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Why comedians stopped being funny It's safer to become a podcaster than tell a good joke

Why so serious? (Anthony Harvey/Getty Images for Advertising Week)


February 8, 2022   8 mins

The most exciting stand-up comedy show I’ve ever seen was Bill Hicks in a student union in the autumn of 1992. Being a comedy naïf probably helped. I had seen Hicks’ sensational Channel 4 special Relentless earlier that year but I was unprepared for the rock-star electricity in the room. The 30-year-old Texan could be righteously indignant or disarmingly sweet, hilariously petty or shockingly sincere, flamboyantly profane or deeply moral — and he thrived on the dissonance of these tonal shifts. “Please relax,” he said during a particularly intense riff. “There are dick jokes coming up.”

In the UK, Hicks was acclaimed as the stand-up who might define the Nineties but back in the US he felt stuck. “Today he would be a mad prophet of the airwaves,” comedy manager Jimmy Miller says in Cynthia True’s Hicks biography American Scream. “He’d be on HBO, interviewing people, saying whatever’s on his mind. But back then the comedy business just hadn’t matured. They didn’t know what to do with him.” Miller said that in 2002. Twenty years on, Hicks, who died of cancer in 1994, wouldn’t need an HBO deal; he would be hosting a podcast.

Stand-ups played a foundational role in the podcast industry. In 2009, just as the format was becoming mainstream, Marc Maron launched the interview show WTF and Joe Rogan recorded the first episode of what became The Joe Rogan Experience. Two early podcast networks, Earwolf and Nerdist, were established by comedians; Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick compared podcasting to the comedy LP boom of the Sixties.

The symbiosis of comedy and podcasting isn’t hard to understand. Stand-ups love to hear themselves talk and a rambling chat is a much more congenial vehicle than the intense, time-consuming labour of writing and honing a tight one hour of killer material. With a successful podcast, a comedian can circumvent the usual gatekeepers and build a cultishly loyal fanbase without even having to leave the house or — and this is crucial — worry about being funny. What do you call a comedian who doesn’t make people laugh? A podcaster. Ba dum tss.

While old-fashioned one-liners and wry observations are doing just fine, many of the innovations in comedy are in the realm I call post-funny. Some of the most acclaimed comedian-fronted projects of recent years — including Master of None, Feel Good and Bo Burnham: Inside — see laughter as a secondary concern. The Closer, Dave Chappelle’s final Netflix special, is a prickly monologue about cancel culture and why he’s not actually transphobic, with occasional jokes. Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette was a Netflix sensation in 2018 precisely because Gadsby deconstructed her duty to make people laugh: “I must quit comedy. Because the only way I can tell my truth and put tension in the room is with anger.”

Comedians increasingly want to be philosophers. (No philosophers want to be comedians, except perhaps Slavoj Žižek.) This can make them rather pompous. Over the weekend, Whitney Cummings tweeted: “Comedians did not sign up to be your hero. It’s our job to be irreverent and dangerous, to question authority and take you through a spooky mental haunted house so you can arrive at your own conclusions.” To which Marc Maron replied: “Maybe add ‘to be funny’ to the list.”

The first great philosopher-comic was Lenny Bruce. In Comedy at the Edge, Richard Zoglin describes the evolution of stand-up comedy between the Forties and the Seventies as “a long march from joke-telling to truth-telling”, with Lenny Bruce as its gung-ho general. Starting in 1953, he was not alone in reinventing comedy but he established a new template for the stand-up: raw, authentic, discomfitingly honest, ferociously intolerant of hypocrisy and cant and sometimes messy. Comedians in that mould couldn’t just make people laugh; they had to offer a point of view. “With Bruce a smile is not an end in itself, it is invariably a means,” wrote the critic Kenneth Tynan.

As Kliph Nesteroff explains in The Comedians, some critics didn’t consider what Bruce was doing to be comedy at all. Time complained that he “merely shouts angrily and tastelessly at the world”, while the Los Angeles Times deplored his “soaring, if uncertain, egotism rooted in the eroded soil of unlettered knowledge, snippets of cliché liberalism, borrowed erudition, and a conviction he has a Messianic message”. Bruce, who died of a drug overdose in 1966, claimed for comedians the radical freedom not to be funny all the time.

At that time, only three kinds of people enjoyed the privilege of speaking their minds to an audience for an hour: politicians, preachers and comedians. In fact, the priest delivering Bruce’s eulogy said “he was in a sense an evangelist, on a street corner”. After Bruce’s death, the baton of comedian as social critic passed to the likes of Richard Pryor (“the Picasso of our profession,” according to Jerry Seinfeld) and George Carlin, whose aphorisms now circulate, like Orwell’s or Gandhi’s, in the form of earnest Twitter memes.

These pioneers cast a long shadow. A 2017 Rolling Stone list of the best stand-ups of all time was topped by Pryor, Carlin and Bruce, with others in the same tradition — Louis CK, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle — close behind. At number 13 was Bill Hicks. “To me, the comic is the guy who says ‘Wait a minute’ as the consensus forms,” Hicks told the New Yorker in 1993. “He’s the antithesis of the mob mentality.”

The politics of this brand of comedy are, more often than not, libertarian. Comics want the freedom to say whatever they like as long as it’s funny so have often ended up on the frontlines of the battle for free speech. Bruce was twice tried on obscenity charges, while Carlin was arrested for disturbing the peace when he performed his celebrated routine ‘Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television’ in 1972. When an English vicar complained of blasphemy in Bill Hicks’s 1992 show Revelations, he replied: “This is about freedom and freedom of speech and words can’t hurt you.”

The culture has changed somewhat since then. In comedy, at least, there are now more taboos on the Left than on the Right and the spectre of cancel culture is to someone like Chappelle what the NYPD was to Lenny Bruce, minus the court cases. In The Closer, Chappelle expresses the comedian’s licence to say anything in a less noble form than Hicks: “Comedians have a responsibility to speak recklessly. Sometimes the funniest thing to say is mean. Remember, I’m not saying it to be mean: I’m saying it because it’s funny.”

This licence is immensely powerful. Take Jimmy Carr’s Roma Holocaust joke, for example. In the context of his recent Netflix special, it’s still, I think, grotesquely misjudged — but Carr goes on to talk about the forgotten victims of the Nazis and why he made the joke. It clearly didn’t shock the audience in the room, nor the huge number of people who watched the special during its first six weeks. It only became scandalous when a 40-second clip went viral on TikTok and Twitter: the land of no context.

Even in a stand-up environment, though, Chappelle’s disclaimer isn’t enough. I don’t buy the popular binary division between comedy that “punches up” (good) and the kind that “punches down” (bad). Comedy doesn’t cleave so neatly, and nor does society. But I’m equally unconvinced by the “just jokes” defence.

For one thing, it’s not the case that anything goes. No major comedian currently delivers the kind of racist jokes that were commonplace in the Seventies, however deftly constructed they might be. (Carr celebrates Black Lives Matter in his Netflix show before getting laughs out of the Roma.) For another, it’s inconsistently applied. Ricky Gervais has arguably replaced Richard Dawkins as Britain’s most famous atheist and on that issue he wants to be taken seriously. Increasingly, comedians want to say whatever they like even when they’re not being funny.

You can see this double standard at work in Jon Stewart’s famous appearance on CNN’s Crossfire in 2004. I agreed with Stewart that Crossfire was a toxic travesty of debate but notice how he positioned himself. When Crossfire co-host Tucker Carlson criticised him for asking politicians soft questions, Stewart replied that he’s on Comedy Central: “The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.” But when Carlson complained, “I thought you were going to be funny, come on, be funny,” Stewart said, “No, I’m not going to be your monkey.” Depending on the moment, he is Schrödinger’s comedian: just a funnyman but also not just a funnyman.

Rogan uses this trick, too. He would not be interviewing politicians, authors and epidemiologists if he were only about the laughs, but he keeps his comedian’s licence in his back pocket in case of emergency. Last April, Dr Anthony Fauci criticised him for advising young, healthy people not to get vaccinated. In his self-deprecating response, Rogan said: “I’m not a doctor, I’m a fucking moron and I’m a cage fighting commentator who’s a dirty stand-up comedian who just told you I’m drunk most of the time and I do testosterone and I smoke a lot of weed. I’m not a respected source of information, even for me.”

This is very convenient. Rogan is half a conspiracy theorist: he has the curiosity but not the commitment. To his credit, he sometimes admits to being wrong. But he has that particular blend of scepticism (towards mainstream expertise) and credulity (towards anybody challenging it), so he becomes a conduit for false information, even when he’s not explicitly endorsing it. In the case of the present Spotify controversy, whether Rogan himself is an anti-vaxxer (he claims he isn’t) is a moot point if he is sympathetically conversing with vaccine sceptics to an audience of millions.

Russell Brand, too, has been described as “a powerful voice for anti-vaxxers”. He’s been on a journey. In 2013, Brand abruptly transformed himself from verbose dandy lothario into revolutionary seer in a Newsnight interview with Jeremy Paxman in which he urged people not to vote. His ensuing book, Revolution, was a peculiar mix of rehab memoir, New Age mysticism and solid policy proposals from Left-wing thinkers such as David Graeber and Thomas Piketty, liberally salted with self-deprecation: “I’m not Noam Chomsky, you’ve probably noticed; I’m happy to be Norman Wisdom.”

During the pandemic, Brand’s obsession with political alienation and challenging official narratives has led him a long way from Piketty. The breathlessly clickbaity titles of his YouTube videos are often indistinguishable from those of the conservative guests he gently interviews on a regular basis: “Why The Left Can’t Handle Donald Trump”, “Vaccine Gold Rush: Do You Trust Gates?”,They’re Eliminating FREE THOUGHT!! Billionaires’ Plan To CONTROL The Internet”, the latter bearing the hashtag #GeorgeSoros.

Brand claims that he is “breaking down the news, providing you with information you won’t get in mainstream media”. Is it true? It doesn’t matter. “What do I know?” he says in a recent video defending Rogan. “What could I claim to know? I’ve never been to university or higher education of any kind, except for showing-off school.” To his fans, of course, this makes him all the more reliable: one of them, not one of Them. That video is called “The Truth”.

