India’s Outrage Machine Devours a Star YouTuber Over a Crude One-Liner

Asia Pacific|India’s Outrage Machine Devours a Star YouTuber Over a Crude One-Liner

The Indian internet is a boisterous place, not always for the faint of heart. But sometimes India itself turns fainthearted in the face of the internet. Or livid, when family values are at stake.

Until a couple of weeks ago, Ranveer Allahbadia, 31, was riding high as a podcaster, influencer and all-around successful hyper-bro — a Joe Rogan for online Indians, especially young men. His handle, BeerBiceps, presented him to his eight million followers as a lighthearted, overgrown boy’s boy.

He interviewed celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Priyanka Chopra, as well as government ministers who build highways and plot foreign relations. He signed deals with brands like Sony, Skechers and Spotify. Last April, he shared a stage with Prime Minister Narendra Modi while being named “Disrupter of the Year” at India’s first National Creators Awards.

It all came crashing down for BeerBiceps on Feb. 8, when “India’s Got Latent,” a YouTube-based talent show with a clever title and almost a half-million subscribers, broadcast an episode with him performing as a judge.

Mr. Allahbadia told a joke that sounded like a throwaway line, racy if unoriginal. But it landed.

“Would you rather,” he said, “watch your parents have sex every day for the rest of your life, or would you join in once and stop it forever?” The studio audience oohed, whooped and laughed, and the show went on.

Indians are extremely familiar with this form of obscenity — the two most common terms of abuse in Hindi refer to illicit sex acts within a family. But BeerBiceps’s jest seemed somehow a step too far. India has become fitfully intolerant of entertainment that offends certain sensibilities, often religious. Comedy, its reach lengthened by the ubiquity of YouTube and WhatsApp, has become riskier.