Brocasting eats the world

Jesters ain’t professors. I'm with Bill Burr: "I don't think you should be asking a comedian." Also: The Met Gala, Belichick's gf, Waymos, the NBA playoffs, and much more.

As a comedian, I occasionally get asked about the impact all these comedy podcasters are having on the culture nowadays. My reply: Honestly, I can’t believe y’all are taking them seriously. People obsessed with getting a laugh aren’t who you should turn to for legit commentary or insight. We’re just trying to get over.

Consider how much comedians clock clickbait. In effect, the setup to every joke is a plea for engagement. The audience 'clicks' by paying attention. Sure, punchlines get laughs…but half (maybe more?) of the battle is hooking ‘em with something juicy so they crave hearing what comes next.

Basically, we’re attention whores – and then we pay off that attention with punchlines. Our goal is to provoke more than inform.

And that’s what I hear when I see clips of comedy podcasters. (I usually don’t listen to full eps because I already spend most nights listening to comedians opine about the world and it’s enough.) They’re getting folks to pay attention. If you start taking them as legit thinkers, that’s on you. See Bill Burr on the red carpet when asked about his Luigi comments:

'I'm not doing all of this. What are you gonna bring up next? The Middle East? I went to summer school three out of four years in high school. I'm not qualified to talk about this.'

Burr seemed to grow completely sick of the line of questioning when asked about the relationship between Trump and 'First Buddy' Musk.

'I don't watch the news! I have no idea what's going on,' he quipped, saying that he mostly watched silly videos on the internet.

'I don't think you should be asking a comedian, you're a journalist.'

Plus, podcasting requires hours of weekly output. Beware of taking someone seriously if they talk into a microphone for 3+ hours a week. It was true for Howard/Rush/shock jocks and it's true for podcast bros and YouTubers. Talk that much and you inevitably wind up spouting off on things you know little about since air time becomes an insatiable beast you must continually feed.

Content creators ain’t truth tellers because a big part of telling the truth is being able to shut the hell up sometimes. Good luck doing that if your income depends on an IV drip of verbiage.

“But these right wing bros…” I’m gonna stop you right there. The repeated labeling of Schulz, Theo, and Rogan as "right wing" is actually a reveal of how out of touch many online libs are from regular folks and the media they consume. All of those dudes prob voted for Obama and would be in play if old fogey Dems didn't insist on running an out-of-touch corporatist playbook that seemingly fears open, longform conversations. The left should clock what Mayor Pete did on Flagrant and follow his lead.

Speaking of, there’s a difference between what Gavin Newsom and Pete Buttigieg are doing on podcasts: Platforming conservatives so your fans hear them (a la Newsom) is 1000% different than going on their platforms so their fans hear you.

All this goes back to two things I wind up repeating to frustrated libs: 1) Dunking on people and labeling them as hateful is a bad way to get their votes. 2) Do you want to win or not? If the answer to the latter is yes, then it’d be wise to reconsider your approach to the former.

And all of us should realize there’s a price to pay for valuing charisma over legitimate expertise. If you want to understand the complexity of, say, Israel vs. Hamas, you probably shouldn’t turn to a guy who says, “Cocaine will turn you into a damn owl, homie.” 🦉

Jesters shouldn’t be treated like professors. We’ve all heard “Don’t sh*t where you eat.” Well, here’s a corollary: Don’t educate where you laugh.

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Quickies

🎯 Manifesting is prayer for atheists.

🎯 IEDs are yet another reason to hate improv.

🎯 Odd how people love calling stuff a "sh*t show" but recoil when I tell them my childhood was a "vomit carnival."

🎯 We need a lane for people who like drag queens but hate bingo, karaoke, brunch, and story hours.

🎯 Technology eliminated boredom and replaced it with anxiety.

🎯 Time launders everything. The edges always get sanded down. Eventually, you wind up with Che Guevara on a t-shirt, the Beatles in a Nike ad, Dennis Hopper in Speed, and the Sex Pistols on a credit card. The half life of revolution is no match for the slow burn of capitalist decay.

🎯 Y'know when someone has headphones on and they're singing along and think it's good but actually they're way outta tune? That’s alcohol but with everything.

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West coast

I like going to the west coast from NYC because I keep going to bed/waking up at the same time I always do, yet all of a sudden I'm a morning person.

Waymos are everywhere in SF! The funny thing is they seem dangerous and then you get in one and all of a sudden you start thinking human drivers are the problem.

SF guy: “We don’t say homeless. We say unhoused. OK, my driverless car is here.”
Me: “Um, we don’t say driverless. We say undriven.”

This crowd member asked me an interesting question about NYC:

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Best of Working Methods

Working Methods is my newsletter filled with creative inspiration from art legends. Some recent highlights there:

🗯️ “Ultimately, your desire to create must be greater than your fear of it.”
-Rick Rubin

🗯️ "I wanted to say the opposite of what everybody else was saying. I did it with peanut allergies. I had a joke about airplanes, when you can’t have peanuts — who are these adults addicted to peanuts this bad? These kids are going to die!"
-Nate Bargatze

🗯️ "Passion is a tower of flame, but curiosity is a tiny tap on the shoulder — a little whisper in the ear that says, 'Hey, that's kind of interesting…' Passion is rare; curiosity is everyday."
-Liz Gilbert

🗯️ "You actually have to go in and start humiliating yourself sometimes, right there in front of people, in order to get to the good stuff."
-Philip Seymour Hoffman

🗯️ “We have a word for that in Japanese. It's called Ma. Emptiness. It's there intentionally. [He then clapped several times.] The time in between my clapping is Ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it's just busyness."
-Hayao Miyazaki

🗯️ “The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that.”
-Richard Price

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Met Gala

The theme for next year’s Met Gala should be "Emperor's New Clothes." Everyone just shows up naked, but we all act as if they're wearing gorgeous robes, take their photos, and spend days gossiping about "who wore it best."

Admittedly, I may not be the target audience. After all, I’m still trying to figure out what “camp” means. (Wore my canoeing fit that year and all the fashionistas tsk tsk’d me.)

Also, I would 100% wear this “hidden by umbrellas” as my look:

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Best of Funny How

Funny How is my newsletter about doing standup comedy. Some recent posts there:

💥 Seinfeld's 12 rules for comedy: "If you're efficient, you're doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way."

💥 Clean is hard: "Consider how much the really edgy thing to do is NOT curse. It’s easy to fall back on dirty talk as a way to keep the crowd juiced (they laugh for the same reason a third grader laughs at the word “b00bs”). But maybe you can aim higher?"

💥 Roy Wood Jr. on the wrong lesson to take from Dave Chappelle: "That’s not a sustainable creative process: to just be contrarian for the sake of outrage."

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Comedy

Watch BOLO and you’ll think I’m brilliant (even more than you already do.)

“Art is not delivered like the morning paper; it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus.”
-Wayne Thiebaud

Up ahead: More Quickies, Who’s crazier: Libs or MAGA?, the NBA playoffs, Stephen A., Bill Belichick’s gf, and my fave Gregg Popovich story.

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Politics

Prediction: There will be no more two term Presidents. Here’s why: