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Get @ me: comedy in the age of social media

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Get @ me: comedy in the age of social media

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Get @ Me:
Comedy in the Age of Social Media

Laura Grossman

A Thesis Presented to the
Faculty of the USC Graduate School
University of Southern California
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
Specialized Journalism

May 2017

Copyright 2017 Laura Grossman
Grossman | ii
Abstract
This thesis takes the form of a multimedia website with audio, textual, and visual
elements. It is an exploration of how, as people have moved their search for connection
and entertainment online, the entertainment itself has transformed. In pursuit of this end, I
went to different comedy shows and spoke to comedians at all levels of success to try to
get a handle on what the purveyors of this kind of art are experiencing as they watch the
media landscape change all around them. I found that the comedians I talked to are
finding distinctive ways to adjust to the changing media landscape, and that the comedy
they create is becoming inclusive and collaborative with the audience serving.

Grossman | iii
Table of Contents
Abstract ii
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Creation 3
Chapter Two: Presentation 5
Chapter Three: Reception 6
Conclusion 8
References 9
Appendix A: The Website 10
Appendix B: Interview Transcripts 12

Grossman | 1
Introduction
Prior to 2009, only three comedians had ever sold out Madison Square Garden.
The same number have done so in the last three years, each multiple times.
Right now, there are more people doing comedy and more people enjoying
comedy than ever. This is by no means the first comedy boom—there was one in the
1960’s powered by the popularity of comedy records and one in the 1980’s focusing on
live shows—but nothing has ever hit the magnitude we’re experiencing now. Thanks to
the internet, comedians now have infinite means by which to reach their fans; and those
fans are more enthusiastic and dedicated than ever.
There had been comedians, comics, monologists, humorists, and hosts for
centuries, but not until 1947 was the term “stand up” used to describe what they were
doing—a specific way of performing alone, at the very front of the stage, telling jokes
without music.
During the era of vaudeville it was called performing “in one,” meaning the
performer didn’t need much room on stage and could work in the area between the
footlights and the closed main show (number one) curtain. Comedy was entirely a live
art, and every comedic moment was unique and fleeting. It was possible to build and
sustain a successful career on little more than one performance worth of material told to a
different audience, in a different venue, in a different city, each night.
The 1948 premiere of The Ed Sullivan Show marked a significant change in the
genre. Comedians were invited onto a television program to amuse whoever happened to
be tuning in around the country at a given time. These opportunities granted the
comedian an unprecedented amount of exposure, brought viewers together, and boosted
morale during the post-war era. But the comedy itself suffered. It became more widely
appealing and therefore blander. Still, sheer accessibility ignited a national taste for
comedy that has grown to a point of insatiability today.
Now we are in the era of social media. Both the supply of and the demand for
comedy of all forms has skyrocketed. In 2016, almost twice as many half-hour comedy
pilots were picked up by networks and cable channels as dramas, without even
accounting for the explosion of comedy programming on streaming platforms. On Netflix
alone, arguably the biggest but not the only producer of streaming content, there have
Grossman | 2
been just under fifty original stand up specials released in the last four years—more
original content than any other genre on the platform. And, when combined with the few
original scripted comedy series that have come out, it is more than all the scripted
features both comedy and drama, and documentaries combined.
Clearly people are ravenous for comedy, but what people are gravitating toward is
a very specific type. What seems to be appealing is a style reminiscent in many ways of
vaudeville, when the only way to view comedy was live. Both then and now, through the
ebb and flow of comedy popularity, creating laughter while standing alone in front of an
audience remains essential.
Aside from the method of delivery, there is one clear difference in the experience
of comedy between the vaudeville era and now. What audiences didn’t have a century
ago, and a key part of what makes today an interesting turning point in the development
of comedy as a genre, is access. While people are watching an isolated joke or a full hour
of comedy, they can tweet at the comedian who wrote it and give immediate
commentary. The comedian, in turn, can watch feedback come in in real time and choose
to respond directly and engage in a dialogue with their viewers, or not.
The change in the way comedy is being presented to and received by audiences is
dramatic. Every aspect of the way the jokes are being created and produced is being
altered to cater to its new medium, but it’s unclear if the impact is a positive or a negative
one, and how deep it goes.

