Oversharing?

[pg13]

Saw this article and posted it on my Facebook wall...and an interesting discussion has developed from it...

Chicago Tribune article on stand-up comics "oversharing"

Curious as to your thoughts.

[nixonjames]

Seems like the best way to deal with this is to stay under the radar until you have sufficient material and credibility to 'go there.' I've got a good chunk I want to do but realize I have to fit that into a much longer set where I've really got the audience on my side before I go into it.

But I would agree that it's important to fight the shame culture so many of us as Americans are raised in. The freedom of acceptance was something that I was helped to get to through comedic acts that challenged the way I saw the world but made me laugh hysterically anyway. So I guess if you wanna deal with this sort of stuff you might want to really learn to read an audience extremely well as well as how to dance around the line rather than step on/over it.

Ah so much work to do.

[ErikNielsen]

If you need to goose the audience by appealing to their appetite for voyeurism, or shock them by talking about stuff that's going to make them tense, that's your problem and nobody else's. And sometimes you have to go through there to get somewhere relevant, but as for most of these acts... well, if they think that most of their appeal isn't the shock value, they're lying to themselves.

[Phil]

In particular, Condren is worried someone will record his act with a cellphone then post the video online. "I don't want it to go viral," he said. "I know how that sounds: I want to talk about my life, but I don't want everyone to hear. To me, a stage is a controlled environment. What's said there stays there. That's the illusion I have."

That's my biggest fear too - becoming famous for my standup. A shame that shaky smartphone videos only go viral if they're sex tapes or Michael Richards.

[Burnside]

RE: "I don't want to go viral." I can understand feeling this anxiety, OTOH how reasonable is this fear? Are there examples of nobody standups going viral? It seems that heckling videos go viral sometimes, but not in a way that causes anyone to remember who the standup in question was if they were nobodies to begin with. At least as far as I can tell.

I don't think anything anyone says in a standup routine has the shock value to go viral on the webz. After all, there's a whole lot of of videos of ass sex to compete with. So even if you had ass sex during your set or sucked off a donkey it would be instantly unmemorable online. Maybe if you made one of those really long basketball shots from the stage, that would go viral. Nobody on the webz wants to hear you talk unless they are already a big fan.

Or does someone have a counter-example to prove me wrong?

[Burnside]

A more legitimate fear, I think, is not going viral but having a video of you that someone can find with your name attached to it of you telling rape jokes and assfucking stories years after you have quit comedy for good and are trying to get a real job.

[simpgeek]

I think that is more accurately his fear. Like Phil pointed out, if a stand-up bit went truly viral it would be a enormous boon to one's stand-up career.

[ErikNielsen]

Well, if that's a concern for you, don't do jokes you aren't willing to stand behind. There are plenty of comics (and I don't just mean open micers) who are essentially real-life Internet trolls, reveling in the power the microphone gives them to shove people's faces in unpleasantness for unpleasantness' sake. I wouldn't hire one of them either. If people are worried that their actions will have consequences... well, damn right, and they should.

[Burnside]

Yes but -- and I think this was the valid point made in the article -- material which might be good, funny material at a comedy show might come off as horribly tasteless and inappropriate outside of a comedy show. I'm not thinking here of "unpleasantness for unpleasantness' sake" material (despite my exaggerations above), but blue material which is socially appropriate in a comedy club but would be inappropriate in most other public settings. Remember, there are many people in the country who would never step foot in a comedy club, who don't want to be around anyone who ever drops an F-bomb and who have no sense of humor whatsoever. And most of these people work in human resources. And when they hear your wry take on online dating which was originally delivered in a comedy club, an environment they have no familiarity with, ten years later on a screen implanted inside their eyelids they might not get the joke and decide you are an obvious sociopath.

Point is that while attempting to make it as a standup has always been a dangerous career move, the stakes are now higher.

[isoS]

Dan Telfer's Best Dinosaur bit went viral, and no one knew who he was.

[punkdc]

Dan Telfer's Best Dinosaur bit went viral, and no one knew who he was.

Only thing I thought of. Does Jon Lajoie or Bo Burnham count? The only reason I wouldn't think they would be because both are music based.