
There was a time when questioning was allowed and debating was encouraged. People would think about things before giving an opinion. People could change their opinions when new information was presented. But somewhere along the way, it changed to: you have to think this way, or else you’re a (insert overused insult here).
When I was a kid, I was allowed to ask questions. I was encouraged to ask questions about anything—except for the Bible. My family weren’t really religious, except for one uncle who was full-on with the Jesus thing. I guess I believed in God early on because, growing up, you just accept what you’re told. But as you get older and start thinking about shit, a lot of it doesn’t make sense. And then you’d ask a question, and a grown-up would give you the answer. When it came to religion, though, a lot of the time I’d be told not to ask the question. “We don’t talk about religion.”
There was a church up the road, and a few of my friends went there for Sunday school. I went to check it out, and it was pretty cool. It was run by these Americans who played games with us and gave us sweets. All we had to do was sit through 30 minutes of Bible class.
None of the stories made sense. I asked a lot of questions—not meaning to sound rude or like a dick or anything. The stories just made no sense to me, and with everything else I didn’t understand, I’d ask questions. This was the only topic where I noticed people got very uncomfortable, and for years, I couldn’t understand why.
So life goes on, and I get older, and I’m still asking all the questions. For years, the only topic that made people uncomfortable was religion… but then along comes politics. We’re told to vote for this because of that or for that because of this, and I ask why. And then you see the anger in some people when you don’t automatically agree with them. Because you’re not a (insert political insult here). For years, the two things you didn’t talk about were religion and politics.

Then comes the Brexit era, and then Donald Trump running for president of The Merica. First Brexit. I couldn’t give a shit about it, but I was told it was really important. I had just gotten into cartooning and was invited to a South African cartoonist WhatsApp group. The political cartoonists in the group were all ranting about Brexit shit. I asked them to explain what it was, and pretty much, it’s that British people wanted fewer people from other countries living there and fewer people taking their jobs. I said, “That makes sense, I guess. A country should focus on its own people first.” Apparently, this was the wrong opinion to have. “No, Brexit is wrong and bad, and nobody wants it.” (But then it happened, so I guess people did want it? No?)
I asked the group how they’d feel if we started bringing in more and more people to South Africa. What if we flew in hundreds of cartoonists, and now these guys were taking your jobs? Would you be happy with that? No response. I then got a private message from the group’s admin asking me to stop stirring shit. They then uploaded rules to the WhatsApp group telling us all that we’re not allowed to start arguments. But… it’s not an argument. They said something, and I asked a question. Side note on Brexit—these cartoonists all made cartoons about how England couldn’t function if Brexit happened, and it was all bullshit. Not even close to reality, but these guys just pretend they never said those things. It confused me for so long how people could be so wrong and not seem to care, but then I learned that they didn’t believe this shit either. This is what their newspapers were telling them to say. Any cartoon that could be seen as pro-Brexit was rejected. All topics about things that didn’t fit a certain way of thinking were rejected. They didn’t really have the choice of having an opinion. The choice was: have this opinion or don’t have your cartoon sell.
Now, when all the papers are saying the same thing and thinking the same way, people who read the paper begin to have these opinions. Non-cartoonist friends would start talking about Brexit and how stupid it would be and how nobody would vote for it, and again I said that I could understand people wanting it. In my head, it makes sense that people could want that. It was the first time I had heard the term “right-wing” that wasn’t referring to a chicken. The fuck does that mean? The weird thing, though, was I’d be called right-wing but not told why—just that if I didn’t agree, it meant I was right-wing. I then read about the left and right wings, and it’s all retarded. John Cleese explained it best. He said something like it’s actually a circle, and the further left or right you go, it meets. The extremes of either side are as retarded as each other. Normal people should take bits from each “wing”, if you’re fully in on any one side on all beliefs then… I think you’re in a cult there buddy.
Anyway, so Brexit happens, and people are supposedly shocked. But only the people who believed the papers. If you spoke to an English person, they’d say they wanted Brexit (unless you asked them online, then they’d lie).
The next thing people got wrong was Trump winning the election the first time. Like, I wasn’t into the news, but I had heard that it was impossible for him to win. The news folk were saying he had like a 10% chance of winning. Nobody believed he would win—and he did. That’s when I realized the news was telling us what they wanted to happen and how they wanted us to feel, not the news. If you thought Trump was going to win, you were stupid and (that word again) right-wing. I’m still confused as to why one wing is seen as bad. Like, to be honest, the people who do most of the name-calling come from the side that’s supposedly good. It’s like you’re allowed to say whatever you want to a person you say is on the right as long as you say you’re on the left. Ooof, this shit annoys me—rant mode on!

