No laughing matter at Comic’s Lounge

North Melbourne’s Comic’s Lounge has faced Twitter backlash for a series of homophobic and sexist jokes on its Twitter account, with some claiming that a brick was thrown through a window and death threats were made against the club in response. The establishment posted a joke about a gay man getting diagnosed with HIV on its Twitter account, but deleted its account after the backlash. Owner Grant Lee refused to comment on the situation, saying the issue was now in police hands. Lee only said that the brick was thrown through a private residence, though this is yet to be confirmed.

In comments on Facebook, the Comic’s Lounge has blamed the tweets on “a hack job” and further blamed “a young guy” from “Match Works, a company that finds work for disabled people,” for not removing the jokes from the account. The HIV comments follow the trend across both of The Comic Lounge’s social media platforms, featuring sexist, homophobic and racist slurs. The Facebook page predominately relies on unsavoury memes.

If the hacking excuse holds up, it would mean the page was hacked since December last year, when the first HIV joke was made. The tweet was copied word for word in March, April and June this year.