Going Viral - with Alice Brine

Selfie Reflective

Alice Brine is a Kiwi-born London-based comedian and creative ~

"I’m gunna start going home with random very drunk guys and stealing all of their shit. Everything they own. It won’t be my fault though... they were drunk. They should have known better. I’ll get away with it 90% of the time but then when one brave man takes me to court over it, I’ll argue that I wasn’t sure if he meant it when he said ‘no don’t steal my Audi.’ I just wasn't sure if he meant it. I said ‘Can I please steal your Gucci watch?’ He said ‘no’ but I just wasn't sure if he meant it. He was drunk. He brought this on himself.

You should have seen how he was dressed at the club, expensive shirts and shoes. What kind of message is he sending with that!? I thought he wanted me to come and steal all of his shit. He was asking for it. When he said ‘no’ to me taking everything he owned I just didn’t know if he meant it. ‘No’ isn’t objective enough, it could mean anything."

The text featured above went viral via a post on Facebook in 2016. Today, we're speaking with Alice Brine, the comedian who wrote and published that post. As we’ll learn in this episode, Alice's analogy about sexual consent resonated all around the globe.

Since then, you’re on the money if you think that a lot has changed - but also not a lot when it comes to the issue of consent. In this episode, we speak to Alice about what the experience of going viral was like, what the surprising parts were, how it changed her life - and whether there the ideas of victim-blaming and sexual consent have positively progressed at all - or just taken a different form.

Shownotes:

Follow Alice Brine on Instagram or Twitter, and if you're in London send her a DM to be kept in the loop about her upcoming standup shows.

Email [e-mail] with any reflections on this episode.