This topic pisses me off because when I started cartooning, I thought about getting into political cartooning since it was so easy to come up with ideas—politicians are so fucking retarded, you could pretty much just write what they said and you’d have a joke. But I quickly learned that you could only make fun of one side, or else you’d be called a (insert political insult here). I was making fun of whoever said the dumbest shit. I still didn’t know the left-right wing bullshit or what side which politician was on. I didn’t care about the news, but if there was a joke to be made, I’d make it. But I’d get super attacked whenever I made cartoons about politicians on one side. It didn’t seem fair. The newspapers didn’t want fair cartoons—they wanted cartoons that only made fun of one side, which they called the bad side (which I then learned was the right wing). It was even worse in America. If a cartoonist made a joke and the joke happened to have a chick or a black dude in it, the anger would instantly turn toward the cartoonist being racist or sexist. Doesn’t matter that the cartoon had nothing to do with sex or race—it was sexist/racist to make a cartoon about a chick who said something stupid. They’d focus on the drawing, saying that they made the black guy look too dark or some other distraction bullshit. A friend of mine got in trouble for drawing Oprah as a fat black lady… like, if you drew her thin, it wouldn’t look like her. Fucking retards.
Anyway, so fine, you’re not allowed to draw caricatures or unflattering pictures of people… well, no, you are allowed to. As long as the politician or person is on the right side. Dude, people draw Donald Trump as a fat ugly dude or a pig or a baby all the time. Boris Johnson, the same. And it’s ok? I’m not saying you shouldn’t draw them like that—draw them however the fuck you want—but cartoonists should also be allowed to draw other people as ugly if they want to. Nobody should be off-limits. You should be able to make a cartoon about any politician who says something stupid.
The funniest thing of all was that Joe Biden dude would say dumb shit all the time, but you wouldn’t see negative cartoons about him. He was possibly the worst president in history, but the negative cartoons only started coming out once it was decided that whoever that drunk Harris lady was would take over.

I’d never heard of this chick in my life, but suddenly she was, out of nowhere, the best person for the job? Again, the news was saying how she’s going to win and she’s so good at this and that. I asked, “Then why didn’t she run last time instead of the old Biden dude?” No answer. Anyway, I was in SA talking to family, and they told me how this chick was going to beat Donald Trump. And I said, “No fucking chance. I don’t care if the news says she’ll win. If she wins, it’s rigged, 100%.” They were shocked because the TV was telling them she was going to win. I said, “Every American I know wants Trump to win because they don’t feel safe in their own country anymore. If your country is having tons of foreigners coming in illegally, and the chick who was in charge of stopping them is running for president, she has no chance.” But the news kept pushing that she was going to win, and my family in SA all fully believed it. Anyway, yeah, so she lost—the most embarrassingly bad loss of an election ever. I feel bad for her. I don’t know if she believed the bullshit she was told or if she knew she had no hope.
So now, back to the topic of debates. Has the news killed debates? The news is meant to tell us the news, but somewhere along the way, it changed to telling us their opinion on what happened. Smart people used to listen to the news, repeat it, and sound all super smart. But now, the news gives their opinion, people repeat this opinion, and if it doesn’t make sense and you ask a question… you get called (insert your favourite retarded insult here).
You won’t believe (or maybe you will) how many times I’ve been called a Trump supporter because I don’t automatically hate the guy. I just said I hadn’t seen him say any of the stuff people claimed he said. There were so many things he supposedly said, and memes went around making him sound stupid. If he said those things, then yeah, he’s stupid for saying that. But the meme was used as evidence of what he said, and almost always, the meme was based on what the news thought he meant. I have zero trust in the news anymore. Probably around the lockdowns is when I realized they are just full of shit, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to trust what they say again.

