The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 401. Rife For Cancellation

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone. I had the opportunity today to welcome and speak with one of the world's most outstanding current comedians.

00:01:19.100 Young guy, 28 years old, Matt Reif, who's exploded onto the comedy scene in the last few years.

00:01:26.020 After having put his time in the trenches, he's been working as a comedian in small clubs and so forth.

00:01:33.160 He started when he was 15, so he put in his 10 years before really becoming popular.

00:01:37.680 He's been the subject of a relatively dedicated cancel campaign in recent weeks,

00:01:42.620 and so we had a chance to discuss that, to discuss his witty, fast, brave, and appropriate response to that cancellation,

00:01:52.580 to talk about that sort of thing in more detail, and also to detail out the structure of his new tour

00:01:59.860 and his plans for the future and why he's doing what he's doing and what the role of comedy is in the broader world.

00:02:06.960 So, welcome to the conversation.

00:02:10.360 All right, so I've been planning this opening, which I don't usually do,

00:02:14.980 because I like to do things spontaneously, but I have to get this one right.

00:02:19.200 Okay, so you've got to help me get this straight.

00:02:21.300 Okay.

00:02:21.620 Okay, so now you're a comedian and you got cancelled for a domestic assault joke,

00:02:27.080 and then in response to that, instead of apologizing like a good boy,

00:02:30.800 you put up a joke ad site about special needs helmets to protect the people who are offended by you,

00:02:38.820 and now, to get yourself out of trouble, you're going to come on my podcast.

00:02:44.060 I never said that.

00:02:44.460 That's your plan.

00:02:45.140 I was hoping it would make things way worse,

00:02:46.840 and I'm hoping we can drive sales to that very real website about the helmets.

00:02:50.640 Yes, anyways, congratulations on that.

00:02:52.180 Thank you very much.

00:02:52.900 I thought the joke was funny.

00:02:54.740 Thank you.

00:02:55.180 Risky and funny.

00:02:56.420 Of course.

00:02:56.540 And I thought your response was dead on.

00:02:58.420 Like, one of the things I've noticed is that people who are harassed by sensorial-minded null wits

00:03:08.300 almost always back down and apologize.

00:03:11.900 And then my sense of that is that a mob comes after them first for whatever hypothetical sin they've committed,

00:03:18.480 and then they apologize, and a second mob comes after them for that.

00:03:22.380 Exactly.

00:03:22.800 And then they lessen their own character by the false apology, and they embolden these idiot accusers.

00:03:28.880 And so why did you decide—when this blew up around you, and I mean in some ways it's a tempest in a teapot,

00:03:35.060 but when this blew up around you, why did you decide to take the strategy that you took?

00:03:40.660 Why weren't you, like, racked with guilt and apologetic?

00:03:43.560 Because it's just comedy.

00:03:47.360 I'm just doing what's funny to me.

00:03:49.660 It's never any deeper than that, nor should it be for anybody.

00:03:54.180 I'm saying things that my imagination drums up that makes me happy,

00:03:59.080 release endorphins in my head that makes my life happier,

00:04:02.120 and all I do is share those thoughts with other people in hopes that it makes their life easier.

00:04:06.780 Well, I've been watching what you do on your specials, and you're continually interacting with the audience,

00:04:13.220 which—correct me if I've got this wrong—I mean, a lot of the comedians that I've spoken to,

00:04:17.900 they spend a lot of time preparing their sets and practicing,

00:04:21.580 but you're doing—it seems to be something that's much more akin to spontaneous wit,

00:04:27.280 and that's a dangerous thing to do because you could easily be not funny.

00:04:30.480 Oh, high risk, high reward, yeah.

00:04:31.740 Yeah, well, and it's also that because you're doing that,

00:04:35.140 you don't have a lot of time to exactly think through what you're going to say, right?

00:04:40.200 I mean, if something strikes you as amusing, you pretty much have to go for it.

00:04:45.780 Oh, of course.

00:04:46.520 And if your head's full of censorship-related thoughts,

00:04:49.980 you're going to be not funny in about 15 seconds, so—

00:04:53.360 And you have to let the intrusive thoughts win in comedy.

00:04:55.560 You have to.

00:04:56.120 What comes—if you're a naturally funny person,

00:04:58.000 the first thing that comes to your mind should be the funniest thing to you,

00:05:01.240 most of the time in a comedic situation.

00:05:02.600 Right, right, and it has to be the first thing.

00:05:04.260 Yeah, you know, if you're writing a multiple-choice test, by the way,

00:05:07.700 if you second-guess your intuition about the right answer,

00:05:12.240 you're more likely to be wrong with the second guess.

00:05:14.720 Is that true?

00:05:15.200 Yeah, yeah, that immediate response.

00:05:15.800 Oh, that makes complete sense.

00:05:16.760 Yeah, that immediate response tends to be better.

00:05:19.220 Yeah, well, and it's a weird thing, eh?

00:05:21.320 Because that thing that's comical inside you

00:05:23.980 that's providing you with the intuition for the jokes,

00:05:27.100 it has to be in quick—

00:05:29.560 Timing's everything.

00:05:30.640 Yeah, absolutely.

00:05:31.600 It has to be a quick relationship with the audience.

00:05:33.580 Yeah, timing is absolutely everything.

00:05:35.300 You want to say the most pointed thing at exactly the right time.

00:05:39.560 And so, what do you think—or maybe, I don't know if you've thought about it.

00:05:42.580 What do you think is—

00:05:43.940 First of all, how broad-scale do you think this rebellion against what you said actually is?

00:05:50.500 How many people do you think are behind it?

00:05:52.280 And why do you think it's become such a big deal?

00:05:54.460 It's probably a few dozen thousand, which sounds like a lot until you remember there's 8 billion people in the world.

00:06:01.800 Yeah.

00:06:02.000 And I would say 90% of the small majority that is upset with me doesn't go to comedy shows anyway

00:06:10.140 or wouldn't vibe with me as a person anyways, which is fine.

00:06:12.960 Right.

00:06:13.120 They're probably not that funny.

00:06:14.400 I watched a couple of them today on YouTube.

00:06:16.580 I can imagine.

00:06:17.320 Oh, my God.

00:06:18.100 Yeah.

00:06:18.300 I mean, they're the sort of people that you just want to—what do you want for them?

00:06:22.720 You want for them—you want them to spend eternity in a hell composed of nothing but people like them talking to them.

00:06:29.420 Oh, so Twitter.

00:06:30.520 Yeah, yeah.

00:06:31.000 Yeah, exactly that.

00:06:32.400 Right, right, right.

00:06:32.620 But that's the thing.

00:06:33.340 It's like whether you enjoy what I do or not, you don't even have to know it exists.

00:06:38.240 If I'm your problem, if you and I are face-to-face and you have a problem with my comedy that I tell that I admit to the world, right?

00:06:42.860 Like, if you just remove yourself from me, if you do something as simple as just turn around, there is an entire planet behind you for you to go explore and live the rest of your life.

00:06:54.360 You don't ever have to think about me.

00:06:56.260 You don't have to talk about me.

00:06:58.060 I don't like screamo heavy metal music.

00:07:01.960 Guess how often I think about it or talk about it?

00:07:04.060 Zero percent of the time.

00:07:05.360 You just remove yourself from the situation.

00:07:07.420 I see no harm in trying to make people laugh as a general intention.