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Chapter One: Creation
For some creators of standup comedy, it is still possible to behave as if they were
living in the era of vaudeville and tour a single performance worth of material for years
and years to any small venue that will have them. This method is a hard way to grow an
audience in any significant way or to advance beyond small, local clubs to areas of wider
exposure such as national television, radio, and large theaters.
To achieve broader appeal requires a consistent flow of polished, authentic
novelty. Producing consistently original material is hard, and as anyone who’s ever
subjected themselves to the challenge knows, entertaining even one room full of strangers
is not something most people can just get up and do. It takes years of practice to develop
a presence and learn the proper pacing of a joke, let alone write an hour of consistently
funny material.
According to the comedians I’ve asked, the ratio of jokes they write that don’t
make the cut to those that do can be as little as ten to one. As the delivery of comedy has
moved from small vaudeville theaters to television and radio programs to online
platforms, even the most successful jokes have been getting exhausted at an increasingly
brisk pace. In a sense, the material is being compromised by the exact channels that were
designed to serve it. To maintain relevancy in such a frantic environment, creators must
become a churn of poignant and funny ideas spinning faster and faster.
As with any shift in the media landscape, an entirely new set of rules and tools
must be learned and implemented to ensure the spread of ideas. In contrast to the
sometimes long and developed stories that are an integral part of standup comedy, the
jokes that seem to flourish online are quick, easily shareable, one liners. Further still, the
ease of sharing and re-sharing this bite-sized content has cracked open a door for
aggregators—people who build significant followings online by putting a caption on a
picture that isn’t theirs. This new genre seems to operate in complete contradiction to
everything standup comedy stands for, and is likely causing those who embrace stand up
to hug it even tighter.
Jokes are written by or for a specific perspective—that of the person who’s telling
them. Therefore, who’s telling a particular joke is a very important part of the joke’s (and
the comedian’s) success. Now that every joke ever told is accessible to anyone inputting
Grossman | 4
the right search terms, many have had the authorship and originality of their jokes called
into question.
Before the current comedy boom, joke borrowing may not have mattered. If two
comedians appeared on stage with a similar joke, people probably wouldn’t notice, and if
they did, it would be written off as an obvious premise and great minds think alike. Now,
it is much more commonplace for comedians to be accused of stealing because it’s so
easy to compare one joke to another side by side. To combat any doubt of their freshness,
many are using social media as a backlog of every idea they have as a makeshift form of
intellectual property protection, should they ever need it.
Constantly having to look over their shoulders to ensure their original material
isn’t being stolen, and they aren’t being accused of such a grievance by anyone else, can’t
be a healthy way to produce creative work. Crafting a bit of comedy is difficult, after all,
and comedians should want to share their ideas, not fearfully hide them away in a secret
notebook.

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Chapter Two: Presentation
A key part of becoming a standup comedian is, of course, learning how to stand
up, present, and evolve your ideas in a public setting. For the most part, this process is the
same as it’s always been—established comedians in small clubs with new material.
What’s changing is the definition of the word “public.” Whereas before, it meant
simply walking into a room and convincing an audience of your brilliance by talking to
them for a few minutes, now there are many more ways an idea can be presented in a
public setting: a short video, a tweet, or a photo caption.
Figuring out how and on what social platform an idea would be most successful is
a very new and tricky task that requires consideration of how many eyes you want it to
get, and how tailored you want those eyes to be in both demographic and mindset.
Twitter is meant for short thoughts but allows for easy interaction between people.
Snapchat has filters, but it’s very one sided and it goes away the next day. There seems to
be a constant revolving door of booming and failing social media platforms, each touting
a different variety of success and accessing a different audience. With each new option
comes a new set of potential failures.
Comedians today at all levels are under tremendous pressure to be present on
social media and to get themselves as much exposure as possible in hopes of expanding
their audience. For those who already have a core audience of people familiar with their
comedic voice and sensibility, this pressure must be at least slightly relieved.
For creators who don’t yet have a loyal, familiar audience, but who may be just as
funny as those who do, social media can prove to be crucial. Both groups, in fact
everyone with an internet connection, has access to the same platforms on which to put
content. But, with a good (meaning a timely, funny, shareable) idea, smaller-time comics
have much more to gain. The flip side, and an ever-present risk, is if a comedian at any
level presents an idea before it is ready to be exposed, it, and maybe their career or any
chance of having one, could die on the spot. Even a flash of relevancy can backfire
online. One idea that hits a social nerve, can be exciting but it short changes the creator
on the time necessary to refine material and translate it into a wider audience. Success is
opportunity meeting preparedness and a trending account can find the person behind it ill
prepared to meet the sudden demand for their ideas.
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Chapter Three: Reception
Soon the largest audience of comedy (18 to 24 year olds) won’t have known a
time before Twitter, and social media and streaming will be the only way they consume
media (if it isn’t already). Anyone who wants to maintain a career in comedy needs to
acknowledge, embrace, and adapt to the shift, not shun it.
Comedians working today who are enjoying any semblance of a successful career
have already seen a stark change in the faces looking back at them, both digitally and
live.
Contemporary audiences are significantly more socially and politically conscious
than previously. The realm of what is unmentionable has appeared to expand, but also
change shape. On social media, there are more lines to cross, but you can, for example,
say all of George Carlin’s “Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television” without fear
of censorship.
Because online platforms are sometimes determined to be the best vehicle
available for an idea, any misstep in this judgment can lead to a synchronized outcry.
These storms can seem amplified in attention and humiliation, but they are also more
fleeting than ever, and probably (except in some more profound accusations cough Bill
Cosby cough), won’t be around for long before they are washed away by another loud
controversy.
Comedians know that anything they put into the sphere of the internet is being
consumed by a group of people who may or may not share their values and is broader and
more enduring than any other audience they’ll encounter. So, comedians are learning to
be more cautious about what they say through their social platforms and in their live
performances.
Even though most comedy venues have a strict policy against photography, video,
and audio recording, it’s easy to discreetly record a voice memo. Small clubs that were
previously safe, insular spaces for artists to hone their material before possibly sending it
out to a larger audience are now fully exposed to the world. In a live stand-up comedy
setting, the feedback of the audience is instant, and a crucial part of the development of
any comedy. But now, something said with the intent of experimentation in front of a
Grossman | 7
small, tipsy crowd in the middle of the night, can easily be shared with a sober mass of
people sitting upright in their chairs browsing the internet the next day.
These virtual commentators, who are a strong majority of the eyes a piece of
comedy will get, are particular about what they find funny, and they often aren’t very
keen on laughing. It is much easier to take offense to a transcribed and retweeted
fragment than it would be to listening to a spoken statement in its original context.

