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The article places the problem of aesthetic vulgarity in the context of recent scholarship on the structure of invective speech. As processes of vulgarization are not to be understood as social facts but as results of communication, vulgarity as an element of invective speech must be distinguished from the supposed vulgarity of the invected. According to my thesis, an increasing vulgarization of the public sphere can be observed in particular where the addressees of invective speech are absent, but involuntarily become its audience. This already tended to be the case in the early modern period, where in the course of a gradually integrating public sphere phenomena of a reflexive and political ‚hypervulgarization‘ already take shape. Today it gets even more likely in the horizontal structure of contemporary digital media, which is reminiscent of the structure of gossip communication. The essay illustrates this perspective using the example of two fictional texts that reflect on the triadic scheme of invective communication: the ‚Schimpfspiel‘ Absurda Comica. Oder Herr Peter Squentz (1657) by Andreas Gryphius and the anonymous dialogue pamphlet Karsthans (1521).