00:07:14.460 Yeah, well, I also don't understand exactly, from a purely logical perspective, what the people who are complaining exactly expect from you.

00:07:22.780 Because, and maybe it is that they, A, have no sense of humor, and that's highly likely, or that they're doing something we can talk about, which is gaining some kind of benefit from their complaints, some virtue signaling.

00:07:38.460 I already see that with the men in particular.

00:07:40.160 Well, I know I really care a lot.

00:07:42.260 I know.

00:07:43.100 Yeah, it's pretty ugly.

00:07:43.960 Yeah, I saw one TikTok video who was like, I have a wife, and I found this severely disrespectful.

00:07:50.080 I was like, okay, you cuck.

00:07:51.520 Yeah.

00:07:51.960 Whatever, too.

00:07:52.620 Yeah, yeah.

00:07:53.180 He probably thinks that's a form of foreplay.

00:07:55.360 Yeah, what do you want to get more pussy outside of your wife?

00:07:57.820 Like, chill out.

00:07:58.280 You're already married.

00:07:59.000 She already respects you.

00:08:00.240 Like, what do you want from me?

00:08:00.760 Yeah, well, I used to see, when I had demonstrations around me, which used to be more common than they are now, which is just as well, the worst people I ever saw at those demonstrations weren't the Herodan women who were screeching like fishwives.

00:08:14.140 But the men that were hypothetically there to support them, man, I tell you, I couldn't even look at some of those guys without having a shudder run up my spine.

00:08:21.540 There's almost nothing worse than a man who tries to worm himself in with a group of women by pretending to be more on their side than the women actually are when their actual motivation is to use that.

00:08:34.980 What was that?

00:08:35.580 Gad Saad, the evolutionary psychologist who works at Concordia, he called that the sneaky f***er routine.

00:08:42.340 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:08:43.940 Well, and that's actually a phrase from evolutionary biology.

00:08:46.480 Is that really a funny story that goes along with that?

00:08:48.900 This is hilarious and so telling.

00:08:52.020 So primatologists who studied orangutans figured out a long time ago that there are two variant male types of orangutan.

00:09:01.280 Okay, so there's like, orangutans tend to hang around in trees, they're arboreal, but the males who become dominant in a given territory get so large, sort of like a linebacker in football, and they have these big fat pads around their face that are circular.

00:09:17.660 They get so large, they can't really go in trees anymore, and the females come to them, but then there are other males in the vicinity who the primatologists thought were adolescents for a very long time, because they look like adolescent males and they hang around in the trees.

00:09:32.940 But they turn out to be, many of them, fully mature males whose development into the linebacker is forestalled by the fact that they're not at the top of the pecking order.

00:09:43.000 Right, and so their strategy is sneaky rape.

00:09:47.380 Jesus.

00:09:47.780 Right, right, so it doesn't take much of an imagination to map that onto the, you know, the feminist male who's so on the side of women that, you know, he gets to be the friend who can entice some poor girl into bed when she's at her lowest point.

00:10:00.580 So it's almost like their own insecurity and lack of manhood, manhood probably isn't the best word to use, but it stunts their own evolution.

00:10:10.580 Well, it requires that they take a different pathway to mating success.

00:10:16.900 They can't use dominance, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right, right, right.

00:10:20.680 That's so pathetic.

00:10:21.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:10:22.380 So why did you decide to come on my podcast?

00:10:26.160 I'm a huge fan, man.

00:10:27.540 Oh, well, thank you, sir.

00:10:28.360 Listen, you and I have never met, I'll be truthfully honest, I've never, I haven't done extensive research into everything you've done, but I find you to be a very kind man and very well-spoken and someone who stands on their morals and the realism of society today.

00:10:45.220 And I think that is incredibly rare, and I just highly appreciate you.

00:10:49.480 Oh, well, thank you.

00:10:50.260 I wasn't fishing for compliments, but I do appreciate the fact that they emerged.

00:10:53.940 Well, I'm curious partly, too, because you, I think it's fair to say that your primary fan base is women.

00:11:01.260 I mean, I'm not certain of that, but it is the case.

00:11:03.860 Okay.

00:11:04.080 And is it almost always women that you interact with in the crowd?

00:11:07.620 No, not at all.

00:11:08.560 It's totally, total luck of the draw, whatever happens.

00:11:10.900 I mean, women yell out the most, for sure, like, they'll heckle the most, so that will draw more adamant crowd work, like, that I didn't necessarily intend on doing, but overall, no, it's just lovely to draw.

00:11:22.260 Is that something that's particularly characteristic of your shows?

00:11:25.680 Because I would think, yeah, right, because that's not, yeah, okay.

00:11:28.880 Well, I've kind of created my own crowd work monster in a way.

00:11:32.680 A friend of mine put this in perspective for me.

00:11:34.380 If I got popular from doing crowd work, which was a very specific strategy, a lot of, I only post my crowd work because I don't feel like burning through material.

00:11:42.920 Comics build for minimum a year, two, three years, about an hour-long show, right?

00:11:47.660 I would feel like a total piece of shit if I let you pay money to come see the exact same material you just saw for free online.

00:11:54.420 So crowd work being a very unique circumstance that really isn't to be duplicated at any other show that you do,

00:11:59.480 because you're not going to meet the same person who's been through the same circumstance, has the same story to tell, right?

00:12:04.060 And this is a very unique thing that you can share, and it doesn't burn through any of your material at all.

00:12:09.060 So that's why you've been making the specials on YouTube out of crowd work.

00:12:12.500 Yeah, exactly.

00:12:13.140 Right, right, because you can make them permanent, and you said it doesn't interfere with the novelty of a prepared show.

00:12:18.880 Yes.

00:12:19.260 So you do prepared material as well.

00:12:21.080 Yeah, I have two full specials on YouTube that are fully material.

00:12:23.720 Okay, so I've only seen the crowd work, okay.

00:12:25.360 Oh, you watched the Red Flags one?

00:12:26.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:26.940 So I specifically did that special because I was getting popular for doing red flag crowd work just on TikTok,

00:12:32.780 and it got so bad to the point where I'd be in the middle of working on material,

00:12:36.820 and people would be yelling out, like, do red flags, or just yelling out, like, flip flops,

00:12:42.300 or what, like, mama's, like, yelling out their own red flags without any context at all.

00:12:45.800 So I was like, fine, I'm going to do one special at the biggest red flag city there is, Miami,

00:12:51.600 at the Miami Improv, and then that's, like, the final statement closing the chapter on my red flag crowd work.

00:12:56.280 Like, no, I don't do it anymore.

00:12:57.480 Now there's, I think the special's, like, 50 minutes long of me just doing full crowd work for 50 minutes with the people in Miami,

00:13:04.200 and it was a lot of fun.

00:13:05.680 I was happy to close the chapter, though.

00:13:08.140 Okay, so why did you close it, and why were you happy to close it?

00:13:12.920 Because it does ruin the show when people yell out.

00:13:14.900 I wanted to go, okay, I know you like this thing I do, so here's that.

00:13:18.440 Now you have that final product.

00:13:20.040 I did this specifically for you guys.

00:13:21.840 Now let me grow to do the kind of comedy I want to do.

00:13:25.860 And I'm still growing, and I'm still learning.

00:13:27.660 I'm 28 years old.

00:13:29.180 Most comics that are at the top of their game today probably just started at the age I'm at right now.

00:13:34.580 So, I mean, I have a lot of learning and growth to do.

00:13:36.920 Right, right, right.