Grossman | 8
Conclusion
Stand up has always been about thinking while being watched, but maybe not
being watched this much. For those that do still experiment on stage despite the risk of
potential backlash, not a whole lot has changed about actually performing live comedy.
What is changing significantly is what it means to pursue comedy as a career. It is
no longer just about writing a few minutes of material and traveling around. There is such
a saturation due to the increasing channels through which comedy can be seen, creators
are having to develop new and unique ways to stand out and connect with their viewers.
Because audiences now have so many choices of where to go for their entertainment,
they are having much more of a say in the entertainment itself. Due to the dialogue that
social media can foster under the right circumstances, comedians are learning that they
can interact and collaborate with their audience in an unprecedented way. An example of
this is the show @Midnight on Comedy Central, which encourages strong audience
engagement. A segment of the show is called “Hashtag Wars,” during which the panelists
buzz in with a phrase based on the given hashtag theme. Audience members at home are
encouraged to tweet submissions for the host, Chris Hardwick, to read on the following
episode.
Through engagement with entertainers on social media, viewers are learning that
they have power. They can be active participants where they previously could only be
passive viewers. If all goes well and it continues to grow, such a relationship will provide
opportunities for artistic endeavors that wouldn’t have seemed possible or even
imaginable in the past.

Grossman | 9
References

Burnham, Bo, personal interview, May 29, 2016.

Crouch, Ian. "Is Social Media Ruining Comedy?" The New Yorker. December 30, 2014.
Accessed September 12, 2016. http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-
comment/social-media-ruining-comedy.

Endicott, Marina. "A Vaudeville Glossary." Marina Endicott. Accessed December 05,
2016. http://marinaendicott.com/books/the-little-shadows/glossary/.

Federman, Wayne. "From Sullivan to CK: A History of Modern American Standup
Comedy in 10 Steps." Splitsider. 2015. Accessed December 05, 2016.
http://splitsider.com/2015/09/from-sullivan-to-ck-a-history-of-modern-american-standup-
comedy-in-10-steps/.

Federman, Wayne, personal interview, August 21, 2016.

Galifianakis, Zach, personal interview, April 17, 2016.

Haynes, William, personal interview, May 28, 2016.

Jeselnik, Anthony, personal interview, April 20, 2016.

Kosta, Michael, personal interview, September 6, 2016

Liao, James. "Trends in Comedy, Technology and Social Media's Impact on
Entertainment - Social Media Week." Social Media Week. February 23, 2016. Accessed
July 05, 2016. https://socialmediaweek.org/blog/2016/02/trends-comedy-technology-
social-medias-impact-entertainment/.

Maron, Marc, personal interview, June 24, 2016

McGraw, Peter, personal interview, August 19, 2016.

McGraw, Peter, and Caleb Warren. "Http://ljournal.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/d-
2016-154.pdf." Association for Psychological Science, 2010. doi:10.18411/d-2016-154.

McGraw, Peter, and Joel Warner. The Humor Code: A Global Search for What Makes
Things Funny. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2014.

Sturges, Paul. "The Production of Comedy." The Production of Comedy | SAGE Open.
October 19, 2015. Accessed December 05, 2016.
http://sgo.sagepub.com/content/5/4/2158244015612521.

Weems, Scott. Ha!: The Science of When We Laugh and Why. New York, NY: Basic
Books, a Member of the Perseus Books Group, 2014.
Grossman | 10
Appendix A: The Website

The title appears statically above the
initial image with a short logline of my
project and an invitation to enter the
website.

Each of the four subsequent page
includes the title and a menu of the
chapters of my project in a banner at the
top, followed by a mixture of text, audio,
and video.

Grossman | 11

I have an up-to-the-moment feed of
tweets for #hashtagwars and @midnight,
a show on Comedy Central and a
segment within it that airs every
weeknight.

The concluding page is a textual wrap up
of my project and what I have learned
from my research, along with an excerpt
of an episode of @midnight, which is
referenced in the text.

Grossman | 12
Appendix B: Interview Transcripts
Subject
Zach Galifianakis

Excerpts
I think your children and peoples’ children that are into the social media, I think they’ll
rebel against it and probably won’t do that. It will be interesting to see what the next
generation does just ‘cause their parents did it.

I don’t [use social media] because I don’t have time to do it. And also, it’s very noisy and
it’s a waste of time. The Arab Spring is about the only good thing that’s ever come out of
social media, as far as social change.

I suggest people live their life and not marry their work life and their social life.

If you want to be a stand up, there’s not a lot of substitutions for physically being there,
on stage.

The linear time that people are willing to sit with a comedy piece online. The quickness
with which we’re all looking to be satisfied and have that big laugh or cut to the chase
versus this sitting down, watching something, getting invested in something. To me,
that’s what comedy online has changed a lot. The narrative structure is not needed as
much when you can trip over a cat. But you’re not writing that, that’s accidental.

The comedy landscape is always going to change. The styles of comedy; physical
comedy is not really popular right now but it will be again. Political comedy got really
really big, and that’s why stand up got really big: the political climate got so weird that I
think comedy was the only answer to that. Folk singers don’t sing about not going to war
anymore, you hear comics talking about it. That’s the really important thing.

Grossman | 13
I’m a little bit out of the loop so I don’t really know about the technology with people
filming themselves. I don’t know what that is, I’m not from that. There is really very little
substitution for actually getting up and getting onstage. Whether you want to be a
performer or not, it’s just a really good exercise to do it.

You’re expected to schmooze and market yourself, go to dinner and all this stuff that this
business that I’m in. Don’t do it—just go preform. They will find you. If you’re good,
they will find you, period. But, you have to make yourself seen; you have to get on stage.

