As Trevor Noah barrels towards his September 28 premiere of The Daily Show, he wishes to tie up some loose ends. Those pesky remnants of his former existence still exist in the realm of social media, where even a deleted tweet can be screencapped for all of posterity. The Internet called out Trevor Noah for a series of unfortunate Twitter jokes, which dated back to 2012. In the controversy’s aftermath, Comedy Central stood behind their new host, and Noah asked audiences to not judge him by some bad jokes from yesteryear.
Noah’s out there promoting as the dust settles. Although he hasn’t officially begun hosting duties, he landed in Vanity Fair‘s new “Titans of Late Night” feature, so it’s safe to say Comedy Central has thrown their full support upon this relative comedic unknown. Noah also spoke with Entertainment Weekly to discuss how he’s changed since he made those tweets. He also addresses “faux outrage,” which he believes rules social media:
I understand where it comes from. But people would say, “Are you going to change?” And I’d say, “You went back three years to find the tweets! If I haven’t repeated those things, haven’t I changed?” If you look back three years and youre not disappointed in who you were then, you’re not progressing.
But we live in a world of faux outrage. It’s hashtag this, hashtag that. There are people who jump onto trends before they even know what the trend is about. People want to be part of the good, but they don’t want to put the work in, so they think, “Can’t I just say that I agree?” Then you have an artificial inflation of what the problem is. All of the sudden you get all of these big scandals, but they’re not big, because everyone is on the periphery of the argument.
Noah makes a relevant point about social media outrage. It’s pretty easy to find out what’s upsetting people on Twitter simply by checking out the sidebar topics. By extension, some users may wish to nab new followers by hopping on a hashtag and offering up the same opinion. Some scandals do exist by virtue of their own value, and others turn into a pile-on. Will Noah overcome his own controversy?
(Via Entertainment Weekly)