00:13:37.680 How long have you been doing comedy professionally?

00:13:40.480 Twelve and a half years.

00:13:42.020 So since you were 16?

00:13:43.200 Fifteen, yeah.

00:13:43.800 Fifteen, fifteen.

00:13:45.200 Were you funny before that?

00:13:46.580 Yeah, yeah, I was always, like, class clown, making my friends and family and laugh.

00:13:49.820 I didn't know comedy was a career or even a job until I was about 14.

00:13:56.160 And I kind of discovered who, like, Dane Cook and Dave Chappelle were.

00:14:00.160 And those guys were at the pinnacle of comedy at that time.

00:14:03.120 So I just learned, I studied them, fell in love with the art form,

00:14:06.420 and I started doing open mics when I was 15 after school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

00:14:09.940 And everything just kind of snowballed.

00:14:11.980 And nobody in my family has ever been to college,

00:14:14.020 so there was no pressure to do anything after high school.

00:14:16.940 Everyone in my hometown kind of does the exact same thing.

00:14:18.960 How big is your own town?

00:14:20.920 About 1,200 people.

00:14:22.580 Oh, yeah.

00:14:22.980 Yeah, one stoplight that could have easily been a four-way stop.

00:14:26.320 Right, right.

00:14:26.780 Never any traffic there at all.

00:14:28.420 Yeah, yeah, yeah, but that's a mark of attainment to have at least one light in town.

00:14:32.860 Of course, of course.

00:14:33.400 Yeah, yeah.

00:14:33.860 I came from a little town in northern Alberta.

00:14:35.820 It had about 2,500 people.

00:14:37.920 Oh, yes.

00:14:38.300 It was a big deal when we got our first stoplight, which was, like, utterly unnecessary.

00:14:42.180 They just got a Dollar General on the outskirts of town, and everyone's like,

00:14:46.540 we got a new grocery store.

00:14:47.900 Yeah.

00:14:48.120 They are loving it.

00:14:49.460 Yeah, yeah.

00:14:49.820 It's a very simple town.

00:14:50.860 Yeah, yeah.

00:14:51.260 I can remember, too, that when the Kentucky Fried Chicken came to town, that was also a big deal.

00:14:56.420 When you got a KFC.

00:14:57.500 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:14:57.900 That's so funny.

00:14:58.840 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:14:59.220 In hindsight, it's one of those places growing up, you go, oh, this is so boring.

00:15:02.660 Can't wait to get out of here.

00:15:03.780 But looking back, I had such a wonderful childhood.

00:15:07.020 Even going back now, I went back maybe a couple of months ago because I had some shows.

00:15:10.500 What's the name of the town?

00:15:11.320 It's called North Lewisburg, Ohio.

00:15:13.240 It's a very, very small town about Marysville, Ohio.

00:15:16.680 It was the closest city to it, I suppose.

00:15:20.220 And I was doing shows not far from there and had to drive past it for a tour, like, two months ago.

00:15:24.520 And I stopped through there.

00:15:26.280 Nothing had changed.

00:15:27.640 And I thought that was beautiful.

00:15:29.880 Like, I live in L.A. now and I tour constantly.

00:15:33.480 But people get so wrapped up in what they think the rest of the world is actually talking about

00:15:38.400 or actually cares about when it's not true at all.

00:15:41.060 I saw kids riding their bikes and running around playing outside when I was driving through town.

00:15:45.040 I go, I haven't seen that in years.

00:15:47.280 People weren't on their phones.

00:15:48.940 People, even people at the gas station when we stopped in, the workers in there were talking,

00:15:53.000 hanging out.

00:15:53.620 Nobody was just on their phones scrolling.

00:15:55.640 We become so detached from the rest of the world when we live in certain environments.

00:15:59.120 How long have you lived in L.A.?

00:16:01.580 It'll be 11 years in January.

00:16:03.000 Oh, okay.

00:16:03.820 Yeah, after I graduated high school early at 17 and I moved out and just couch surfed for the first, like, year, year and a half.

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00:17:46.300 Okay, so what did you do in L.A.?

00:17:49.860 Okay, so first of all, you said you started doing open mics when you were about 15.

00:17:53.620 Where?

00:17:54.480 The Columbus Funny Bone in Columbus, Ohio.

00:17:57.260 I went on the comedy club's website when I kind of figured out open mics were the thing to start with.

00:18:02.020 I don't remember how I found that out.

00:18:03.460 But I remember going to their website, finding out it's 21 and up, as most comedy clubs are due to liquor license, and the owner's email was on there.

00:18:12.460 And like a naive kid, I just emailed the owner.

00:18:15.860 I was like, hey, this is my name.

00:18:17.060 This is how old I am.

00:18:17.920 I know I'm supposed to be 21 and up.

00:18:19.080 That if I have, like, a parent guardian with me, could I come in to try the open mic?

00:18:23.220 And any rational businessman would say, no, I'm not going to risk my liquor license for some kid to come in here and tell jokes.

00:18:28.820 Like, what could possibly come out of that?

00:18:31.040 But for some odd reason, he said yes.

00:18:33.440 And it allowed me an opportunity to go and practice and enjoy this new thing that I was just doing for fun.

00:18:38.560 I had no idea anything like this could ever happen to me.

00:18:42.000 It was just something I was doing for fun to, like, make my grandpa laugh.

00:18:44.740 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:18:45.860 And did you make your grandpa laugh?

00:18:47.280 Oh, my God.

00:18:47.720 He was my number one fan.

00:18:49.120 I miss him every single day.

00:18:50.880 Oh, yes.

00:18:51.960 So did you have a good time in Columbus doing this?

00:18:54.900 I did.

00:18:55.780 But it's, like most Midwestern towns, there's a ceiling, you know?

00:18:59.800 And if you have bigger dreams, you have to escape.

00:19:03.200 You have to go see what else is out there.

00:19:04.820 So tell me how your career progressed from Columbus.

00:19:09.340 How many shows did you do at Columbus?

00:19:11.480 What was the arc of your career?

00:19:13.700 So I started when I was 15, and then I got a manager at a comedy club in Atlanta over Twitter, believe it or not.

00:19:21.620 Oh, look, well, there.

00:19:22.620 Twitter was good for something.

00:19:23.400 I know.

00:19:23.660 Make or break you, I promise.

00:19:24.320 That's like the one time Twitter has been good for something.

00:19:26.640 Exactly.

00:19:27.200 It's good for getting canceled, actually.

00:19:29.040 If you want to get canceled, Twitter's excellent for that.

00:19:30.520 It's kind of only its use.

00:19:31.640 Yeah.

00:19:32.440 Jesus.

00:19:33.880 That is its primary use.

00:19:35.400 What else is it?

00:19:35.960 It's just negativity.

00:19:37.480 It's the worst app.

00:19:38.860 People who thrive on Twitter rarely do well in life.

00:19:40.940 It's so bad.

00:19:41.820 But this was when Twitter was kind of brand new.

00:19:45.360 So what would happen was comics that I was a fan of would come through the state of Ohio, whether Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati, or Columbus.

00:19:52.700 And this was a time where Twitter was so new, you could access anybody.

00:19:57.280 This was a time when Ashton Kutcher was the only person to have a million followers on there.

00:20:02.100 Like most celebrities had maybe 10,000 followers on there.

00:20:06.560 You could tweet to somebody, and they would see it, and they would respond.