In the mid-90’s you could be fine with twenty minutes of material for years because there
wasn’t internet, there weren’t a lot of places for you to expel it. Now there are tons of
places. So as soon as I do something on TV, it’s done.

You have feedback. If you’re thinking about it and you have a notebook in your room,
and you’re scribbling in your notebook to yourself… The thing about standup is you have
to have a feedback. You don’t need that in anything else. It’s not like sculpting, it’s not
like playing guitar. You have to have that feedback.

Subject
Anthony Jeselnik

Excerpts
The day of the Boston Marathon, people were watching the news and I tweeted a joke
“today there are just some lines that should not be crossed, especially the finish line.” It
got a lot of traction for some reason, more traction than jokes I’ve done on the days of
tragedies have usually gotten, and the network, I had a TV show at the time, made me
delete the joke.

I’m kind of known for doing that. People like Gilbert Gottfried have said offensive things
in the past and gotten in trouble for it, but they’re known as the voice of the parrot in
Aladdin, so people take umbrage. But that’s kind of what I do is make people hate me.
Grossman | 14
There was no backlash besides the network making me take the joke down. They didn’t
even make me apologize for it.

If I think of something that’s happening in the moment, a current event or something, I
think about if it will be a joke if I do it on stage in two weeks. If I tweet about Kanye’s
new album, that’s not going to be with me forever. Most of my jokes are evergreen, so if
it’s something that’s only good in the moment, then I tweet it. It’s got to be a comment on
a story going on right now.

I think that the comedians job is to say the unsayable. We’re the only people who really
get to. There are some reasons not to: economic purposes or to be likeable. For some
comics, being unlikeable is part of the job and it makes jokes funnier. That’s kind of what
I do is make people hate me and then try to make them laugh anyway. If I see a line and
people say “don’t cross this”, that’s the first thing I’m going to do. Those are the only
things I’m interested in joking about are things that people don’t want to hear jokes
about.

People say comedy is changed by social media, but I don’t really agree with that.
Comedy was changed by television in a way, but still things that are funny are going to
be things that are funny. People are really into Twitter and then they get sick of it, in the
same way that people were really into MySpace and now no one is into MySpace. I think
down the line it will be about Vines or now Snapchat’s a big thing. I think social media
gets people’s names out there, but there is no real substitute for being great onstage or
being great live or being great at acting. It helps people get access to you but it’s not
necessary or that influential I don’t think.

Subject
William Haynes

Excerpts
I started making YouTube videos in like 2007 and 2008, which at the time was a thing
Grossman | 15
that weirdos did. If you were posting videos of yourself onto the internet, you had a lot of
extra time and no friends. Now, people do it to get more Instagram followers. So, I
started doing that. Most of my videos were just talking about me getting bullied and I
would play this character who would bully me. I would just take the things that people
said to bully me in real life and I would put it into this character. After that it just kind of
became me developing monologues. The internet is a great place to do that because it is a
great place to get immediate feedback. As an introverted kid I couldn’t really go to open
mics because I was afraid and under 21, so the internet played a big part in me
developing my comedic tools.

Now, social media is where I go to post most of the things I do. Instagram is a great place
to put photos and videos that are quick, quicker than a YouTube video, and people can
just watch it and replay it as many times as they want. Twitter is where I can go and just
put out my thoughts of the moment, and that’s pretty much it. I use apps to say what I
would say anywhere, but through that medium.

Now I actually go to theaters and people come and I make them laugh, which is pretty
cool.

Most comedian people aren’t too keen on compliments. There’s something exhausting
about it. Doing comedy, live especially, drains all my self-esteem on the mic. Usually
after a show I’ve just used all of that weeks’ worth of self-esteem so I can’t really feel
correctly. Usually people will tell me that they like the show but I never believe them
because, I don’t know.

I tweet is mostly just the things I think of and then I refine it from there. I’ll be walking
around and I’ll think of a thought and then I’ll take that thought and make it more
concise. That’s kinda what comedy is, and that’s about it. I just put anything that I think
that I feel like people can understand.

Grossman | 16
If you’re going to be solely a social media comedian, you gotta know which ones are
tweets, which ones are Instagram posts, which ones are a snapchat. Most things that don’t
matter at all are usually snapchat. I’ve said so many pointless things on snapchat because
everybody feels that it gets erased immediately so why put a lot of time and effort into it.
You gotta know what goes where.

For sure there are things that are on twitter that would never work on stage. There are a
lot of internet types of humor that are just self-deprecating and meant to help people
relate with it, not necessarily make you want to laugh in front of an audience.

Comedy comes from confidence. I find my confidence through walking around the
streets talking to strangers. I will talk to pretty much anyone who looks like they can’t
hurt me. Because of that I feel like I’m able to connect with different types of people.

I used to be very formulaic about my sense of humor. I would try to be shocking, but I’ve
realized that may not work as well as I thought. Real comedy comes from when you
expect something to come out of someone’s mouth and it’s the opposite. A lot of people
are funny and just don’t know it. When people go out of their way to be gross or weird, it
just comes off as forced. You’re going to get your best laughs that really resonate when
you’re not playing a character, you’re just being yourself. That’s how I feel.

Uh, I think social media and comedy go hand in hand. They are two great friends because
people come and be social because they want to laugh. As a person who’s known to do
social media, it’s great because I feel like people feel that I’m just one of their friends
because they absorb me in the same way that they would absorb some of their friends.