Another weird thing that happened was—sorry, this just popped into my head—when I questioned stuff, I’d be asked in a laughy tone, “Did you get that from Joe Rogan?” I didn’t even know who the fuck Joe Rogan was. I Googled him, and I sort of recognized his face, but I’d never heard his show. I then started listening, and yeah, he was a fuck ton more right about shit than the news ever was. He does say dumb shit—it’s almost as if he’s a comedian on a podcast making jokes with his friends. Oh wait, that’s what his show is. Funny thing is, I would never have heard of him if it wasn’t for people ranting about him and the news telling me not to listen to him. He’s not perfect, but I trust him way more than any news channel.
Sorry, off-topic again. So why I wanted to make this post was, yesterday I went on Instagram, and there was a cartoonist I followed. He wasn’t that great or that funny, but he had potential. We all had to go through figuring out our style and type of humour. So I had been following this guy for a couple of months, and I was keen to see where he was going. But as he slowly got more popular, his cartoons started to suck balls. He stopped being offensive, he stopped taking risks, and he was headed down the path all good webcomic artists seem to go down, the slow sad road to boring relatable bullshit. I unfollowed him yesterday because he went full retard.
He made a post saying goodbye to Instagram and Facebook because Meta has changed its rules. Meta’s rule change pretty much encourages free speech. When I saw Mark Zuckerberg’s video about the changes, I was excited—it’s about fucking time. The last few years, social media wouldn’t allow debate and discussion about certain topics. You weren’t allowed to question certain things, and it was fucking annoying. It was like when YouTube banned discussing shit during lockdowns. With free speech and discussion, people talk about a topic, and you have a chance to change a person’s mind—or have your mind changed. But banning certain topics makes people think there is only one way to look at something. It’s not right.
They’re trying to distract you by saying this will allow misinformation, sexism, or whatever-ism. Yeah, maybe—who gives a fuck? At least people can say they agree or don’t agree with it. I think banning certain opinions is way, way worse. And again, you’ll see, the ones who agree with banning certain topics are the ones on the side that want those topics banned. Meta is allowing discussion, not banning it. The problem comes with who decides which topics get banned. Give us all the information, and let us decide for ourselves.
Anyway, this dude whined about Facebook allowing free speech and quit to go to a social media platform that doesn’t allow free speech. Like… when I was growing up, people would fight for freedom of speech. The “left” would fight for freedom of speech. But now, if you want people to be able to think for themselves, you’re a (yawn, political insult here).
Where did debating and discussions stop, and when did name-calling and running away start? A few positives I’m seeing, though—I think the next generation is going to be super wild. My young nephew seems to be asking tons of questions again and is super openly pro-Donald Trump. None of his family is, so I don’t know where this came from, but he loves the guy. I like that he can openly say that without being called names. His generation are way less “woke” and way more honest and care less about the opinion of strangers. I’m excited because this means in the next few years we might be able to get a tropic thunder 2 with Robert Downey in black face. Fuck, that movie was good. It’s still odd to me how nobody thought that was racist at all back then but we’ve slowly been trained to believe it is. But things seems to be going back the right way. I have faith.
This reminded me of a story I’m saving for another post about when I was asked to write an animated show for this network in California, we wrote it around 2019 and it was super rough, but then this woke shit caught on and the network went into a panic and we had to change everything to make it more diverse, at first we just changed the race of some character, but then people got upset about these charters being made fun of, but originally they were white so it was fine, but now the colour of the characters changed and the jokes suddenly became too offensive. I’ll explain the full story soon, but man, I think growing up in SA must be way different to where you first world folk are from. We have real problems to deal with, we don’t have time to whine about invented racism.
Anyway, that’s all for today. I need to start filling these posts with more pictures and cartoons to break up all the writing. In other news, episode 18 of That ’90s Comic is up.

Chat later!