00:20:09.500 So I would tweet to favorite comics of mine when they were coming through the state of Ohio.

00:20:12.840 And I'd be like, hey, I'm a big fan.

00:20:13.880 I'm a kid.

00:20:14.840 Can I do a guest spot on your show?

00:20:16.140 And some would say no.

00:20:17.100 Some would thankfully say yes.

00:20:19.220 So who gave you an early opportunity?

00:20:21.360 D.L.

00:20:21.780 Hughley actually gave me my first ever guest spot, which was so funny.

00:20:26.000 Because when I was 15 years old, my extent of my D.L.

00:20:29.000 Hughley knowledge was just soul playing, where he played a bathroom attendant.

00:20:33.080 His smallest credit to date has to be.

00:20:35.480 I had no realization that he was one of the kings of comedy, like one of the greatest to ever do it and go on one of the most famous tours of all time.

00:20:43.220 But he was so kind to me.

00:20:44.540 He gave me my first guest spot.

00:20:46.480 My second guest spot was Finesse Mitchell, and then it was Ralphie May, who was a brother of mine.

00:20:53.260 He's one that really helped me out in my younger years.

00:20:55.160 But through Twitter, there was this comedy club owner in Atlanta who knew D.L. for a very long time.

00:21:01.740 And he saw D.L. Hughley and I just going back and forth, joking back and forth with each other on Twitter.

00:21:05.620 He reached out.

00:21:07.420 My mom and I drove down from Ohio to Atlanta.

00:21:10.120 It's like a nine-hour drive to come perform at his club for a weekend.

00:21:13.980 Went there.

00:21:15.640 We hit it off really well.

00:21:16.720 He explained to me the things he wanted to do for my career, and I didn't know any better.

00:21:20.580 So I was like, yeah, however you want to help.

00:21:22.600 And my mom was also like, yeah, whatever, keep some off drugs, I guess.

00:21:26.940 Did that work?

00:21:27.780 Did it keep you off drugs?

00:21:29.500 Until like my early 20s.

00:21:30.960 Yeah, I would say so.

00:21:31.840 Well, that's not bad.

00:21:32.300 That's probably better.

00:21:33.100 That's a better time to start than like 12.

00:21:33.720 He did a fantastic job.

00:21:35.360 Yeah, exactly.

00:21:36.240 I'm from Ohio.

00:21:37.200 I'm lucky I didn't brush my teeth with fentanyl growing up.

00:21:39.300 It was bad.

00:21:40.800 My hometown was so trashy.

00:21:42.660 So he finds me on Twitter.

00:21:47.040 We go down there.

00:21:48.180 We meet.

00:21:48.640 We hit it off.

00:21:49.680 And he offers me to come down there the summer between my junior and senior year of high school.

00:21:54.200 And I go down there, and I live on a comics couch for three months my entire summer break.

00:21:59.580 I go down there, and I'm doing nine to 11 shows a week.

00:22:02.560 I'm going to the malls.

00:22:04.040 I'm passing out free tickets.

00:22:05.680 I'm hanging posters up to promote shows.

00:22:07.640 I'm going in to the comedy club at 3 p.m. to like practice my set while he throws tennis balls at me and honks horns and jingles.

00:22:15.340 Anything he can do to distract me to a very Mr. Miyagi.

00:22:19.540 That was part of the training regimen.

00:22:21.620 Exactly, exactly.

00:22:22.580 And I think to this day, I think it helps me keep my composure in the pocket.

00:22:25.720 Like I'm not thrown for a loop when somebody yells out something.

00:22:28.360 Yeah, right.

00:22:28.380 That typical exposure therapy from a psychological perspective.

00:22:31.900 Exactly.

00:22:32.380 It's a way faster way to say it.

00:22:34.180 Yeah, oh, that's cool.

00:22:35.180 So what way?

00:22:36.400 Huh.

00:22:36.660 So how did he know to do that, do you think?

00:22:40.020 That's smart.

00:22:41.480 I'm not sure.

00:22:42.600 He's a fantastic guy.

00:22:44.080 His name's Gary Abdo.

00:22:45.280 He's very prominent in the comedy community.

00:22:48.000 He's helped out a lot of people starting out their career.

00:22:50.420 He was very prominent in Chappelle's early years.

00:22:53.160 He was like a late teenager, earthquake.

00:22:55.560 Right, so he's probably seen people thrown by hecklers and so forth and by trouble.

00:22:59.880 Absolutely.

00:23:00.180 Because you can't get knocked out of your groove.

00:23:01.580 Well, his comedy club down there was called Uptown Comedy Corner.

00:23:04.180 And it was notoriously known as like one of the harshest comedy clubs in the country.

00:23:10.440 It was a tough environment.

00:23:12.120 Like they either loved you or they would boo you off stage.

00:23:14.440 Oh yeah, oh yeah.

00:23:14.820 So for me to go in there as a kid, yes, you have the novelty of like, he's a kid, give him

00:23:19.540 a chance.

00:23:19.900 Right, right.

00:23:20.460 But only so far.

00:23:22.880 Yeah, so you got to get them in the first couple of minutes.

00:23:25.020 Otherwise, they're not going to sit there and watch you do five or ten minutes.

00:23:27.160 They just, they don't have that patience in them.

00:23:29.180 So I go down there and I get trained in like one of the harshest environments possible.

00:23:33.840 And in doing that, I meet more comics who are coming through the club.

00:23:36.380 I would pretty much open for like anybody that came through the club down there.

00:23:39.060 I met a lot of comics who lived out of LA.

00:23:41.120 So then when I went back to high school for my senior year, I knew I didn't want to go

00:23:44.640 to college.

00:23:45.020 I knew comedy is what I wanted to do.

00:23:46.700 So I flew out to Los Angeles and I took the CHESP, the California proficiency exam, which

00:23:53.220 in certain states is kind of like college where you have to have a certain amount of

00:23:56.320 credits to graduate high school.

00:23:57.440 The CHESP is essentially a test you can take at any time that basically tests you out of

00:24:01.340 high school.

00:24:01.700 You've learned everything you need to learn.

00:24:02.800 Oh, really?

00:24:03.420 Oh, that's a great, that's a great option.

00:24:05.240 Fantastic.

00:24:05.760 So I flew out there, took the test, came back, had to wait like two weeks for my results,

00:24:12.040 but I had a good feeling about it.

00:24:13.360 So I was just going to school for two weeks and just like sleeping throughout class.

00:24:17.780 I wouldn't do any of the work.

00:24:18.800 I wouldn't take any of the tests.

00:24:19.780 How old were you at that point?

00:24:21.260 I had just turned 17.

00:24:22.760 Like maybe I had just turned 17.

00:24:24.340 I was maybe still 16.

00:24:24.760 And so that's after you came back from LA.

00:24:26.700 Yes.

00:24:27.140 Right, right.

00:24:27.640 I came back from taking the test, waiting for the results, got the results back at like

00:24:32.460 the first week of January, moved out to my friend Eric Griffin's couch two weeks

00:24:36.720 after that.

00:24:37.660 So I was about like four or five months early from graduating high school, moved out there,

00:24:41.720 lived on his couch for the first couple of months.

00:24:44.060 Then my manager at the time, his son graduated film school.

00:24:47.720 He moved out to Los Angeles.

00:24:48.800 I stayed on his couch for the next year.

00:24:50.780 And I was just going to comedy clubs every single night.

00:24:53.040 I would go and just hang out.

