Part of the visceralness of the likes of Monty Python and Little Britain was how uncomfortable stuff was while you were laughing uproariously at it. Kind of, this is hilarious but I'd hate it if any of this became reality. You'd laugh, and then make a deep sigh of relief that is was only on your TV, and not the world around you.
Now it's jumped from the TV, like "they're here!" from Poltergeist, or the weird reality warp in David Cronenberg's Videodrome.
And instead of being a skit on the TV you could laugh at for it's sheer preposterousness, it's deadly serious as you're invited, no, expected, to not only not laugh, but go along with it.
Let me see how this will all be viewed in retrospect if we ever come out of this cloud of irrationality. Those in the media who supported David will claim loss of memory or some other ambiguousness in that they never supported the movement. Many will say they always knew it was satire, expected everyone else to be the same.
Indeed, there'll be the most almighty game of "don't blame me, blame them..."
There'll be no calling to account, no inquiry, no post mortem. Like the Russell Brand fiasco, a few figures will be marginally frank, others will say they weren't part of any complicity.
We could all point to this article in a decade, noone from the media will remember commissioning it or supporting it. And David himself will just claim it was a bit of fun, a bit of banter.
And we'll all wonder, what happened then? And what's happening now with mass denial.