Comedians should be free to switch lanes, but when Al Franken runs for the US Senate, or David Baddiel writes Jews Don’t Count, they aren’t doing so as comedians and they are making a choice. Comedians who express political opinions through the discipline of stand-up (a discipline which inevitably tests and sharpens those opinions) are also making a choice. Just as a musician has more freedom in a protest song than in an essay, or a film-maker more liberty in a drama based on a true story than in a documentary, the criteria are relatively clear. Rogan and Brand raise an interesting question: does the privilege of comedy apply even when you’re not doing comedy?

I do wonder if Hicks, with his nascent taste for conspiracy theories and spiritual self-discovery, would have wound up in a similar role. 70 years after Lenny Bruce’s comedy revolution, Rogan and Brand represent a very modern, very online mutation which is both post-funny and post-truth-telling. Rather than establishing a point of view and crafting it into a routine, they offer a muddy, non-committal version of “anything goes” in which misinformation is simply another interesting idea for the open-minded to consider and pushback is establishment intolerance of free speech.

By hedging their bets, they have achieved a freedom that Carlin and Hicks could only have dreamt of. If you say they should clarify their own positions, or take responsibility for the opinions they promote, well, they say, they’re comedians, not intellectuals. Why so serious?


Dorian Lynskey is an author, journalist and UnHerd columnist.

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Orson Carte
Orson Carte
2 years ago

“…whether Rogan himself is an anti-vaxxer (he claims he isn’t) is a moot point if he is sympathetically conversing with vaccine sceptics to an audience of millions.”

Wow, and the propaganda goes on.

Sean Penley
Sean Penley
2 years ago
Reply to  Orson Carte

Yeah, so the guy who helped developed the mRNA vaccine is an anti-vaxxer. We shouldn’t listen to him, we should listen to Fauci with his decades of experience in…er, government bureaucracy. Do they even think for a second about what they’re saying? For that matter, are they aware what Malone said? I have a pretty good idea of the answer to both.

Last edited 2 years ago by Sean Penley
Perry de Havilland
Perry de Havilland
2 years ago
Reply to  Sean Penley

Indeed, this does indicate a stunning lack of thought by the article’s author

John
John
2 years ago

Hear! Hear! It was going well until that point – when it showed that they hadn’t actually researched this article but relied on hearsay of the majority.
I have to confess I stopped reading at that point – as it’s quite ironic how someone who is critiquing how the mob is stopping comedians be comedic then resorts to supporting the very mob!

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Sean Penley

We should listen to Fauci… or maybe Dorian Lynskey? He apparently also knows more than Malone, pinning his colours to the mast – I spotted the same excerpt as Orson and had already copied it: “so he becomes a conduit for false information, even when he’s not explicitly endorsing it. In the case of the present Spotify controversy, whether Rogan himself is an anti-vaxxer (he claims he isn’t) is a moot point if he is sympathetically conversing with vaccine sceptics to an audience of millions”.
Many comedians are highly intelligent and podcasting is an obvious option when the wokesters and Twitter mobs are constantly offended and baying for blood.

Last edited 2 years ago by Lesley van Reenen
Paul Smithson
Paul Smithson
2 years ago
Reply to  Orson Carte

I thought the same thing. It is as though many intelligent people have been brainwashed to just repeat whatever the given narrative is. So information given by amazing and highly published doctors and scientists like Malone and McCullough, is ‘misinformation’ not for any reason than the TV or some unqualified fact checker at Facebook said so. They don’t even say ‘alleged misinformation’.

Have any of them actually listened to the ‘offending’ Joe Rogan interviews and done some fact checkng of their own, as anyone who does will quickly realise that there is an ever growing mountain of evidence supporting their claims and they’ll also find these doctors and scientists are happy to shate links to these sources, unlike the MSM and/or social media factcheckers who just seem to be shouting ‘liar, liar, pants on fire’ at anyone who dares to question the narrative.

I have to say that repeating of the given propaganda did detract from what is otherwise an excellent piece of writing.

Oh, and also there was little mention of current comedian’s slave-like adherence to the woke agenda. The number of comedians who step away from that path and have anything approaching an original or radical thought can be counted on one hand.

Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
2 years ago
Reply to  Paul Smithson

“Many intelligent people have been brainwashed to just repeat whatever the given narrative is. ….”
By definition I do not think they can be
Also if you want a signed confession, there is a document that our lords and masters accidently put on the net and then quickly took down, issued by the Department for Business and entitled “Net Zero: principles for successful behaviour change initiatives”
Copies can still be found in dark corners of the web

Last edited 2 years ago by Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Paul Smithson
Paul Smithson
2 years ago

Good point and thanks for the heads-up on that document.

Graham Stull
Graham Stull
2 years ago
Reply to  Orson Carte

Right. I got to this point in the essay and realised: this was the only thing the author really wanted to say. All the rest is packaging and fluff
He’s another mouthpiece for this mRNA-driven narrative that will tolerate no dissent, no critical thought, no interrogation.
And while the packaging and fluff was really well constructed (I especially liked the line on Lenny Bruce not being afraid), for me the stakes are simply too high this time.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Graham Stull

I’m watching re-runs of Seinfeld at the moment. Good for a belly laugh and completely irreverent.

Paul Smithson
Paul Smithson
2 years ago

The best US sit com ever. Great choice.

Lesley van Reenen
Lesley van Reenen
2 years ago
Reply to  Paul Smithson

I agree… this is about my third viewing.

