It was no April Fool’s joke.
Harry Potter author-turned culture warrior J.K. Rowling kicked off the month with an 11-tweet social media thread in which she argued 10 transgender women were men — and dared Scottish police to arrest her.
Rowling’s intervention came as a controversial new Scottish government law, aimed at protecting minority groups from hate crimes, took effect. And it landed amid a fierce debate over both the legal status of transgender people in Scotland and over what actually constitutes a hate crime.
Already the law has generated far more international buzz than is normal for legislation passed by a small nation’s devolved parliament.
It’s incentivized for him to remain that way, it’s what his audience gels with. I feel pretty confident that if you look at the episodes that get the most views, they’re gonna be the ones that have the most stupid controversial figures, political candidates, and higher tier celebrities, rather than any episodes where he talks to actual experts about what they know.