I think social media is constantly growing and getting better and better. Right now, it’s
the biggest employer of millennials. People older than us don’t know how to use social
media, so they are given certain jobs. That’s actually really great because we’re really
building a career there. What it is right now is not what it will be in fifteen or twenty
years. It’ll be an actual industry with business suits and everyone really making decisions
Grossman | 17
about social media because they have years of experience. Right now it’s not that cut and
dry and clean. It’s only between us and the app makers, so we might as well do as much
as we can to spread our messages before we get too censored.

Subject
Michael Kosta

Excerpts
I don’t love social media. I think if anything it’s probably hurt comedy, however that’s
coming from someone who probably isn’t seen as a success on social media. Some
comics have a hundred thousand or a million followers on twitter and it helps their career.
For me, if anything, I find it to be the opposite. Because I don’t have that it’s maybe seen
as a detriment to my career. That’s my take.

I’m from Ann Arbor, Michigan and I’ve just always enjoyed comedy, particularly stand
up comedy. I think it’s the most honest and raw form of comedy there is, and
performance in general; it’s very, very honest. I started at an open mic in Michigan
twelve-and-a-half years ago and here I am sitting in my kitchen talking to you, Laura, so
I’ve made it.

If it was up to me, I would just do comedy on a stage, as a stand up comic. But, I feel the
necessity to have a Twitter, a Vine, an Instagram, Periscope, Facebook…that’s just five
and I haven’t even mentioned Snapchat. There’s just five that twenty-five years ago a
stand up wouldn’t have to focus on.

When I started, I used to send VHS tapes to people to watch. But YouTube really
changed a lot of it, because now everybody thinks they know what comedy is because
they’ve seen a funny video on the internet.

I’m 36 years old, so I’m not wildly veteran, but I’m also not 20 years old. I think I like to
perform a bit after it’s been worked on, after it’s been polished, after it’s been perfected. I
Grossman | 18
don’t want the audience to see that. People have videotaped me without my permission,
without me knowing, and what’s the first hundred comments? “This is a shitty set.” Well,
that set wasn’t a set that I was ready for you to see. I’m working on it. A car company
releases their car when they’re finished with the car not each prototype. Maybe I’m more
of a traditionalist, but I don’t want to go see the rehearsal of Hamilton the Musical, I want
to go see the actual show.

I don’t want to sound like a negative person, because I am an optimist and I’m very, very
lucky that this is my job. I get to tell jokes for a living, that’s pretty crazy. But, the thing
that I love the most is live performance.

I would rather be funny in real life, so when you see me on tour I’m hilarious, than be
funny on an Instagram meme. But I understand there’s a lot of people that don’t agree
with me on that.

Normally what I do when I sit down and try to write jokes is I go through my joke
notebook and if there’s an idea there, I’ll maybe tweet it first and see if it gets a positive
reaction. The thing I get confused about is, let’s say it gets a positive reaction on Twitter.
Is that always my audience? I think it’s a lot of teenagers. That’s good, teenagers like my
tweet. But I’m not someone that I would say has a ton of success on twitter. I’m verified
and I have ten thousand followers, but I’m sure some people you’re speaking with have
millions of followers and that’s their strength. For me, I wouldn’t say it’s my strength.

My demographic has always been people who are my age, and that changes with my age.
If you look at the jokes I wrote when I was 23, they were for 23 year olds. If you look at
the jokes I write now, it’s about getting a little bit older, I’m 36. I’m a white male. I
wouldn’t necessarily say my comedy is all male driven, but it’s for people more or less in
my economic class and those are the people that I understand the best.

I seriously don’t know how much Twitter, Vine, Instagram, and live performance ties in
all together. I think we’re all figuring that out. I know people that are vine stars. They are
Grossman | 19
truly famous; they go to the grocery store and get surrounded by young kids. But if you
gave him or her twenty minutes at a comedy club it would be a disaster. There is no
skillset there. I do believe The Fat Jewish on Instagram, who’s an aggregator. Let’s not
pretend that he’s a super funny creative person. He’s an aggregator of other funny stuff.
I’m sure he’s done funny things. That may be a skill set: vine may be a skillset; they all
may be separate skillsets. If anything, that’s what I’m leaning towards now. If you can
kiss ass at all five of those then awesome, but not everybody can.

It’s the internet; I don’t know who these people are and it’s kind of built for hate. But, it’s
easy to type “this guy sucks”, right? It could be jealousy; this could really suck. Live
performance; no one is going to come up to you and say that you suck. They do
sometimes but you can see in their eyes if they had a great time. For me, that feedback is
the most important. If I can make two hundred people laugh, who don’t know me and it’s
their night out, and I can hear them laugh and see it in their face relax for a moment,
that’s the ultimate feedback. I don’t give a fuck how many retweets I get on something, it
will never feel like that does when you do a live performance. I would even argue that the
people that kick ass on twitter and Instagram, that they would actually trade that in for a
live performance. Appreciation, in my opinion.

Here I am reading in the trades, “hey, new show for this person that has a twitter
account”, and I’m calling my manager and agent and they’re going “hey dude, do what
you do best, we want you to focus on hosting which you do great at, and stand up
comedy.” They’re not telling me to switch and do something else, and that’s really nice.
Even my agent who books people for a living, he’s like “these YouTube stars, they can’t
perform an hour. We get them money but a lot of it’s like a question and answer.”
There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s a different skill set. So, thankfully what’s
important to me is live performance and my manager and agents are supportive of that.

