We're joined by writer and podcaster Huw Lemmey, author of "Bad Gays: A Homosexual History", to discuss his recent substack essay on the Cry Laugh Emoji, and its links to British 'banter' culture and cultural encouragement of cruelty. We discuss how concepts of accepted cruelty as social relations became digitally mediated, and how the cry-laugh emoji embodies the worst elements of it, as well as a broader, political effort to enshrine dehumanisation into policy-making. We discuss how and why the emoji is used, why it clogs up our facebook feeds, and why, regardless of who wins or loses an election, it's ultimately the cry-laugh emoji that rules over the British Isles. --------
Read Huw's essay on substack here: https://t.co/1MoivjXLVpFollow and listen to Bad Gays pod, here: https://twitter.com/BadGaysPod