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
2 years ago
Reply to  Paul Smithson

No Frasier is the best.

Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago
Reply to  Orson Carte

Pfizer and Moderna could put an end to this by accepting liability for any serious side effects (which they claim don’t exist) or paying for detailed studies on outcomes.

Weirdly enough they seem very wary of doing so. Maybe Pfizer / Moderna are anti vaxxers too?

Paul K
Paul K
2 years ago

This is one of those pieces that starts by pretending to be a thing and then morphs into the thing it really wanted to be in the first place. Which in this case is a concern that comedians are challenging the narrative.

whether Rogan himself is an anti-vaxxer (he claims he isn’t) is a moot point if he is sympathetically conversing with vaccine sceptics to an audience of millions.

Sympathetically conversing with vaccine sceptics? Well, we can’t have that, can we? Everybody knows that there is no debate to be had – even with highly qualified experts in the field, one of whom helped invent the vaccine technology. There are just the sensible people and the ‘anti-vaxxers.’ Stay in your lane, Rogan!

they offer a muddy, non-committal version of “anything goes” in which misinformation is simply another interesting idea for the open-minded to consider and pushback is establishment intolerance of free speech.

Gosh, ‘misinformation’ again. How awful. We can’t have that out there. Perhaps Mr Lynskey, with his deep and wide knowledge of virology, human rights law, democracy and freedom of speech, should be employed to help root it out on Twitter, along with everyone else. Or perhaps he’s already doing that.
These two paragraphs alone explain precisely why people listen to Rogan, Brand and others like them. It explains why some of us read Unherd too, which is why we expect better than this.

Last edited 2 years ago by Paul K
Eddie Johnson
Eddie Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  Paul K

This is one of those pieces that starts by pretending to be a thing and then morphs into the thing it really wanted to be in the first place”.
Indeed. And so depressing that someone who surely relies on free speech to practice his profession, is basically endorsing the campaign against Rogan.

michael stanwick
michael stanwick
2 years ago
Reply to  Paul K

Yes. I also agree with your points. After finishing the article I had the same ‘morphing’ realisation.
It is also asking us to accept the hidden underlying assumption from which the writer is arguing – that the people who listen to Rogan et al., cannot be trusted or do not have the wherewithal to understand and interpret what they read or hear for themselves.
I think this is both an arrogant assumption and leads to unethical outcomes.

Eddie Johnson
Eddie Johnson
2 years ago

“But he [Rogan] has that particular blend of scepticism (towards mainstream expertise) and credulity (towards anybody challenging it), so he becomes a conduit for false information, even when he’s not explicitly endorsing it.”
Given that according to at least one recent study (Johns Hopkins Uni), the Lockdown only resulted in reducing mortality rates by 0.2%, and that vaccinated people are just as infectious as the non-vaccinated, we could have done with a lot more scepticism throughout this pandemic.


Samir Iker
Samir Iker
2 years ago
Reply to  Eddie Johnson

“the Lockdown only resulted in reducing mortality rates by 0.2%”
Which is partly correct.
Lockdown, vaccine etc reduced death rates for the above 70s by maybe 1-2%

For the rest, mortality rates went from near zero to near zero.

Russell Hamilton
Russell Hamilton
2 years ago

The author writes “misinformation is simply another interesting idea for the open-minded to consider”, without defining ‘misinformation’. Certainly the open-minded want to hear other than mainstream opinions.

J Bryant
J Bryant
2 years ago

This is an excellent essay, imo. I’ve read it once and know I’ll have to read it twice to unravel all the ideas. I sense a book here if the author wanted to write non-fiction about comedy and culture.
The only thing the author didn’t consider (or not that I noticed) was why so many modern comedians have sold out. They’re not trying to be philosopher-comedians or even just comedians; they parrot ideological snippets of the latest brand of progressivism and are spectacularly unfunny. I guess there are no hidden depths to their behavior. They are scared of being cancelled (or just see an easy connection with their audience) and sold out. End of.

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Comedy is now a career path – smart arse in school, Footlights, the clubs, radio game shows, TV game shows, sitcoms (remember those), podcasts, books – sorry, bookie wooks – history docos, retirement, death, exhumation, post-humour cancellation.

Apropos sell-outs and Bill Hicks. Hicks had a bit where he absolutely pays out on comedians who do commercials.

Last edited 2 years ago by Tony Taylor
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
Ethniciodo Rodenydo
2 years ago
Reply to  J Bryant

Harry and Paul is an honourable exception. They went right for BBC sacred cows and sneering BBC presenter.
They did a spot on takedown of Have I Got News For You

Malcolm Ripley
Malcolm Ripley
2 years ago

Is this an essay about modern comedy or a bloated excuse to berate the ever increasingly successful Joe Rogan and Russel Brand for presenting information that goes against the narrative? The dreaded term “anti vaxxer” sneaked in there.