00:24:54.580 Some of them wouldn't even let me hang out inside until finally people would vouch for

00:24:58.820 me.

00:24:59.140 People wouldn't show up on the lineup.

00:25:00.680 And somebody was like, well, he's here.

00:25:01.920 All right.

00:25:02.160 So you're hanging around enough to get your opportunity.

00:25:04.580 Exactly.

00:25:05.240 But funny enough, sometimes I would get the opportunity to go on stage and I literally couldn't step foot

00:25:09.660 in the comedy club until they're like announcing and Matt Reif.

00:25:13.300 And then I would have to run through into the comedy club, go on stage and leave immediately

00:25:16.880 after because I wasn't 21.

00:25:18.720 So they still had to abide by like their own rules in a very loophole way.

00:25:23.140 And in doing that, I just kind of stayed consistent in the scene.

00:25:26.100 I was getting more and more prominent stage time.

00:25:28.040 I started to book smaller and smaller, smaller turning into larger TV appearances, which was

00:25:33.940 some Disney stuff that led to a bunch of MTV stuff.

00:25:36.540 And then after I left on my MTV stuff, I just became really dedicated to stand up and transferring

00:25:43.240 over to acting and producing and developing and all that kind of stuff.

00:25:46.120 So what did you do for MTV?

00:25:47.960 My first thing I did on there was Wild and Out.

00:25:50.460 I did four seasons of that.

00:25:52.220 I was like the youngest cast member.

00:25:53.880 It was right after Pete Davidson left there to go to SNL.

00:25:58.080 They needed a white guy.

00:25:59.420 And I happened to fit like that exact mold.

00:26:01.920 Went on there, learned so much.

00:26:03.540 So that's a very strange diversity hire.

00:26:05.540 Oh, of course.

00:26:06.740 Yeah, yeah.

00:26:07.020 We're short of white guys.

00:26:08.520 Yeah, let's call Matt.

00:26:09.580 He's white.

00:26:09.940 Never heard of you more.

00:26:10.680 No, no.

00:26:11.080 That's not a likely diversity hire.

00:26:13.300 But it could not have been a better learning experience because I was a very insecure,

00:26:18.180 shy kid.

00:26:18.880 And I was going on a show with comics.

00:26:21.180 This was the revamp of Wild and Out.

00:26:23.360 This was after Kevin Hart, D. Ray Davis, Corey Holcomb, all these amazing, Cat Williams,

00:26:27.620 all these fantastic comics had left the show and they rebooted it with a lot of comics I

00:26:33.200 knew from the Atlanta scene who were monsters.

00:26:36.060 Carlos Miller, DC Young Fly, Chico Bean are all killers on stage.

00:26:41.760 And I had to compete with them.

00:26:44.320 And I knew I couldn't, but I at least had to hold my ground.

00:26:47.180 And in doing that, I just went through the gauntlet over there.

00:26:49.740 Like everyone at that show turned me into a man with confidence on stage.

00:26:55.180 And I'm so grateful for that.

00:26:57.400 I can't imagine I would have gotten that experience anywhere else.

00:27:00.740 So I did a few seasons on the show and the show was fun.

00:27:03.860 I enjoyed my experience on there, but I had a very niche role to play.

00:27:06.960 Every joke I said had to be about me being a white guy on the show.

00:27:11.640 If I ever tried to step out.

00:27:12.700 That's a very constrained routine.

00:27:13.940 Yes.

00:27:14.500 Anytime I try to step out of it, people will be like, what are you doing?

00:27:17.600 And I'm like, oh, I thought I was going to do like a clever joke.

00:27:20.140 And they're like, no, no, no, no, no.

00:27:21.020 Do the thing you're here to do.

00:27:22.860 And although I enjoyed it and I had to build a little bit of a name for myself, I was like, this isn't what I want to do for that.

00:27:27.820 Well, that's an interesting set of constraints, right?

00:27:29.980 I mean, it's a very tight set of constraints.

00:27:31.800 And one of the facts that emerges from the literature on creativity is that you tend to get creative responses when people are constrained very severely.

00:27:42.080 Best example I know of that is, so there's a Japanese poetry form known as haiku, which has very strict rules.

00:27:48.780 Well, MIT nerds set up a website decades ago now that was devoted to haiku that could only be about the luncheon meets spam.

00:27:58.120 And there's like 50,000 haikus.

00:28:00.120 There's literally 50,000 haikus online in the online haiku spam archive.

00:28:05.880 And they're hilarious.

00:28:06.800 But partly they're hilarious because, well, it's bad enough that you have to just do haiku.

00:28:11.500 Of course.

00:28:11.840 Because that's like pointless and constraining to begin with.

00:28:14.540 But then to restrict it even further.

00:28:16.580 So specific.

00:28:17.040 Well, yeah.

00:28:17.400 Well, it forces a kind of wit.

00:28:19.200 And so I can imagine that having the constraint of only being able to make jokes about being the white guy must have also been one of the things that sharpened your wit.

00:28:28.040 I think so, too.

00:28:29.180 And I think, unless I'm misconstruing this, I think that's probably why crowd work works the best for me.

00:28:36.080 Because I'm very constrained.

00:28:36.900 I have to answer what they're saying to me with a funny response in association with what they're talking about.

00:28:43.820 I don't have vast options.

00:28:46.140 It has to be now and it has to be about what they're saying.

00:28:48.580 Okay.

00:28:48.820 So you said that you were a shy kid.

00:28:51.200 And obviously the last thing in some ways that you would expect a shy kid to be doing is to be doing online stand-up comedy in front of live audiences and then taping that that's specifically devoted to crowd work.

00:29:04.820 Because I can't actually imagine a situation, you know, maybe if you threw someone on stage and said, like, sing naked, that would be about the equivalent of inducing self-consciousness.

00:29:14.780 So how did you get to the point where, what did you have to do so that your shyness was no longer making you self-conscious on stage?

00:29:24.440 And how is it that you orient yourself towards the audience so you don't become self-conscious when you're, now you'll become self-conscious because we're dealt with this.

00:29:31.960 No, no, not at all.

00:29:33.200 Not at all.

00:29:33.700 So I'm curious about how you keep yourself not focusing on whether or not you're being funny, for example, when you're interacting with the audience.

00:29:44.900 It's purely confidence, whether it's real or fake confidence.

00:29:48.260 I think when I was younger.

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00:30:56.580 I did develop a fake confidence.

00:31:01.380 Yes, right.

00:31:02.020 I was bullied a lot in high school.

00:31:05.080 Not like getting shoved into lockers, but to the point where I wasn't in anybody's group.

00:31:09.580 You know, I was a class clown.

00:31:11.080 I was the butt of a lot of people's jokes, which didn't hurt, at least I tell myself, but I think that's where you learn to deflect, right?

00:31:21.940 You have two options in a moment when somebody makes a joke at your expense.

00:31:24.660 You can either laugh along and play into it and go with it, or you can be embarrassed and everybody sees you're embarrassed, which is even more embarrassing.

00:31:32.680 Yeah, right.

00:31:33.240 That just invites further abuse.

00:31:35.160 So I think growing up, I developed this sense of false confidence where I went, hey, if I also make fun of myself and I get in on your guys' joke, it won't hurt or people can't tell that I'm obsessed.

00:31:45.480 People think it doesn't bother me.

00:31:46.920 Because obviously, like, so I'm going to challenge your supposition that that was false.

