Thank you for this! This is a very reasonable explanation.

I think one of the areas this is breaking down is whether or not what Colby's doing is that bad. Jon has done far worse than Colby has, so it's hard for me to compare.

The amusing thing is that I'm indifferent to Colby for the most part. He's funny sometimes, he's weird other times. Just questioning the general logic is all. If some act from societies standards isn't okay, then I don't really get excusing it when someone said they were just kidding. Just my line of thinking I guess. If someone paraded around a school campus yelling racial slurs and said he was doing it just to get popular and wasn't really racist, it doesn't really matter because people would have been impacted by what that person did. The reason society has this standard in the first place is because of what it does to people on the other end.

I think I do weigh intention sometimes, but just not in this instance. Kind of a case by case thing. Intention to me matters more when you don't intend to do something bad, but it comes across that way. In this instance, Colby's planning everything he does so that's where it breaks down for me.

By the way, you are absolutely correct it is an act. He had an AMA years back where he said he'd be willing to put on an act to increase interest.