This anti-vaxxer narrative becomes comical in itself when you consider the background and medical expertise of prominent “anti vaxxers” such as Robert Malone (names on the mRNA patent ), Peter McCulloch (more published medical papers than anybody alive today), Geert Vanden Bosch (vaccine developer). But no no no the faceless fact checker behind facebook knows all………

michael stanwick
michael stanwick
2 years ago
Reply to  Malcolm Ripley

Yes. But I think there is a difference between the category ‘antivaxxer’ and ‘vaccine hesitant’.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/needle-points-vaccinations-chapter-one

j morgan
j morgan
2 years ago

Podcasts can take many forms but usually they are conversations. I wonder if the writer of this article approaches conversations in real life as if giving a lecture with a thesis? It would have been worth considering the difference between a YouTube video created to make a point and a conversation in which someone can be convinced by their interlocutor and then change their minds. This is the value of people like Joe Rogan for me, despite his faults. He models free discourse in a doctrinaire age.

Stephen Walshe
Stephen Walshe
2 years ago

Well maybe modern comedians are post funny. Certainly this article is post succinct and post interesting.

John Riordan
John Riordan
2 years ago

It’s interesting, isn’t it though, that there’s a degree of soul-searching about this that’s only happening at the point when someone perceived as right-wing becomes highly successful at it. Jeremy Hardy, Marcus Brigstocke and Stewart Lee have been pompously boring the collective arse off us all for years and nobody has ever felt the need to explain or apologise for the fact that these unfunny clowns are principally politics lecturers who include slightly more jokes than do the sort who do the job officially.

The real reason that comedians stopped being funny is that some time ago they decided their job was to convert people to the secular religion of Liberal-Orthodox. And they were tolerated in this principally because there are enough people out there willing to let someone billed as a stand-up comedian choose instead to give a light tirade about politics with a few jokes thrown in, while the rest of us just switched off the TV whenever they appear. The important point is that we all allowed this to happen, either by approving of the change, or ignoring it and just doing other things.

In short, we all stopped insisting that comedians must be funny, and that’s why many of them are not.

Zorro Tomorrow
Zorro Tomorrow
2 years ago
Reply to  John Riordan

I look upon Ghengis Khan as an old softy but Stewart Lee’s Scooby Doo and the Zombie Pirates Jungle Island or his Braveheart in Glagow are gems. Brigstocke is a prize Pr!ck.

Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
2 years ago

But he has that particular blend of scepticism (towards mainstream expertise) and credulity (towards anybody challenging it)

The above was the phase that particularly struck me. I find a lot of commentators, not just “comedians”, take this point of view, it doesn’t matter what the person says so long as it’s not coming from the “establishment”. It’s all rather like a conversation I once had with a supporter of Green Peace, about a waste disposal issue – I said that the rearch has shown the government’s preferred option to be the least environmentally harmful option, and he replied that the work was done by a government scientist and they have an agenda; Green Peace says the opposite and they have no agenda. It always seems that the person who supports one’s own point of view is a shining example of rectitude, entirely agenda free, while the other view-point is held by the corrupt and biassed establishment. All assertions need to be held to the same standard of scrutiny.

I like the writer’s term “post-comedy”, I have been referring to so-called alternative comedy as an alternative to comedy. I think that a comedian has a duty to at least try to be funny, otherwise it’s a kind of false advertising aimed at people who buy tickets expecting to be, at minimum, amused. I also find it problematic that almost all comedians take the same political stance; certain views and people are beyond criticism, whilst others are not only fair game but almost compulsory game. This bias in targets allows some agendas to go unexamined and unchallenged on the comedy circuit.

Karl Francis
Karl Francis
2 years ago

Good post.

Eddie Johnson
Eddie Johnson
2 years ago

“I also find it problematic that almost all comedians take the same political stance;certain views and people are beyond criticism, whilst others are not only fair game but almost compulsory game.”
Indeed. But the standard moralistic response to this insinuation of hypocrisy and bias is “You must only punch up, never down” – which effectively takes most “identities” out of the firing line.
Leaving only one target basically.

Tony Taylor
Tony Taylor
2 years ago

Gadsby doesn’t do comedy, she gives Ted Talks.

Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
2 years ago
Reply to  Tony Taylor

Gadsby is absolutely awful. As soon as someone mentions ‘their truth’ you know it’s time to switch over

Allison Barrows
Allison Barrows
2 years ago
Reply to  Jeff Butcher

The first time I heard that stupid phrase was from a 16-year-old girl seven years ago who wanted to leave class so she could cram for her driver’s license test. She claimed that she needed to live her truth. I laughed out loud because I thought it was some sort of millennial joke. But then, I did the same thing when faculty began including “my pronouns are” in their email signatures, not realizing they were dead serious.

JP Martin
JP Martin
2 years ago
Reply to  Tony Taylor

It’s the opposite of comedy. She is aggressively unfunny. Her routine is like a form of provocation. She basically is taunting the audience to laugh or else be condemned for some sort of political thought crime.

George Glashan
George Glashan
2 years ago
Reply to  JP Martin

you could be onto something JP, the 2 minute laugh, Gadsby as Emmanuel Goldstein , the party approved avatar for the correct thinking audience to vent their cognitive dissonance from all the contradictory nonsense they hold to be true. They get the emotional release of laughter but without anything comedic actually taking place.

Last edited 2 years ago by George Glashan
Matthew Powell
Matthew Powell
2 years ago

It may be somewhat pretentious for comedians to claim they are speaking the truth to power, rather than just been funny but as the saying goes, the truth is often said in jest and speaking the truth is no longer permitted on a range of subjects. No wonder fewer and fewer comedians have anything to joke about.

