He says something gross, then: “relax, it’s a joke.”

Now give him a prime-time slot on NBC and a social team clipping it for the algorithm.

So who’s actually laughing, and who’s getting paid for it?

-Abdel Khalil, Brand & Marketing Exec

The cultural landscape of mid-October 2026 is feeling remarkably fractured (among other things), and the latest flashpoint on Saturday Night Live has thrown a harsh, uncompromising light on the deep divisions defining modern media consumption.

During his opening monologue, comedian Shane Gillis made a joke about his time away from the gym, declaring to the audience: “I haven’t been to the gym in so long, I didn’t know women just dress like whores now.” He doubled down with a bunch of other ways to be a total loser, that I care not to type out.

The bit was quickly clipped, uploaded to SNL’s official social media channels, and then immediately met with an explosion of engagement. For obvious reasons. While a segment of the internet defended the monologue as standard, politically incorrect stand-up comedy and “free speech”, a massive wave of public pushback erupted.

Prominent cultural figures, including actor Dan Levy, publicly challenged the bit, stating that calling women whores for wearing athletic shorts isn’t observational humour, it is basic misogyny. The king speaks only in truths.

For those of us who had the unfortunate burden of witnessing the Thumb of a man speak, we need to remind ourselves this controversy isn’t just an isolated debate about comedy boundaries. This is a highly volatile tension point: the “it’s just a joke” shield.

The severe backlash against the SNL monologue cannot be analysed in a vacuum, detached from the broader news cycle. The joke aired at a moment when the public is actively grappling with the horrifying details of the “Cornell 7” civil lawsuit, allegations surrounding the drugging and gang rape of a sophomore student at a Cornell University fraternity house. This is also, as we know too well, no isolated incident.

The court documents and public discourse revealed text messages from a 50-person group chat where fraternity members casually commodified and violated the victim’s body. Comment sections on the issue are hard to stomach, with thousands of men claiming she’s a “whore” simply for putting herself in that environment.

When women online look at these real-world horrors and then log onto Instagram to see the world’s biggest sketch comedy show platforming a routine that frames women’s gym wear as an invitation to be perverted at, the cognitive dissonance is exhausting.

Sociological research on media consumption has frequently shown that casual, degrading humour targeted at a specific demographic doesn’t exist in isolation. Instead, it acts as a subtle cultural ladder. It normalises victim-blaming, reinforces the idea that women are responsible for the male libido, and manufactures an environment of social complacency where serious crimes are treated as low-stakes locker-room banter. These things contribute to a culture where a young woman is subject to gang-rape within the walls of the very schools and institutions that are supposed to protect her, by people that are supposed to be her friends.

What makes the current landscape feel uniquely bleak is the polarisation of the online ecosystem. On one side of the feed, women are sharing their common, exhausting experiences with street harassment, non-consensual image distribution, campus safety fears, and abuse stories.

On the other side, the algorithm is of course actively rewarding defensive, aggressive anti-woke content that mocks these concerns as hyper-sensitive corporate posturing.

This deep ideological rift has left many feeling like cultural progress is moving backward under the current administration, as the public square fragments into two realities that refuse to communicate with one another.

Traditional legacy media brands like NBC are caught in a cynical, dual-incentive trap. On one hand, corporate diversity initiatives preach a commitment to equality and safety. On the other hand, the cutthroat metrics of the attention economy reward raw controversy. By platforming an individual with a long history of controversial rhetoric to host a prime-time slot, executives are making a cold commercial bet: they believe the massive influx of outrage-driven traffic, hate-watching, and viral comment section wars is more valuable than maintaining an ethical baseline of respect for their audience.

As always, get me off this ride.

-Sophie Randell, Writer

We get it. Creating content that does numbers is harder than it looks. But doing those big numbers is the fastest way to grow your brand. So if you’re tired of throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks, you’re in luck. Because making our clients go viral is kinda what we do every single day.