I think with anything with the internet, it’s introduced us to people that we wouldn’t
otherwise have known. There’s a lot of TV writers that were hired off of their twitter
accounts. That’s pretty cool. We hired a guy on my E! show who was living in San
Grossman | 20
Diego, and his tweets were hilarious. We asked him to submit jokes for our show and he
did and we hired him. We never would have found him, ever. That’s an amazing thing
that the internet and twitter have provided for us. I also think twitter has made everybody
thing they’re funny. Go to any hashtag that isn’t #RIPPrince, and everyone is trying to be
funny, and it’s all the same jokes. I think it’s good and it’s bad. As someone who makes
their living in live performance, I wish would get away from this. I hate when I’m on
stage and I see people recording me. You wouldn’t do that at a theater or a play. I can
bitch about social media all I want; it’s not going away. It’s here to stay. I’m sure there’s
an old journalist who thinks all the news on social media is garbage, so I’ve got to be
careful spewing too much shit about it.

Subject
Marc Maron

Excerpts
Well, I started doing comedy when I was about 21. I’m 52 now and I started getting paid
as a comic when I was about 25, so I’ve been doing stand up comedy as a living and
whatever that’s gotten me for more than half my life.

I think the primary concern is that when you work on jokes, or you’re in the process of
creating something, if somebody tapes it with their phone and puts it out in the world, it
sort of disables your ability to make money from it or for it to be a surprise or for it to
even be complete. So, more than like a tweet, which can be taken out of context and used
against you, something you’re doing in public generally you’re in a comedy club; it’s for
public consumption but it’s not always for the world or for televised consumption. In
terms of what happens in a club, more than it being used against you, just it being put into
the world before you want it in the world is the bigger threat.

I think there is a problem with the culture we live in now that no one seems to think
they’re an amateur. Developing is fine, you can develop however you want. But once you
reach a certain level where your livelihood is derived from your new material, if someone
Grossman | 21
is putting it out without permission in a nascent form or an undeveloped form, it possibly
diminishes the bit for when it’s done and for it being a surprise to the people who pay to
see you.

When I’m on stage there are certainly things I don’t say in the sense that I’ve become
more diplomatic as I’ve gotten older just in general, and I think through things. But I’m
aware of sensitivities, and if I agree with them then I’ll be careful around people taking
offense; if I think it’s righteous. I don’t need to say “tranny”, I don’t need to say “retard”,
I certainly don’t need to say the n-word. I’m completely okay with everybody having the
right to do those things but I’m a little more careful in terms of things, mostly on twitter,
being taken out of context. This morning there was a good example of that. I tweeted out
just a piece of a poetic idea, which is “choose your context, you content whores”. The
idea was that you can take anything out of context. There is barely a context of anything
given the internet and social media platforms. Almost immediately a woman said that I
had no right to use the word “whore”. Laughing. But in a sense, she chose her context,
which I thought was very funny. I didn’t get back to her or respond to her because I
didn’t want to get involved in that conversation, but I thought it was an interesting
indication of the point of the tweet.

Before I did the podcast, I didn’t really have an audience, I couldn’t sell tickets. I’ve been
doing comedy about twenty years, a little less, and it was frustrating, you know, it was
not a good time. So, the podcast is a completely different medium. It’s a little more
honest and a little more candid, and I don’t feel that it has to be funny. Over time the
podcast has allowed people to get to know me in a fairly intimate way, and get into me
that way, and that’s brought people in to the shows a little more, so I’ve built an
audience. From the podcast, as well, I was able to get a TV deal around my life as it was
at the beginning of the podcast. We based the show on that, so then it gets out that way.
I’ve done a couple specials in the last few years, so it’s a combination of things. People
might come see me for any one of my projects. Those all work together but work
separately and sort of bring people to the comedy shows.

Grossman | 22
In terms of publicity, we’ve grown to believe that having a big twitter following and
putting it out there is a way to alert people, but you don’t know how many people are
really alerted. I’ve tried Facebook advertising as well but I don’t know how well it
necessarily works in terms of metrics. We’d like to believe it works, but I can tweet every
day for two weeks before a gig and then after the gig people are like “I didn’t know you
were coming”. I don’t know really what one does. Certain people reach a level of fame
where their following is so intense and the infrastructure around their personal
appearances has a lot of momentum. If they’re a star, people just know because they’re in
the world and it’s a big event. I’m not there; I’m a mid-level, smaller following but good,
but not thousands of people. I don’t sell thousands of tickets everywhere I go, but I still
have to get out there and do the grunt work. There are a lot of different ways but they all
sort of work together.

I’m a little compulsive about twitter for good reasons and bad reasons. I like the
immediate gratification and also the immediate hate that can come from twitter. I like the
impulsiveness about it, how there’s no real rules. Today I tweeted out “hit the showers”
for no real reason because I was going to take a shower. I don’t care really how anyone
responds to it. I like when people do respond to it but I also promote a bit on twitter. I
don’t really do Facebook at all, I don’t know why it’s just gotten complicated and I don’t
trust it somehow, but I do use the fan page to promote the podcast, and I use Twitter to
promote the podcast and my comedy dates. It’s sort of time consuming and I’ve paid for
ads on Facebook that are supposedly focused, but I don’t really know the results.

Once I got to understand twitter and build a following and understand that building a
following was good, and I understood how and what I could use it for. Then I got
addicted to it because I just like the immediacy of it. Instagram, I have but I didn’t really
take to it; I go through flurries of it. Periscope I’m just not interested, and snapchat I
think I’m too old for that shit. I seem to have drawn a line with how much time I have to
do that stuff.