00:31:51.280 Well, because the thing about being funny is that if you're false, you're not funny.

00:31:55.940 And if you're not funny and you're being bullied, you're just going to get bullied worse.

00:31:59.200 So you were obviously, it seems like you were able to generate responses that were witty and that were funny.

00:32:05.720 But purely a defense mechanism, I think.

00:32:07.560 It wasn't for the point of like, oh, I hope I get a good joke off here.

00:32:10.780 I think it was, I have to deflect them saying a mean thing with me saying a funny thing.

00:32:15.620 Right, but that is, so I would say that is a good, that's actually a very sophisticated defense.

00:32:21.000 Because, I mean, one of the things that people do, guys do this particularly in like relatively rough working class jobs is they'll throw pointed barbs at each other to see, you know, are you the sort of person who gets irritated and flies off the handle and can't be trusted in a crisis?

00:32:37.500 Or are you the sort of person that can roll with a joke and maybe even say something funny?

00:32:42.420 And so I wouldn't say that the ability to do that is false.

00:32:45.600 I would say that's a sophisticated, it's more sophisticated form of defense than physical aggression.

00:32:50.580 I mean, physical aggression can be useful, but that's a, that's, there isn't a more sophisticated way of parrying like a pointed remark than to turn it into something that's funny and to toss it back.

00:33:02.120 Oh, well, thank you.

00:33:03.360 Yeah, I mean, it was a, it was a totally subconscious skill set.

00:33:06.880 I had no idea until right now, apparently, what I was even doing.

00:33:11.040 So, A, thank you.

00:33:12.820 And B, I think it starts then.

00:33:15.980 And then the longer you do stand up, you realize you're funny.

00:33:20.140 Eventually, you do realize you're funny.

00:33:22.000 Chris Rock talks about this all the time when he talks about, when comedians can't tell a joke on stage and it doesn't work.

00:33:28.860 After a certain point, you know you're funny, you're just not saying your joke correctly, where the audience perceives it the way you want them to perceive it.

00:33:36.560 Right, so you don't, you don't experience moments of global doubt.

00:33:39.460 Exactly.

00:33:40.080 It's localized.

00:33:40.740 Exactly.

00:33:41.340 Yeah, yeah.

00:33:41.700 So I think after a while, I mean, after doing comedy for 12 years and having had shows of uproarious laughter and standing ovations, you know you're capable of being funny and putting on a good show.

00:33:54.000 Right, right.

00:33:54.600 So I think that confidence is paired with the control of an audience.

00:34:00.780 When you're on stage with a microphone, people are there to watch and listen to you.

00:34:04.940 Right, right.

00:34:05.260 They're also hoping you'll be funny except for the audio control.

00:34:08.300 So they're on your, they could be on your side.

00:34:10.620 Yes.

00:34:10.960 And then once people see how you can handle that kind of power, that you can be funny, that you can shut somebody down, I think people are more apt to take the seat and just go, okay, let me just see what he does.

00:34:24.660 Right, right.

00:34:25.260 They're going to give you more of the benefit of the doubt.

00:34:27.080 Exactly.

00:34:27.300 Yeah, well, and it's tricky, too, responding to a crowd like that, too, because you have to be funny, and this is, I suppose, in some ways why you've gotten into trouble.

00:34:35.700 You have to be funny, but you can't be too mean, right?

00:34:40.600 You can't hit a fly with a sledgehammer.

00:34:42.600 Of course.

00:34:42.880 Your response has to be proportionate.

00:34:44.740 Yes.

00:34:44.900 I mean, you up the ante a little bit.

00:34:46.300 That's my presumption.

00:34:47.620 You up the ante a little bit when someone says something smart, but you don't come out with, like, the long knives and hack someone to bits.

00:34:52.960 Oh, of course.

00:34:53.660 Right, because that'll turn them against, because, first of all, you can actually hurt someone publicly by doing that, which is not good if it's not necessary, and second, you could easily turn the audience against you.

00:35:04.020 Well, this is also, again, why I think it's so unfair that comedians, in particular, face this kind of absurd cancellation pressure, because the line that a good comic is walking on is so damn thin.

00:35:16.620 You have to be playing with disaster in order to be funny, right?

00:35:20.340 The things you say, this is one of the things I used to really like about Sarah Silverman, because she would say, you could see it, you could see it, she'd be listening to someone, and some absolutely horrible thought would come into her mind, and then she'd have the guts to lay it out, even though it was, like, rude and unacceptable beyond belief.

00:35:38.480 Well, I think comedy is purely down to intent.

00:35:41.880 When people are bullying you, like, when high schoolers are making fun of something about you, that's a totally different intent.

00:35:48.660 Even though they are making a joke, their intention is that you're going to feel a certain kind of way.

00:35:53.100 That is what differentiates it from stand-up comedy.

00:35:56.740 Every single thing I say on stage is said with nothing but the intention to make people laugh, and I understand it's not going to make everybody else laugh.

00:36:06.720 Some people heal totally differently when it comes to certain topics.

00:36:09.700 I get that, and I accept that.

00:36:11.780 I'm not for you.

00:36:13.080 Yeah, but getting touchy about that, even if you've been hurt, getting touchy about that, first of all, that's a sign that you still have some real work to do.

00:36:20.580 And second, getting touchy about that and then shielding yourself from any exposure to that is not the way to being cured.

00:36:28.180 Quite the contrary, you know?

00:36:29.580 Like, it's better if you've had a traumatic experience in your life not to protect yourself unduly from situations that might bring that back up,

00:36:40.760 but to voluntarily expose yourself to situations where that's likely to be the case.

00:36:44.820 And so it might be understandable in that people have been hurt, but it's counterproductive even with regard to their own recovery.

00:36:53.100 Oh, absolutely.

00:36:54.140 And, you know, partly what comedy does, too, it has this psychological function, is that it does provide an...

00:36:59.780 It's sort of like a horror movie in some ways, you know?

00:37:02.720 It's a weird thing that people will go voluntarily watch a horror movie, because you might ask, like, why would you pay to be scared?

00:37:09.800 Yeah.

00:37:09.980 But you're not. You're paying for the experience of the mastery of your fear, right?

00:37:15.840 And you have to...

00:37:16.540 Well, and then in comedy, you see the same sort of thing happening, is the comedians are always toying with the forbidden.

00:37:22.040 And the reason for that, in part, the reason the audience participates, is because, well, we often have to deal with the forbidden,

00:37:28.400 and often some of the things we forbid aren't things that we should be avoiding or forbidding.

00:37:34.520 So, Russell Peters, he's a good example.

00:37:39.260 Peters, when he does his huge stadium shows, it's so interesting to watch them, because he tells racist jokes nonstop.

00:37:46.340 And you can feel that there's a palpable demand in the audience from the ethnic group that he hasn't yet skewered,

00:37:55.660 to be skewered so that they can show that they can take a joke, that they're in on the joke, right?

00:38:00.380 And so, comedians, they have that function of putting forward, what would you say, unpalatable truths, right,

00:38:08.620 in a place where everyone's there to do that voluntarily.

00:38:11.800 That's part of the game.

00:38:12.760 How far can we push things?

00:38:14.080 And then to get all bitchy about that and to try to cancel someone, in consequence,

00:38:18.720 I saw this one guy on YouTube who's complaining about you.

00:38:21.780 You know, he said, first of all...

00:38:22.980 Which one?

00:38:23.000 Oh, maybe you'll recognize him.

