this and think it's just a joke about racists on the internet or something, failing to make the connections and giving off the illusion that StoneToss is separate from alt-right/bigotry. But just when you thought it was safe to think StoneToss wasn't an idiot...
Also, as if to attempt to totally betray all benefit of doubt, StoneToss very cleverly draws the star on the police officer's hat at a Star of David. Get it? Because (((the Jewish world order of liberals, democrats, Trump post-November 2020 and anyone else who isn't white))) is behind making it illegal to be a racist bigot- er, I mean, commit Orwellian thought-crimes.
Oi, StoneToss, you got a loicense for that empty fucking skull, mate?
The best part is that in 1984 they were specifically required to be xenophobic and report anyone who looked different. weird how that works
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