Grossman | 23
Twitter is still sort of anonymous and it’s easily misunderstood. It’s not a real human
interaction. That can happen in as much as a text relationship can be a human interaction,
but there is still an anonymity to it. It also provides access; anyone can get a hold of any
of us. I don’t think it used to be like that. Obviously, I’m not a big celebrity but people
know that they can get at me, and they’ll get at me if they want to get a response by
trolling me. Sometimes I’ll take the bait; I try not to. Sometimes I’ll respond to good stuff
as well, but after a show where people approach me on the street, it’s very different.
Rarely after a show is someone going to come up to me and tell me I suck. On twitter that
can happen easily, and worse. In person, it’s more passive aggressiveness, but not too
much. It takes a certain type of asshole to go out of their way to do that.

I have gone into panics and downloaded the transcript of everything I’ve tweeted, just to
make sure I’m not missing ideas or something. Sometimes I think ideas I’ve put on there
have some traction and I’ll work with them, but a lot of times I don’t really do that type
of joke; I’m not really a one liner guy. But sometimes the ideas I build on.

When people started getting lots of twitter followers, it felt like power to those
representatives. I get it, but I’m not convinced that just because you have a lot of
followers people are necessarily seeing everything you put out there. You definitely have
a voice when you have a large audience that can get some traction.

Some people have done character work on twitter, and I know some guys who have done
that where they definitely have a point of view that is not specifically them or their
comedic point of view or voice. Someone like Rob Delaney I think it worked against him
in a way. His twitter feed got so popular and it was this weird, unanchored, bizarre, and
he had to sort of accommodate his audience for that. He wasn’t that kind of comic and
he’s certainly not that guy, but that’s why people were coming to see him and he had to
figure out how to do that. For me, I have a pretty random sensibility about twitter, I have
a pretty broad personality. You’re never going to be exactly who you are because you
have to service the medium or the context. Like me on my TV show, eventually that
evolved into a character of me that doesn’t engage all of me, but it’s the one that lives
Grossman | 24
there. My podcast is closer to me, but it’s still slightly elevated. You want to represent
yourself, however that is.

I think about pulling out a lot. I’d be having a much more relaxed life. I’d probably enjoy
my thoughts and creativity more without feeling compelled. I have a friend who just got
off twitter. You start to think it’s essential and I don’t know that it is. It would certainly
give me more time during the day. Outside of twitter I don’t do much on the internet. I’m
not poking around too much. I’m pretty busy with the shit I do, between the podcast and
writing.

When I started doing comedy you got in it to be a standup and the goal was to be a
headliner. The goal was to create an hour of material that you could perform and be paid
to perform. I think that some of that has changed. I don’t quite know how, but it seems to
me that newer generations don’t mind performing for nothing. They do a lot of other
things in terms of creating content that they don’t mind putting out in the world for
nothing. They don’t seem to necessarily think about headlining or doing an hour of
standup or becoming great standups. They may think they do, but I don’t know that they
know what that entails anymore. I guess the future of comedy online is a lot more free
content, there will be a lot more stuff out there. That’s going to happen because anyone
can do it now. It’s a lot easier for anybody to put content up and get their ideas out there
and also to get on stage for no money. That all will keep happening and people that aren’t
working comics will call themselves comics but ultimately there’s always a new
generation of comics that can do the job that want to do the job that are interesting and
funny. I don’t think that will change.

I think social media more than anything else has given everybody access to everybody
else. No matter what level of fame or talent. It’s democratized, but it’s sort of a wild west
feeling. I think that sometimes if everyone thinks they can do something it diminishes the
thing. On the plus side it’s given people that wouldn’t otherwise have opportunities the
ability to break through and at least get a shot. Each platform does create its own
celebrities, and then it’s really on that person to deliver the goods or not, and nurture a
Grossman | 25
career out of that. A lot of times it’s a flurry and then they disappear. Other people, like
Bo Burnham, who’s an incredibly talented guy, was able to move from YouTube video to
stardom and handle it and continue to generate and be a great performer. There are
negatives and positives; the plus side is it does give an outlet for the possibility of a
break. I wouldn’t bank on it, but it’s there.

Subject
Bo Burnham

Excerpts
YouTube kind of proves that democracy is not great. If you put people in charge of what
they like it becomes derivative. I’m sure there’s a lot of great original content happening
on YouTube, but most of the original content on YouTube is fucking awful. For anyone
who’s a young person who’s trying to make something, I think making things means
disappearing and working on something for a long time, and then showing it to people.
The social media thing is a sort of IV drip of entertainment. If you have an idea, throw it
out there. If you have anything, throw it out there. Maybe it’ll entertain people a little bit
at a time. I think it’s really detrimental to my generation and the kids below me in terms
of how they’ll make things. Rebel against it. Work hard on something.

What’s insane is that people will tweet at me “did you die?” or “are you dead?”. It’s a
really bad thing I think, the relationship between entertainers and their audience to be in
their face, to be their friend, to be someone in their life. We’re not even someone that
makes things and gives it to them. I think it’s really really bad, and gross, and
manipulative. It makes people on both ends feel horrific, so… I tweet jokes, or I
Instagram stupid pictures, or plug the show. I’m curious to see, like the kids that are
thirteen now, what they’ll say when they have their doctorates in sociology. It’s awful,
it’s really really bad. We’re wondering why there isn’t a lot of crossover, why it still feels
like the same entertainers are around from the early 2000’s, and why isn’t the internet
which is supposed to give everyone a voice, becoming like this. I don’t know. I don’t
think everyone needs a voice.
Grossman | 26
Subject
Wayne Federman

Excerpts
There's many ways to be funny, but the primary way is surprise.