00:38:25.420 He said that, you know, you built your career as an ally of women.

00:38:29.720 That was basically his point.

00:38:30.920 Now that you've betrayed him, you've betrayed them with your jokes about domestic abuse.

00:38:35.800 And so, he was playing this, you know, I'm the friend of women sort of game.

00:38:38.820 Yeah.

00:38:39.280 But he's violating that contract, too, which is that everybody's there in a comedy club to play with disaster.

00:38:45.520 And, you know, you're essentially supposed to go along with that.

00:38:48.460 I just don't understand how the environment isn't taken into consideration.

00:38:54.860 Like, that is...

00:38:55.580 The environment is the context.

00:38:57.580 Think of comedy like a store, like a restaurant front, right?

00:39:00.380 You go in there, the food's not for you.

00:39:02.680 You can leave.

00:39:03.480 You didn't have to stop in here.

00:39:04.860 It's such...

00:39:05.860 Comedy is such a niche field.

00:39:07.600 It's not...

00:39:08.340 I wouldn't consider stand-up comedy a mainstream art form.

00:39:11.200 I wouldn't.

00:39:11.480 It's not film.

00:39:12.240 It's not television.

00:39:12.980 It's not music.

00:39:13.760 It's not as globally celebrated in every household, you know?

00:39:17.720 So I think it just blows my mind that people can't just let it be.

00:39:22.260 If it's not for you, it's not for you.

00:39:23.380 Well, I see what's happening, I think.

00:39:26.000 Like, even this guy that criticized you in the manner that I just described, I found what he had to say, and him, for that matter, contemptible.

00:39:36.160 I thought it was pathetic.

00:39:37.180 But this is something social media does, is that his video, even though I don't think it redounds to his credit, has given him more exposure, likely, than anything he will ever do in his life, right?

00:39:50.960 And so one of the problems is, and this is a huge problem on the social media side, is that we've put undue access to status in the hands of people who will misuse accusations to garner attention.

00:40:05.460 You know, and you might say, well, why would people want that kind of negative attention?

00:40:08.760 And the answer to that is, well, high school shooters will shoot up a high school for attention, and they'll shoot themselves afterwards, which seems to be run kind of contrary to their desire for attention.

00:40:18.280 But what that just shows is how much people want attention.

00:40:21.400 And the problem, one of the massive problems with social media is that it provides people who are willing to do something like savage your reputation with way more attention than they could ever accrue, given their own status and abilities.

00:40:39.300 And so what to do about that?

00:40:41.380 I have no idea, although apologizing is a bad idea.

00:40:44.300 Yeah, absolutely not.

00:40:45.200 I'll never apologize for a joke, ever.

00:40:48.300 I just find the prioritization of human beings to be so f***ed.

00:40:56.200 You're on this earth for 80 years, let's call it, on average, whatever it was, what's the average, 83, something like that?

00:41:02.500 80 funny years.

00:41:03.320 80 funny years.

00:41:04.140 After that, they're not so funny.

00:41:05.200 I disagree.

00:41:05.780 I think after 80, you get to be funnier.

00:41:07.460 You get to excuse.

00:41:08.200 You can shit wherever you want after 90.

00:41:09.740 I think if you're on this earth for such a limited amount of time, how insane is it to sit behind your phone and computer and complain about something you don't like?

00:41:22.080 When you have a world at your hands of all the things you do like, what an absolute waste of energy, time, and emotion.

00:41:30.580 So, why do you think you were inclined, when this tempest in a teapot emerged, to make arguably even a worse joke?

00:41:44.120 Because I think, which I'm very pleased about, by the way.

00:41:47.220 I thought that was actually a masterstroke.

00:41:49.020 Thank you.

00:41:49.520 Because you topped what you were being accused of by picking on an even lower status group, which I thought was-

00:41:56.220 I disagree.

00:41:56.840 Okay, go ahead.

00:41:57.860 I disagree.

00:41:58.420 When people think that joke was intended to make fun of special needs people, that's-

00:42:03.020 No, no, I'm definitely not making that assumption.

00:42:05.680 Okay, okay.

00:42:05.880 But that was the risk of the misinterpretation.

00:42:07.940 Of course.

00:42:08.540 No, I thought it was-

00:42:09.280 And that was inevitably what happened.

00:42:10.120 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:42:10.480 And I go, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:42:11.180 But it was a risk.

00:42:11.900 It was a daring and risky move.

00:42:13.500 And I also thought it was hilarious.

00:42:15.060 But the thing is, that is often not what happens.

00:42:17.820 I mean, I've seen celebrity after celebrity who are cornered by a small minority of their audience, right, abjectly apologize.

00:42:28.060 And so, did you, first of all, did you have any guilt about the domestic violence joke?

00:42:33.360 Which, by the way, I also thought was very funny.

00:42:35.180 No, because it's a completely made-up story.

00:42:37.940 Like, it's, it's, it's, I went to one diner and a girl had like a little bruise under her eye and it was like a conversational joke that happened at our table.

00:42:45.680 And I went, this, this is crazy.

00:42:48.160 How do you describe this humor?

00:42:49.980 Is, is there a definition or a label for the kind of humor that you just say the worst possible scenario?

00:42:56.500 It's funny because it's ridiculous.

00:42:58.620 Because you know it's not true.

00:43:00.600 Because you know it's not what you mean.

00:43:02.660 You know it's not the right thing.

00:43:04.060 That is what makes it funny.

00:43:06.940 What is, how, how is that, how, what is that level, what is that style of comedy describe this?

00:43:10.920 Well, it's a kind of irony.

00:43:12.140 It's a kind of irony.

00:43:12.880 Is it irony?

00:43:13.360 It's a kind of irony.

00:43:14.340 It's not fully sarcasm.

00:43:15.560 It's not totally satire.

00:43:18.040 No, no, no.

00:43:18.840 But it's a wildly common sense of humor.

00:43:22.200 Like, a lot of people share that together.

00:43:24.620 And that is who I want to.

00:43:25.980 Yeah, well, that's part of, that's part of ridicule, I would say.

00:43:28.860 Like, you know, but the, the exaggeration of something, it's also, you know, if you take,

00:43:35.220 okay, so you took this scenario that you saw at a restaurant and blew it up into something beyond what it was.

00:43:40.200 See, it's another form of exposure there too, because obviously domestic violence is a terrible thing.

00:43:45.240 And there's nothing funny about someone with a black eye, except under very restricted circumstances.

00:43:50.160 But being able to, see, one of the things that you do when you set up a terrible scenario,

00:43:56.060 and then you make a joke about it, is first of all, you signal to the audience that you understand that this was a terrible scenario.

00:44:03.100 And then you signal that even though you know it was a terrible scenario,

00:44:07.120 there's part of you that can rise above it and transcend it, right?

00:44:10.040 And to make light of it.

00:44:12.060 And I don't think there is anything really more admirable in human beings than their ability to make light of a tragedy.

00:44:18.940 And light doesn't mean to minimize its importance.

00:44:23.780 It means to transform something that's truly negative into something that's manageable and comical.

00:44:30.780 One of the things I've seen with people who've undergone very deeply traumatic experiences

00:44:35.680 is that you know that they've recovered from their absolute catastrophe when they can start making a joke about it.

00:44:43.680 And my daughter, for example, had a very rough childhood and adolescence.

00:44:48.020 She was very, very ill.

