Last week, people – especially Gen Z – suddenly discovered a strange fact: India is not America. And this country is L and not W. (Out of pity for non-Gen Z readers, here’s what L and W mean.)

The discovery was abrupt and yet unclear, like a buffering YouTube video stuck at 240p. The shock came from realising that the American culture they consume so religiously – their primary source of entertainment, ideology, and even humour – does not fit in their own backyard. It was like trying to import a driverless Tesla into a city where the roads still belong to cows and drivers who drive Thars on the wrong side.

Part of the dismay was that they were simply born too late. Their political consciousness is post-2014, meaning their entire memory of governance is one where free speech and protests is an abstract museum artifact. Everything before that exists only as a fantasy of history, mostly found in Reels on ’90s nostalgia.

The thing is, few people know that history repeats itself – first as a farce, then as content. Most don’t realise they’re watching the same script play out on loop. Getting offended is, of course, India’s favourite pastime. It has always been; offence as a genre is marinated with cricket, music, art and comedy. But the mechanics of outrage have shifted with the media landscape, mixed with the popular morality of the time. Reality TV, in particular, has laid the groundwork for this new era of performative offence. 

Samay Raina, a man known for his ‘dark’ humour, which is also called ‘dank’ humour, found himself in the middle of a storm after a joke about Indian parents on his show, India’s Got Latent, was deemed disrespectful by a large section of the internet. The joke itself – on joining one’s parents having sex – was cracked by Ranveer Allahbadia, also known as BeerBiceps, who has built his brand on self-improvement, discipline, pseudoscience, conspiracy theories  and vague spirituality. 

Thus far, Ranveer through his podcasts has cracked a simple formula for popularity – blending traditional Indian values with Gen Z sensibilities. His entire playbook is taken directly from the pages of Joe Rogan. If Rogan peddles alien conspiracy theories, Ranveer swaps them for yetis and desi ghosts. If Rogan explores spirituality, Ranveer does it through debates on religion and even semen retention – another proudly ‘Indian’ brahmacharya concept. Where Rogan warns of the deep state controlling narratives, Ranveer localises it to India’s version of the same paranoia. 

And, of course, the format is tailor-made for the right wing and self-proclaimed ‘apolitical’ audiences. Anything remotely liberal or left-leaning is dismissed or mocked by guests. The goal was to maintain the image of the ideal obedient Indian son – one who knows exactly how to toe the line of popular sentiment. 

But everything went downhill when the son shifted his gaze towards the private moments of Indian parents. Making a sad situation worse is that the joke itself wasn’t original and was lifted from comedians Sammy Walsh and Alan Fang’s YouTube channel OG Crew.

All this for a man who was once proclaimed Disruptor of the Year by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, to whom Ranveer gigglingly said “aapke saath podcast karne ka man kar rha hai”. Modi replied, “Man to bahut logo ka karta hai.”

Now, India’s Got Latent is a wildly popular show with insane viewership numbers. Reddit threads speculate that Samay is likely earning crores through it. The evolution of the show is, therefore, also interesting from a media progression perspective. 

Reality television in India started out as a mild affair. Indian Idol was a simple singing competition where three judges occasionally roasted contestants for bad performances. Roadies arrived and introduced us to the exhilarating spectacle of contestants getting verbally, sometimes physically, assaulted. By the late 2000s, reality TV had become the cultural pulse of young India. In my college days, Roadies auditions attracted more people than election booths. It was survival of the fittest – or rather, the lamest.

Roadies, despite being a chaotic mix of machismo and misplaced morality, set the template for future cultural moments. It was the prelude to India’s Got Latent, which is a direct rip-off of the US show Kill Tony. Every show in India needs entertainment plus a moral arc to succeed. Indian Idol almost tapped into the middle-class notion that everything must be achieved through competitive exams and hence the show itself has a ‘cracking an interview’ format. 

But Roadies also had a peculiar sense of righteousness and moral cover. The judges, who were otherwise very macho and senseless, would explode in rage if a contestant ‘disrespected’ women, only to follow it up with a string of expletives that directly insulted their mothers and sisters. It was a moral framework that made perfect sense if only you didn’t think about it.

In today’s internet culture, this moral arc has evolved. It’s 2025. The world has changed. But the key lesson always seemed to be this – do not shake the boat. Be ‘non-left’. Be ‘respectful’ to the mainstream sentiment. Make sure all controversial comments lean in the right direction. 

Enter Samay Raina, a comedian who, unlike his peers, understood this unspoken rule. He trolled liberals and mocked their concerns, from Diwali crackers to cancel culture. He even tweeted that the “fear of cancellation from the left” is why India doesn’t have comedians like Jimmy Carr and Dave Chappelle. 

“Don’t worry,” he tweeted, “I’m here to change that. Jab tak janta saath hai, yeh kuch nahi ukhaad sakte.”

Samay was quick to realise an inconvenient truth: cancel culture is a game of privilege. Those who hold it shape the rules. In today’s era, the left and liberals, despite their loud outrage, lack the institutional power to enforce real cancellations. Instead, the right controls culture and popular discourse. Their version of cancellation isn’t just about online shaming or moral policing – it comes with real-world consequences. It’s not just a trending hashtag; it’s the Assam police knocking on your door, shutting down your shows, and reminding you that a punchline in India is about getting punched after each line.

Samay did try his best to be right but then he broke a different rule. A joke about parents crossed a threshold of morality that bypassed every previously carefully crafted idea of morality. A comedian making a vulgar joke about Indian parents? This was unacceptable. This broke the carefully established moral Jenga that both Samay and Ranveer had built for their audience.

As expected, the fallout was swift. Samay, along with BeerBiceps, found himself in the middle of a cultural purge. The lesson was unfolding in real time: morality is not just about political correctness but about knowing which topics to avoid. In fact, this is the nature of morality – the definition itself changes very quickly. Anything can be immoral at any given moment. Your pass card can be revoked if a group of people decides that what you’re doing is immoral.

The outrage cycle does not operate on logic; it is governed by numbers, by which segment of society makes the most noise. Samay’s audience skews young, mostly 16 to 20 years old. They dominate the internet’s algorithms, yet the real cultural authority still lies with millennials and boomers. This episode, in a way, was a power struggle between generations. The mainstream media, predictably, jumped in, outraged over the erosion of ‘maryada’ and ‘Indian culture’ – ironically, the same buzzwords that BeerBiceps had built his career on.

This entire episode reveals something fascinating: how there is no formula to be safe in the digital world, how morality is ever shifting, and how on the dance floor of democracy, everyone breaks a leg (literally). The game is not about truth, humour, or even free speech. It is about knowing who controls the microphone. And right now, the microphone belongs to the ones who set the moral lines – lines that shift with every controversy, but you can’t predict who’s next.

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