Last edited 2 years ago by Matthew Powell
Don P
Don P
2 years ago

You say “sympathetically conversing with vaccine sceptics” as if that’s a bad thing.

jill dowling
jill dowling
2 years ago

Interesting essay. “Comedy” has often been a disguised lecture as to how we should think. I can’t bear the “audience with” style stand up comedy where the fake audience whoop and cheer when something “controversial” is said. Said comment is always left wing and the audience remind me of performing seals.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
2 years ago
Reply to  jill dowling

It’s really bad here in the US with the likes of John Oliver, Samantha Bee, Jimmy Kimmel, and the rest of the unfunny bunch. I think what you are referring to is called ‘clapter’.

Eddie Johnson
Eddie Johnson
2 years ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

To his credit Bill Maher regularly rails against the “madness” of the far-Left, from his old-school, liberal perspective.
I also find him funny.

Last edited 2 years ago by Eddie Johnson
V Solar
V Solar
2 years ago

‘The muddy non-committal version’ might be the very medium in which that rare species discerement might grow.

Karl Francis
Karl Francis
2 years ago

“Tik Tok and Twitter: the land of no context” – that was enough me. Well said sir.

Lucas D
Lucas D
2 years ago

What’s happened to UnHerd.

Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
2 years ago
Reply to  Lucas D

The apparent disappearance of Ed West from the roster (which I missed, otherwise I would never have subscribed) was a portent, I feel.

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago

Wokes have no sense of humour, let alone about themselves, hence why they are so good to laugh at…

Igor Resch
Igor Resch
2 years ago

Wow, what pseudo-analytic mainstream-spewing nonsense that is. A total waste of time.
Funny how people who vaccinate themselves and their children with all common vaccines but refuse to get the covid-vaccine become „anti-vaxxers“.

Steve Trimming
Steve Trimming
2 years ago

“Rather than establishing a point of view and crafting it into a routine, they offer a muddy, non-committal version of “anything goes” in which misinformation is simply another interesting idea for the open-minded to consider”
This writer is behind the curve.
‘Anything goes’ is also known as freedom of speech. Rogan’s (and Brand’s) success is based on not ‘establishing a point of view’, or playing the old limiting partisan games. It’s about attempting to ascertain the facts and openly discuss the issue. Of course each individual host will have a leaning, like any human. But certainly both have shown willingness to hear all sides and leave the conclusion to the listeners. Such veracity is the future of media.
Joe Rogan for president in the next ten years?

Francis MacGabhann
Francis MacGabhann
2 years ago

As a committed and practicing Catholic, please be assured that I take Ricky Gervais’s intellectual atheism every bit as seriously as I do Richard Dawkins’s.

Adrian Maxwell
Adrian Maxwell
2 years ago

The core of this subject lies in the 13th paragraph of the article….It only became scandalous when a 40-second clip went viral on TikTok and Twitter: the land of no context. Who exactly classified Carr’s remark as scandalous and why should I give a monkey what they think and why has Unherd published an article like this? The title is misleading, comedians are still funny despite the post modern horror of being subject to a ’Twitter storm’. I’m offended by this article and I dont feel safe reading it.  

Gunner Myrtle
Gunner Myrtle
2 years ago

I think the author has a point – but if actual authorities would just depoliticize and tell the truth Joe Rogan and company wouldn’t be so attractive. For example they are promoting boosters for 12 to 17 year olds where I live and the first newspaper article I read on it quoted an epidemiologist saying that they should take it ‘so they don’t spread Covid to others.’ Well – that person knows this is a false talking point. But she can’t resist lying to try and make people do what she wants. She would be appalled if her kids got media call advice on the internet – but she is one the key reasons people do.

andrew harman
andrew harman
2 years ago

The only modern comedian I really like is Bill Bailey, who is so charmingly engaging and whimsical in some of his flights of fancy and his musical interludes. Rhod Gilbert is Ok but can’t say I care for many of the others.

Francis MacGabhann
Francis MacGabhann
2 years ago
Reply to  andrew harman

Problem is, most of them just aren’t funny. They’re too taken up with being smart.

andrew harman
andrew harman
2 years ago

And encumbered by snide left wing sneering.

Wilfred Davis
Wilfred Davis
2 years ago

Good point. Hence the observation that audiences of some comedians (‘comedians’) do not laugh at jokes, but rather applaud utterances.

Arnold Grutt
Arnold Grutt
2 years ago

They have turned into ‘the establishment’, yet, absurdly. still consider themselves ‘revolutionary’.

George Glashan
George Glashan
2 years ago
Reply to  andrew harman

i’d recommened this guy, he English and does wee sketches, i think hes a stand up too but i havent seen that, he has a blade runner parody which i wont spoil but cant recomend highly enough.
https://www.youtube.com/c/ABeckettKing

and theres this , american christain satire site, its now doing what TheOnion used to do. there was a recent one about M&M’s that was pretty good.
https://www.youtube.com/c/TheBabylonBee/videos

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
2 years ago

You don’t have to be an expert to know that the ‘experts’ are lying to you.

