Social media dating shows and match-making routines: between humour and hate speech

This paper investigates the dialectic relationship between humour and hate speech in fifty selected episodes of two Nigerian Instagram/TikTok Live dating shows namely Nons Miraj’s ‘The Hunt Game Show’ and Lege Miami’s broadcast between January and December 2024. The study adopted a qualitative method and analysed the purposively selected twenty-five episodes from each show using Critical Discourse Analysis, Benign Violation Theory, and the Theory of Invective Humour. Data analysis indicates that (i) even though these dating shows have traditionally employed humour as a means of audience engagement, they also frequently deviate into discriminatory discursive terrains around questions of gender, class, and body image; (ii) the shows combine verbal and non-verbal comedic elements to uphold broad prejudices through jokes and routines; and (iii) these platforms democratize dating opportunities while their content too often reinforces existing social biases under the guise of humour. The study concludes that these platforms operate through the notion of entertainment camouflage, which strains perceptions of internet spaces as an entirely democratic space and emphasizes the necessity of critically illuminating digital (technological) literacy to deconstruct the normalization of hate speech.