This ambiguity is somewhat captured in the once popular stories Douce recounts in which, though the characters and locations alter in every retelling, some group of people are loudly singing and dancing in direct defiance and mockery of priests, who are trying to conduct a religious service.
The world directs the same mockery at them as the vain, deluded men on Ashley Madison.
But the torrent of mockery directed at Ryan was much larger, possibly an order of magnitude larger than any that had visited his Twitter feed before.
For all of the mockery directed at Dalton for his disappointing record in prime-time games, I can imagine many Bengals fans ruing his absence on Monday night.
I'm not going to add to the cacophony of sexist mockery directed at Madonna for falling, most of which focused on her "deserving" it, behaving the way she does "at her age".
As usual, it was hard to say whether this was the sincere expression of an off-kilter, wide-ranging taste, or a bit of mockery directed at those of us who cared what he had on.
And then there was the mockery directed towards his four children, all created via parthenogenesis: his daughter Le Havre Malden, and his three sons, Prince Karl Malden, Another Prince Karl Malden, and the youngest, Still Another Prince Karl Malden, affectionately known as "Coverlet".
"To claim that Mr Anthony removing his name from the register and claiming that he is not actively involved in direct lobbying makes a mockery of the obvious intent of the code to prevent conflicts of interest," Farrell said.
He also developed a splendid line in mockery, relentlessly directed at the more feudal aspects of rural Conservatism.
