Social media is changing comedy, giving both fledgling and established comics instantaneous, wide exposure while pressuring them to take part in a distracting and potentially career-damaging set of online behaviors.Still, even while the new sharing technology can add extra challenges and pressure for performers, overall the positives outweigh the negatives for today’s comedians.
Twitter’s character limit puts a premium on brevity, and can be the perfect place for comedians to hone one-liners, polish short jokes, and connect with fans. Some people, like Canadian mom Kelly Oxford, even develop a career for themselves exclusively through the microblogging site, crafting 140 character bits sharp enough to gain a massive audience. Oxford went from housewife to Hollywood by amassing over 370,000 followers, including celebrity fans like Roger Ebert.
More established comedy figures like Aziz Ansari and Rob Delaney furthered their careers by taking advantage of the social media platform, but other comedians haven’t taken to the medium quite as well.
Louie C.K. who is brilliant at using the Internet and social media to help fans access his material, claims to hate the site. Even young, ascending comedians aren’t always particularly into using the platform. Comedian Mark Maron, meta-jokingly tweets: “My inability to edit 140 characters is embarrassing #publicshame.” One comedian who found great success in Twitter, Jon Friedman tells PBSoffbook how Twitter enables him to edits his jokes and helps me become a greater comedy writer. His comedy is not usually one-liners, but sometimes he will create longer bits based on tweets, so it definitely helps in that respect.
Comedians don’t start off with a refined set, and they rely on smaller rooms and regular gigs to try new material and experiment with pushing their boundaries. Though social media and the Internet have helped comedians gain exposure and a new platform to engage with fans, it also opens up the possibility that incomplete material can find a way to circulate to larger crowds. Smartphone-armed audience members can record and share these early “draft” performances, entering them sometimes prematurely into the comedian’s permanent public record. This can result in comedians feeling slightly embarrassment about old, lesser material making the rounds, or it can result in a full-fledged PR crisis.
Pre-Internet, incidents like Michael Richards’ racist outburst or Tracy Morgan’s homophobic comments might not have gained widespread attention, and the comedians may have been able to overcome their gauche mistakes without a maelstrom of media criticism. In some ways, this is good — it discourages performers from going on racist or homophobic rants — but it is also difficult for comedians who toe the line and discuss controversial topics, because it may take them time to find the right wording to explore divisive issues without crossing into tasteless territory. After all, some of the best comedians tackle race, sex, religion and every other hot button issue in ways that may offend some, but their purpose is to illuminate an underlying societal truth, not to say slurs for the sake of saying slurs. And as they work on potentially offensive bits, the spectrum of media character assassination may end up spooking comedians away from trying out daring material.
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