Don Lightband
Don Lightband
2 years ago

Isn’t (the strangely omitted from mention) Louis C K “still FUNNY”? After all, what’s funnier than a guy STILL TRYING frantically to hide the little girl’s panties his new french girlfriend sent him for some ‘strange reason’ from France? Can you tell me that?

Last edited 2 years ago by Don Lightband
R Wright
R Wright
2 years ago

I think Lee Evans is the greatest comic of our generation, and the smartest one too. He retired just as comedy began hari kari on the altar of feelings and moral crusading.

Justin Clark
Justin Clark
2 years ago
Reply to  R Wright
Last edited 2 years ago by Justin Clark
Chris Mochan
Chris Mochan
2 years ago

“In the case of the present Spotify controversy, whether Rogan himself is an anti-vaxxer (he claims he isn’t) is a moot point if he is sympathetically conversing with vaccine sceptics to an audience of millions.”
Err… it most certainly is not a moot point. What is going on?

Jaden Johnson
Jaden Johnson
2 years ago

I’m equally unconvinced by the “just jokes” defence.

The problem is that there are NO jokes. Often deliberately so, as Hannah Gadsby’s comment proves. Whatever it is that these self appointed and self important pundits are doing, without the impulse to make an audience laugh, it isn’t comedy.

michael stanwick
michael stanwick
2 years ago

… whether Rogan himself is an anti-vaxxer (he claims he isn’t) is a moot point if he is sympathetically conversing with vaccine sceptics to an audience of millions.
Would it not be helpful to distinguish between those that are labelled ‘anti-vaxxer’ and those that are ‘vaccine hesitant’? As Norman Doige discusses here;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfEkp_TFvY0
or here in written form…
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/needle-points-vaccinations-chapter-one
The discussion in the article exists in a context of free speech and free speech within the internet. And it seems to me that the underlying operating principle being used is that people – the “audience of millions” so-to-speak – cannot be trusted to interpret what they read or hear on the internet.

Last edited 2 years ago by michael stanwick
Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
2 years ago

The whole argument and tone of this article surrounds the issue of whether ‘comedians’ should only be allowed to promote non- mainstream positions when they are being funny and if not, presumably, not!
This seems particularly off target in the recent context of the disaster of lockdowns and, to a lesser extent, mask mandates, where mainstream and orthodox opinion promoted and mandated extremely illiberal measures NOT supported by robust evidence (albeit only adopted suddenly in March 2020) There are other such controversies, “transwomen are women anyone” ?!

Last edited 2 years ago by Andrew Fisher
Dustshoe Richinrut
Dustshoe Richinrut
2 years ago

It’s all gone a bit pear-shaped, the business of entertaining a crowd. Of giving them a laugh. The laughs aplenty? Not on your Nelly. Nor on your telly.

It’s as if Laurel and Hardy transitioned into the Jimmy Finlayson Show. He of the original “D’Oh!” fame, the scowling mad Scotsman, sneering down his nose, who, thankfully, frequently gets his comeuppance when L&H get the better of him, and who appeared a fair few times as the famous comic duo’s crass rival, objector, overseer, employer, deceiver or bullying superior. Not immune he was to rubbing his hands together in glee, when savouring his moment of having pulled the wool down over “the boys’” eyes, they being none the wiser.
Jimmy Finlayson was portrayed as supercilious in extremis. Now super silly us in extremis! Let’s all go along with the new philosopher-comics, why don’t we!

Look at them basically going “D’Oh!” Not once, not twice, but three and four times in a row as they rush to rattle off whatever. Are you amused? No, you’re rattled.

Alex Stonor
Alex Stonor
2 years ago

There used to be places called ‘The Comedy Store’ and you could go and see unfamous comedians take the stage & be funny. It amazed me how funny most of them were. The last time I watched ‘stand up’, about 3 years ago, it was awful. I’ve been to see various well-known comedians too and they have been awful. Being funny and politically correct is a real art form. Foil, Arms & Hogg manage it, who else?

D Ward
D Ward
2 years ago

I used to like Andrew Lawrence but he managed to get himself cancelled after England flopped out of the Euros for refusing to worship at the altar of BLM.

Zorro Tomorrow
Zorro Tomorrow
2 years ago
Reply to  D Ward

I still like him. Just because Sean Lock or Robin Williams are dead they are still funny.

Brooke Walford
Brooke Walford
2 years ago

Yep. The unassailable tautology…

Nicky Samengo-Turner
Nicky Samengo-Turner
2 years ago

Bring back Bernard Manning!

Kiat Huang
Kiat Huang
2 years ago

An email from the company’s Legal Counsel to give him a call to discuss the issue and not – absolutely not – do this on email, made it apparent how companies (and probably now institutions of all types) are terrified of putting into writing anything that they would embarrass them if made public.
The same is true of Twitter – the internet’s glorious sewer! And so whatever someone wrote anywhere on the internet – at any time since it was invented – can then be cut up by a sufficiently motivated individual into contextless chunks and reassembled into a monstrous argument to suit their agenda and chucked into the oft-putrid stream.
So Rogan, Carr, Chappelle are the living statues that the minnows, because of their offended uncomfortableness, will huff and puff to try and topple them. These minnows try so hard to get public figures (“blue ticks”) on their side, to add extra weight to the pushing. It is a cowardly, bullying mob mentality and it is shameful that people fall for it.
Good comedy always has the ability, in the moment to shock, but also to provide social value. Has anyone – in the past 20 years – done more than Jimmy Carr, perhaps inadvertently but at great cost to himself, to raise awareness of the mass genocide of gypsies by the Nazis during the Holocaust?

Adam Steiner
Adam Steiner
2 years ago

Yet another excellent essay on Unherd that you’re too embarrassed to forward onto any of your mates because they gave it a moronic click-bait title…

john zac
john zac
2 years ago

In the kindest way possible, I don’t think you know about what you are writing about Dorian. Either you made up your mind hastily in bias, or some other reason got in the way of the facts. As for the role comedians play in this world start with enclosed link. Then try to figure out who is paying Rogan? who is paying Russell? and who is paying Howard Stern? But ultimately the link below spells out the role the true comedian must play
https://www.commentary.org/articles/arnaldo-momigliano/socrates-and-aristophanes-by-leo-strauss/

Zorro Tomorrow
Zorro Tomorrow
2 years ago

Twitter storm? A contradiction. A storm in a far off land is usually only of interest if family and friends are affected or food, water and blankets are requested. Twitter is a far off land where no such sympathy is needed. If people think Jimmy Carr is funny then he is. If not he isn’t. If you want to hear unkind remarks about gipsies and travellers just ask the public. Was any one seen leaving the audience?

Michael O'Donnell
Michael O'Donnell
2 years ago

I’m amazed that an article about comedy’s evolution has been hijacked by a bunch of loud-mouthed vaccine sceptics. Is nowhere safe from these evangelists? Are these the same people who ranted on about Brexit and remaining? What’s happened to debate and reasoning?

Benjamin Jones
Benjamin Jones
2 years ago

Lol, the author himself hosts a podcast entitled ‘Remainiacs’. REMAINIACS is the no-bullsh*t Brexit podcast for people who won’t just shut up and get over Brexit. Every week we take an honest look at the unfolding shambles that is Britain’s departure from the EU.

Last edited 2 years ago by Benjamin Jones
Michael O'Donnell
Michael O'Donnell
2 years ago
Reply to  Benjamin Jones

So they are everywhere then

Richard Kuslan
Richard Kuslan
2 years ago

Contempt is not comedy; neither profanity; nor political invective. The author of this essay does not understand what constitutes comedy or its purpose.
In my essay The Nihilist’s Masquerade, or “Contempt-edy” Not Comedy on the American version of the TV show, The Office, I wrote:

Comedy does not perform [a] negative function. Comedy…is joyous, mirthful, hopeful, loving. Comedy is not resentful, cynical, derisive and insulting. The Office denigrates the audience; comedy uplifts it. 

Lenny Bruce wasn’t a comedian; neither Hicks; nor Carlin; nor Kinison; nor yet any of the other profane, immature, contemptuous, demeaning, negative so-called comedians.
You can, if you wish, revel in swill. But don’t mistake your coal for a diamond.

Last edited 2 years ago by Richard Kuslan
Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
2 years ago

The success of Joe Rogan baffles me. I see it as evidence of how utterly screwed up social media is. Not funny really, not interesting or otherwise enlightening, but perfect for a generation of people that can’t be arsed to read anymore. And not only that, but a perfect vehicle for corporations who are only too ready to hand over squillions of dollars of ad revenue to the bloke. Give me an hour of incisive stand up any day. Just not from Rogan.

Paul Smithson
Paul Smithson
2 years ago
Reply to  Jeff Butcher

Have you actually listened to Joe Rogan? Come on now. Be honest 🙂 As for reading,, many people, myself included, consume podcasts when walkng, at the gym, etc. These are times when it would be challenging to read. At other times I read for hours a day. You can do both.

Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
2 years ago
Reply to  Paul Smithson

Fair points. Still not a fan though. Besides, why ruin a good walk with a podcast? More to the point, why on earth would you go to the gym!?

Last edited 2 years ago by Jeff Butcher
Paul Smithson
Paul Smithson
2 years ago
Reply to  Jeff Butcher

Very valid point regarding the walk. And you’re right about the gym too 🙂

Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
2 years ago
Reply to  Paul Smithson

Heh

Martin Bollis
Martin Bollis
2 years ago
Reply to  Paul Smithson

I used to listen to podcasts in the gym, until the unfortunate high speed reversal off a running machine while trying to juggle with a falling earpiece.

As the Buddhists say “when walking, walk.”

Chris Mochan
Chris Mochan
2 years ago
Reply to  Jeff Butcher

What do you mean exactly by “not interesting?.” I can imagine a chat with a cage fighter might be boring to most people, but I’ve listened to conversations with US Generals, North Korean defectors, astrophysics professors, Texan mayors, dissident fugitives, elite sportsmen, famous musicians and billionaire inventors. I find it hard to believe in depth conversations with that range of people could be called “not interesting”.

Jeff Butcher
Jeff Butcher
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris Mochan

I was referring more to Rogan himself. I don’t see the appeal. But credit where credit’s due – he’s made a great success of his show. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I find the Netflix deal an example of how skewed the inter web can become when you’re handing someone like him millions of bucks for what is effectively a chat show. I find it obscene when Rogan himself is so unremittingly dull and his ‘comedy’ is so entirely lacking.