A quick troll about social media this morning brought a rather amusing story to my attention. It concerns a student at Manchester Metropolitan University being hauled over the coals by universit management for Tweeting at them the words ‘It’s imperative that you lick my ballsack’.
Now of course I don’t deny that Tweeting ‘It’s imperative that you lick my ballsack’ to a university is a bit on the juvenile side and is not something that I would have done. But what makes it funny is not so much the original comments, but the immensely po faced way that the university has reacted to this statement and the way that they have communicated with the student.
Here’s some screenshots of the university’s communication with the individual whose Twitter feed can be found here.
I must admit that although this comment by the student may or may not have been justified depending on the context, it does seem to be the case that the university has gone a bit ‘over the top’ about this. Students, like any one of us I’m afraid can be twats. Does this user’s twattishness really require him to be dragged into the office for a lecture about social media use, I reckon not. I certainly do not see the comment ‘with my fists’ or the image of a boxer as representing any credible threat of violence, it’s just a person farting around and being a bit of an arse. Goodness gracious, whatever have things come to when a student cannot be a bit of an arse.
The only people that come out of this looking the worst are the university management as they are the ones that have had a fit of pearl clutching over the phrase ‘It’s imperative that you lick my ballsack’ and the fact that the user made this Tweet his pinned Tweet at the head of his feed.
I have no idea why this Twitter user chose to say what he did but this looks like a case of overreaction by the university.
This reminds me of a book I used to have with the script for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It had copies of the correspondence between the pythons and the film censors on the subject of what rating the film should have. There were serious discussions about whether the phrase “we will make castanettes out of your testicles” could be cut so that the film could be seen by a wider audience.
I believe that you may be referring to the Mike Forstater letter See https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Hilarious-Censor-Negotiation-Letter-From-Monty-Python-Holy-Grail-99717.html
I also remember the kerfuffle over the Python’s Life of Brian and Malcolm Muggeridge’s excoriation of it. The strange thing is that now more people are aware of and enjoy Life of Brian than remember Mr Muggeridge. Muggeridge’s desire to censor Brian really didn’t work and probably did more damage to his own reputation than it did to the Pythons.
One of the things that I dislike most about today is that rather than being less censorious and having more people doing the necessary act of heaving dead cats into sanctuaries, the West has got more censorious.