Stand up always is changing, but at its core it’s basically the same thing, which is one
person on stage usually holding a microphone in front of a crowd. That’s the game.

I wrote a whole article about the history of stand up from 1947 to today, and I talk a lot
about the power and reach of YouTube in particular and the internet in general. I gave
two great examples—one was Bo Burnham, who was a comedian who basically just
performed in his bedroom in Massachusetts and got millions of people watching it. This
kid, in his room, may have already performed for more people than I did in all the years
I’ve been working clubs. That was interesting to me; that’s a lot of power, a lot of reach.
Then, also, there was another comedian named Michael Richards who used to be on
Seinfeld, and he did a set at the Laugh Factory where he made some racially insensitive
jokes, and the backlash was so huge from that, from somebody filming it on their
cellphone and putting it up, that he basically had to retire from stand up. So there’s great
power and great risk as well.

There’s a lot. You can go to Funny or Die and they’ll put your stuff up, you can just put it
on your YouTube channel, you can tweet it out, or go on television and tape a special for
Netflix, or go on the Tonight Show, or Kimmel, or Colbert. All those shows still use
stand ups.

Let me tell you who was very important in all of this—Dane Cook. Dane Cook is very
important in using MySpace. It was huge and still is used for bands today. He really
interacted and got a lot of followers, at that time they were called friends, and that really
helped propel his career in a big way. There are articles in Rolling Stone about it, about
Dane just being on his computer and really interacting. He’s the first one that I knew of
Grossman | 27
that used a new way to connect with fans to enhance his career in a big way. Dane Cook
is very important. Bo, Dane, these are the main important guys and then of course Marc
Maron as well.

I basically use Twitter to promote, so I don’t do a lot of comedy tweeting. I’m not a big
used of social media. I would say I have a presence there.

I feel like my job is to write funny material and perform it. Everything else is not as
important as that. If you do that, people will see you. I don’t tweet out a lot of jokes from
my act.

I feel like the availability of comedy does dilute the specialness of what stand up was.
When I was a kid, if you wanted stand up, you had to seek it out—you had to buy a
record and talk to other kids who were into it. You’d only see it on talk shows and maybe
some variety shows. It was a really special, cliquey, comedy nerd world that I lived in as
a kid who was into stand up. But now, I think over all it’s a positive that there’s a
saturation of stand up. Also, I think it raises the bar on what you have to do, because I lot
of premises get burned pretty quickly.

I kind of like that regular people realize what a joke is and put two separate ideas together
and mash them up and create jokes that way, and do little insult humor based on roast
jokes. The more the merrier.

Some comedians, when they get a good premise, will immediately put it on Twitter to
time stamp it even though it’s not even a fully realized routine at this point, just to protect
themselves. I feel like there’s a lot of parallel development—everyone’s thinking kind of
along the same lines of where the joke should be. You see it on late night monologues. I
was the head writer for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon for the first year and we would do
jokes, and then on the Tonight Show earlier that night would be a similar angle on it. We
made it a point to try a more tricky angle.

Grossman | 28
You have to be very careful with rape jokes. I think when some people get in trouble is
when they go outside of comedy and make a declarative statement about what a rape
victim should do, and if they don’t they’re not to be believed.

I’m not a very controversial comedian. There’s a “B” word people use to refer to women,
and I will not use that word on stage ever. I think it’s as bad as the “N word”, but it
couldn’t be more accepted in our society. The societies view of what is acceptable has
just expanded. Ever since cable opened up what you’re allowed to say on television. On
SNL, they’ll never say the “f word”. Like why is that so offensive?

I think people are more knit picky because of the internet than they were. You say the
wrong word and no matter what the context, you’re misogynistic. I feel people are more
overtly sensitive.

I think it’s overall been a positive, despite the blowback. We’re in the internet comedy
boom right now, and that wouldn’t have happened without it. With podcasting, talking
about comedy and exposing it to millions of people. There’s two comedy festivals in
Iowa; that didn’t happen before the internet.

I feel social media lessens the power of what I call “the gatekeepers”, which would be
studio executives. I feel it’s more egalitarian. Overall I think it’s been a positive, despite
the social wars that are happening.

In the end, despite the internet and twitter and somebody being able to film your show
and put it up before you even get to your car—despite all these differences, the act of
stand up hasn’t really changed at all. If you’re doing stand up in a club or in a theater, or
in a coffeehouse, it’s still basically one person on stage trying to make people laugh. That
hasn’t changed for a hundred years, at all. I used to watch vaudeville, it’s the same thing.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Grossman, Laura A. (author)

Core Title Get @ me: comedy in the age of social media

School Annenberg School for Communication

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program Specialized Journalism

Publication Date 02/15/2017

Defense Date 02/13/2017

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag comedy,Entertainment,media,OAI-PMH Harvest,social media

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Seidennberg, Willa (committee chair), Isaacs, David (committee member), Parks, Michael (committee member)

Creator Email lagrossm@usc.edu,laura@pdgrossman.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-337165

Unique identifier UC11255684

Identifier etd-GrossmanLa-5060.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-337165 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-GrossmanLa-5060.pdf

Dmrecord 337165

Document Type Thesis

Rights Grossman, Laura A.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA