Dear older generation comics who resent the new generation.
First off, I understand not only the fratinity ship mentality of you all but also how the business model of your industry was. You’re industry was you had to do open mics for years, than someone might see you, you go on the road meet other comics maybe build a following or contacted by a company or knew someone that during that 10 years honed your craft so much a network would recognize the value in you and finance a special in order to pay you and get more of a name for yourself than you were to collaborate with other comics in that caliber and continue. Ive spoke to most of you in person and you’ve resented and disgusted by me saying “the old model of comedy is dead, these days its about quantity not quality, internet streaming services want to give everyone a comedy special marketing to every demographic so not only has the structure of comedy been watered down. But there’s no longer a 10 year mastering the craft process anymore because the internet becomes where they reach their audience so its as if they’ve essentially skipped all the steps and went from open micer to an industry producing a special, buying their fans and than making money off that stand up comedian in the 2020s.
What you don’t understand and you have a complete blind eye for, is why comedians do what they have to do. First off, you never had to worry about you’re 3rd open mic appearance being posted on the internet by a stranger, you’ve never had to worry about building an image/brand/persona in your first year because the industry looks at online numbers and not actual talent or ability to perform for a crowd. You’ve never had to worry about how the internet created an eco system where you have no control over your own narrative, individuals with more views and more subscriptors cut up pieces of your act to make you look bad and than convince their 100s of thousands of people that you’re comedy sucks and so
not only do you lose potential fans and there becomes a stigma to your name, but you don't have a voice to have a dialouge with that person so it's the annoynomous youtubers narrative over your comedy, rather than individuals deciding for themselves whether they like your comedy or not. so not only do you lose alot of potential fans, but industry people look at you with uncertainty. where at first they were focused on your craft and the shows you were put on, now they’re focused on what some insecure spiteful coward spectators narrative of who you are as a comic so the industry might be hesitant to do buisness with a comedian a bunch of internet trolls channels say is horrible, rather than decide for themselves if they like the comic. You’ve also never expierenced a comedy where it becomes an online numbers game. you build up you're following you have 30K followers, you’re youtube channel does 10,000 views, than it all gets taken down by a mass troll of another fan base that doesnt know you but has decided to destroy your channel so You have to start over, get 5K followers and back to getting 1000 views on the internet, all while an industry or corporation looks at it as “you have only 5K followers you must not be a good comedian”. Rather than actually seeing the comic live, or seeing a video of the comic or asking individuals whove seen them live. That leads into the next issue which is because of that it’s transformed the hierarchy of comedy into weak individuals being able to wield their power with their own spite, insecurity and bitterness. I’ve lost so many gigs and pulled from live spots, because “someone didn’t like me who didnt even know me they just heard about me from the internet”, they never saw me live, they never met me, they never talked to anyone who does know my talent or ability, it’s a preconceived notion brought on by a spiteful coward. Think about the joe e lewis, frank Sinatra lenny bruce days. Their entire craft was performing comedy on stage in clubs by managers and club owners. Now because corperations have weaponized comedy in a culture war and the internet is the only way to get numbers for yourself, you have to become a podcaster, an activists, doing tiktok skits/shorts, you have to have a good social media presence, perfectly shot quality videos, captions with the perfect time for a 30 second algorithm, you have to present yourself as a politican saying all the right business networking words infront of the camera on every podcast, every online video, every radio interview if you say one wrong thing it's over. rather than being able to feel that live expierence of doing bad in a club, messing up, getting booed, failing the whole night vs getting better vs figuring out which jokes and which don’t, doing bad on a radio show and it not being the be all end all of your career, figuring out how to produce your act, it’s as if you have to come out of the gate 1st year a perfect comedian, because you have to make your own opportunities because rather than further year in comics givng you a chance, its all based on personal politics so it created comedians if you want to talk about the old obsolete model, how about the old comics helping each other out because they appreciate the talent or stage precense or jokes of a comedian rather than a literal fratntity where you get spots and specials because you’ve been doing favors for the other comics or they put on certain comics just for how it looks to a certain network. thinks of the 2003 joe rogan he put his friends on who were great comics. imagine if joe rogan were where he was at in his career in the 2020s, had to worry about "well if i put this person on and he says this joke maybe i wont get this deal, or maybe i wont be able to get booked at this place, or this comic represents this activism which is inline with this specific place i need to be. it’s a bias selection politic of comics only lifting up and platforming comics who have “done favors for them personally behind the curtains” and not because they perceive the talent, ethnic, skill or brilliance of the live performance..
Overall this collectively destroys comedy, when corperations are at war for the narrative of whats funny, than everyone has to pretend that’s whats funny to make it, so they program the same low quantity baseline watered down non joke comedy, to where generations from now that’s what kids think comedy is, they think its just talking on stage because you’ve wielding your power unholy so they see the comedians who have all the money, all the Netflix specials all the theatre rooms with no joke writing, no set up, no delivery, no tag lines, no punchlines, no double down, no obscuring, no word play, no double untantras, no subverting, no nuance relation, no miring the truth, no saying ridicous outlandish nonsense, no warping a creative narrative to than unveil it and make the audience laugh. There’s over 100 different styles of comedy, I just listed about 15, the average streaming special has one or two of them, because late night talk shows, mainstream podcasts and hollywood have programmed them what comedy is, so anything that strays from that is seen as abnormal.
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