I think comedy on the internet has taken off because most people are at work and
it's just a nice little escape. It's so accessible. It's right there. Why not laugh a little bit? It used to be
there was this one way. You slog it through the clubs, then you get on late night, and
then hopefully you get a sitcom.
That's completely out the window now.
There's a different, twisted kind of thing that you find funny alone in the dark that you might find
funny sitting in an audience.
What podcasts have definitely done for comedy is
it's created a new type of fan of comedy. You're taking something that
used to be inaccesible and you're making it accessible. There's just a more
personal connection.
Nerd of Mouth is a podcast where lonely people get to be together by
listening to us alone and reveling in their nerd-dom.
"Is being a nerd something you choose our does it choose you?
This episode is just gonna be all of us striking out at tee ball." The inspiration was
somewhat of a disdain towards most portrayals of nerd culture. The Big
Bang Theory is my Tyler Perry.
It's just non-nerdy people
nerd-facing it up, "I know particle physics and I'm lonely," and it's just
insulting. And that's kinda how it came about. What I love about podcasts is
that
it's allowed people to be niche-ier. It used to be that you had to answer to the world as
an artist. Now I get to be as alienating as I want. There's no censorship.
You can be as weird as you want. "No! My kingdom of fudge!"
I just did morning radio for the first time and they said to me,
"You can talk about this, this, and this, but you can talk about that, that, and that." You just
want to be able to talk about what you want 'cause there's a difference between
someone just seeing you do a five minute set versus
hearing you for two hours and getting to know you as a person.
"Let's try to describe what our childhoods were like." "Oh, in that case I'll just cry." I feel like
all of my fans are just me with less confidence
and they see something in me that they see in themselves and that's a great thing.
We're bridging this gap now of all these fans who kind of like comedy.
Now they realize, "Oh, there's comics for me, in venues for me,"
and you can really get to see somebody as a person.
Twitter has really strengthened comedy in the comedy world. It's a good
training tool in writing jokes. My style of humor and jokes are short, little,
weird thoughts and it fits perfectly into the twitter environment.
Twitter has actually helped my joke writing process 'cause you're forced to
fit in what you want to say into those one hundred forty characters. You get
rid of the waste and you just get to the funny.
On New Year's Eve I tweeted, "It was one year ago today that I also didn't want to go
out."
I tweeted, "I still can't believe 'the Machine' left 'Rage Against' to join 'Florence and.'"
I try to experiment within the medium itself.
It's only a hundred forty characters but there are a lot of different style of tweets that you can
do.
I like to do quotes a lot and then attribute it to a person. I quoted,
"Foursquare and seven apps ago..."
and that was Abraham Linkedin. There's a quote that's
just "Ohhhhh." and
that was the first person to peel open a banana.
Sometimes you'll come up with an idea instantly based on a news
story that's breaking. I remember when caught Bin Laden, I tweeted out, "Oh great,
now I'm terrified of zombie Bin Laden." And then that was
retweeted hundreds of times. Those tend to get retweeted the most because
it's happening right then and there and people want to hear and read about it right then and there. When you're doing a show live,
laughter or silence is an immediate response. On twitter, it's the same thing. If you tweet
something out, people comment on it or retweet. You're getting that immediate
satisfaction to know if what you did is connecting with people or not.
The internet is amazing because it's experimental media for comedy. We're not
beholden to censorship. We can tackle very controversial subjects online. Comedy is
important to us because it's cathartic.
Jokes that seem a
little inappropriate to four hundred people might appeal to you when you're
alone and there's no one to judge you for your reaction. We did a sketch called
"Stormtroopers' 9/11." It's three stormtroopers sitting around talking
about the Death Star
getting blown up in the tone that people who talk about 9/11 talk about 9/11.
"When you look at that part of the galaxy where the Death Star used to be and it's just...
nothing." "The Jedis win." "Jedis? I'll tell you something. They hate our way of life."
It sounds so controversial, but to watch the video
it actually makes a lot of sense and is relatively tame and very funny. But I
don't think we ever would've dared to do that live.
Big, over the top content is what works, is what gets the views. I'm really proud
of a video that we did called "Gay Men Will Marry Your Girlfriends."
"Keep marriage between a man and a woman
and in response,
we will marry your girlfriends." I wanted College Humor to come out as pro-gay marriage
which makes no sense because we're a comedy website. Who cares?
So we came up with this idea which was, of course you should let gay men marry
each other because otherwise they'll marry your girlfriends, who they're so much better
suited to than
you. "So don't make us marry your girlfriends. Support gay marriage." The fact that we
were able to see something, even a little bit preachy,
and get that message across in such an effective way, as a comedy site,
felt really rewarding. When something bad happens in the world,
you need to laugh. When nothing bad happens in the world and you're bored, you need to laugh.
It's good exercise. And the internet is very available
catharsis.
It's point and click catharsis. "You're all a bunch of drones!"
"Hey, keep your voice down." "You're drones. Especially the drones."
Embracing the internet and embracing these
modern changes is
the best way to go about it because, I mean,
the reality is, you evolve or you die.
I think to be successful as a comedian on twitter is just to trust your
instincts, take risks,
and go with what you think is funny.
There's something about doing it for that person sitting alone in the dark,
whose mouth is agape at first and then slowly warms up to us. That's just
hugely important
to not take our important
lives all too seriously.