The temporary shutting down of the student site after it 'went too far' in a piece about rape, raises the question of why some men take sustenance from brainless boasting
Sometimes, when stood by the bar, caught in the witty back-and-forth between two strange men, it feels like you're out in bad weather without a hat. "Banter", for me, is like a spitty wind, one that either breezes past gently, or batters me round the cheeks with its mindless force. And smell. I associate banter with a very specific smell, like dirty shirts and oversprayed deodorant. Basically Ck In2U Him, sprayed on to an office chair.
We have reached a crisis in banter. In the wake of "Tricky" Dicky Keys and Andy "Grey" Gray's Sky Sports shame, where the pundits' banter leaked glutinously through the cracks in media and mutated into news, and the introduction of "banter nights" at comedy clubs, and a sacked postman suing the Royal Mail for unfair dismissal, explaining that what they called bullying was in fact just "a lot of banter", the Uni Lad story only added to the instability.
Unilad.com, a British site for male students, has temporarily shut down after publishing a piece that encouraged rape. "If the girl you've taken for a drink… won't spread for your head, think about this mathematical statistic," they wrote, "85% of rape cases go unreported. That seems to be fairly good odds." Under the subsequent apology ("We took things too far") some of the site's 8,000 daily visitors left their own comments. "Nobody minds a bit of casual rape banter," wrote Daena. "Rape only happens because lasses can't handle the banter," said Adam. "[This apology is] Proof women don't understand freedom of speech and banter," added Andy.
Maybe Andy's right. Not for the reasons he thinks, obviously. Obviously Andy is an awful, awful crotch of a man who will never be truly happy, who will die alone, in a chair, surrounded by framed pictures of him doing thumbs ups next to Top Gear presenters, the TV loudly tuned to Dave (the "home of witty comedy banter"), where David Brent is doing his arm dance again, and again, and again; the roar of regret echoing through Andy's carpeted rooms. But maybe women aren't meant to understand banter. Bants. Top bants. Is banter just "boy talk"? Is banter – classless, bruising banter – simply the sound of men being funny at each other? Why does banter exist? Why do men joke like this? Laugh at things that you're not meant to laugh at – insult each other, test their hetero skills? Are they taking the piss out of their own intimacy? Their very manliness? Is banter the act of whispering "IDon'tFancyYouIDon'tFancyYou" with your eyes?
I wasn't shocked by the Uni Lad piece – not as shocked as many of the men I know, who reeled with offence. I was offended by their insistence it was comedy (no), sure, but I wasn't shocked. I wasn't shocked because this is what the internet looks like, often. Online, especially, say, under a comedy YouTube video, or comment piece about street harassment, Uni Lad-style banter thrives. I wasn't shocked, but I was oddly troubled – it made me think about how confusing it must be to be an 18-year-old boy, frantically trying to stay afloat in a lido of banter, where everything's a laugh and what you say is hardly ever what you think, reasserting your sexuality every 10 minutes as if refreshing a screen.
But maybe we don't need to worry about banter any more. If we've come to the point where the banterers are having to explain and apologise for their jokes, then presumably the joy of the thing – the roaring of rape humour across a crowded internet, that beery, leery, Friday-night amour – has been lost? Banter has broken itself.
Email Eva at e.wiseman@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/evawiseman for all her articles in one place. Follow Eva on Twitter @EvaWiseman