00:44:49.100 And she can tell the worst parts of her experiences in a manner that's like,

00:44:53.820 it'll bring tears of laughter to your eyes.

00:44:56.260 It's screamingly funny.

00:44:57.980 Partly because it's so awful.

00:45:00.880 You just can't believe it, right?

00:45:02.360 Of course.

00:45:02.780 But partly because in recounting it and sharing it,

00:45:05.960 you also signal that it can be talked about, it can be faced,

00:45:09.940 and it can be transcended and got by.

00:45:12.460 And that's what you're doing in real time on a comedy stage.

00:45:15.980 It's like, yeah, we share this snake pit of hell that we all live in from time to time,

00:45:20.740 but that doesn't mean that we have to dive in and wallow in it.

00:45:24.300 We can make light of it.

00:45:25.480 And that's what great comedians do continually.

00:45:28.180 And so I thought that's what you did with the domestic violence joke.

00:45:31.800 And you added some nice kitchen-related misogyny to that very rapidly, which was a good...

00:45:36.700 It's a modern twist on an old joke.

00:45:38.880 You know what I mean?

00:45:39.480 It was a real circumstance that happened.

00:45:41.880 I'm sorry.

00:45:44.320 An exaggerated instance that really happened, and I went, you know, this is a classic joke.

00:45:49.980 Why not give my own personal modern twist on it and move on?

00:45:53.420 The joke's like a minute and 30 seconds, and people were like, all he did was bash women for an hour.

00:45:59.280 I go, did you get to the cum?

00:46:01.220 There's so much cum in the middle of the show.

00:46:03.800 Then we talk about airplanes and ghosts and monsters.

00:46:06.160 It was such a minute thing that I go, hey, just...

00:46:09.560 And I purposely did it first in the show to go, hey, just so you know, this is the kind of humor I like to tell.

00:46:16.700 And if it's not for you, you are so more than welcome to turn off the TV right now.

00:46:20.360 I don't want you to fall in love with me and then paint a wrong perspective of who you think I am.

00:46:26.060 And then halfway through the show, he goes, oh, he ruined it.

00:46:28.120 I'd rather tell you up front, like, hey, we're going to do some dark humor because this is how I personally...

00:46:33.280 Jimmy Carr does that, too.

00:46:34.540 He's brilliant.

00:46:35.180 He often starts out with, like, the worst thing he can possibly say just to establish the boundaries.

00:46:39.580 Why not?

00:46:40.380 Yeah.

00:46:40.980 I find it wildly important to make light of dark situations.

00:46:46.900 I feel like you have two options to deal with the situation.

00:46:48.780 You can either, when it comes to a certain topic, you can either let it take up a negative space in your mind and energy to where,

00:46:53.600 if the word or topic even gets said around you, you get so triggered and uncomfortable, it ruins your day.

00:47:00.280 And the day of everyone around you.

00:47:01.980 Yes.

00:47:02.300 Or you can find a way to laugh about it.

00:47:04.540 Find a way to heal.

00:47:05.680 So that way, next time somebody brings it up, maybe you have something positive to say about your experience or how you've come to deal with it

00:47:12.760 that can then lead to other people healing through the same way.

00:47:16.260 When my grandpa passed away, my friends knew.

00:47:19.840 My friends bombarded me with dead grandfather jokes.

00:47:23.220 They knew that was going to help me laugh and get through that.

00:47:26.200 And it was the toughest moment of my entire life.

00:47:28.680 And to this day.

00:47:28.980 See, that's also a testament in many ways to your character because your friends knew that even under those dire circumstances,

00:47:36.360 that they could still poke and prod at you and that you might be able to manage the situation with something approximating a sense of humor.

00:47:44.700 Precisely.

00:47:45.180 When I used, I lectured at Harvard for a long time on Auschwitz.

00:47:49.800 And that's about as dark a topic as you can possibly manage.

00:47:54.180 And I had a voice in the back of my mind constantly.

00:47:57.240 It was dead serious lectures, right?

00:47:58.800 And the voice said continually, if you were truly a master of this topic, you could deal with it with a light touch.

00:48:05.980 And I thought, oh my God, really?

00:48:08.520 Like, really?

00:48:09.320 I'm going to talk about how prison guards took delight in torturing people at Auschwitz.

00:48:14.500 And I'm going to do that with a light touch.

00:48:16.920 And I realized after thinking about that for a very long time, like decades really,

00:48:21.600 that you aren't a master of something until you can deal with it with a light touch, no matter how dark a subject that it is.

00:48:28.740 And like, obviously, the darker the subject, the more mastery you have to have in order to make light of it, clearly, right?

00:48:35.540 Without going sideways.

00:48:37.140 But I still do think it's a sign of mastery.

00:48:39.640 And that's why people enjoy the laughter so much, right?

00:48:42.120 Because it is a signal of mastery, often over tragedy and what's forbidden and what's dark.

00:48:47.540 And to interfere with that, that means that the woke types who are interfering with that are actually doing a disservice to the very morality that they claim to stand for.

00:48:57.040 Because what you're doing, if you're a comic, is actually helping people, not hurting them.

00:49:01.060 And you can tell you're helping them because they laugh.

00:49:03.480 Oh, of course.

00:49:04.600 And it doesn't need to be for the masses.

00:49:06.360 If you reach even just a few people, you're doing the right thing.

00:49:09.720 Like I said at the beginning of the podcast, everything I do is just to make people laugh, right?

00:49:14.280 Okay, so I'm curious about that.

00:49:15.740 Because, well, obviously, the people who apologize for offending someone with their art or their comedy must have doubts about their own intent, right?

00:49:26.560 So someone comes along and jabs them and says, maybe you're just a mean son of a bitch.

00:49:30.740 And they go, well, you know, maybe I should be more careful.

00:49:33.640 Maybe they're feeling a bit depressed.

00:49:35.020 Whatever.

00:49:35.420 They do step back and doubt themselves.

00:49:37.600 So, you know, and you could say that there are two reasons that someone called for their misbehavior might doubt themselves.

00:49:43.980 One would be that they're narcissistic and the other would be that they're actually confident in their intent.

00:49:49.900 Okay, now you've indicated a number of times while we've talked that you are confident in your intent.

00:49:56.400 Yeah.

00:49:56.560 Okay, so if I was like a persistent skeptic, I would say, well, you clearly offended 12,000 people.

00:50:06.120 That was the number you came up with.

00:50:07.460 Why are you so confident in your intent that your belief in your own goodness in relationship to comedy trumps the fact that like 12,000 people are telling you that you said something offensive?

00:50:19.280 Because if 12,000 people are sending that, I would say 100,000 people are saying they loved it and they've been through domestic violence situations.

00:50:26.760 And they found the joke very funny, that they are actually able to deal with that situation in a comedic light.

00:50:32.460 Right, right.

00:50:33.060 And I commend that bravery.

00:50:35.280 I can only imagine what it takes to get through something like that.

00:50:37.980 But if I can help in any way, even if it was on accident, I feel great about it.

00:50:44.420 Okay, so part of what you used for calibration was the fact that as far as you could tell, honestly looking at it, first of all, that you were just trying to be funny and that that joke didn't differ from a thousand other jokes that you've told.

00:50:56.680 Yeah.

00:50:56.840 But also that a marked majority of people agreed with that.

00:51:01.520 God laughs in the club.

00:51:03.120 Well, that's kind of how you know, right?

00:51:04.580 People actually laugh.

00:51:05.540 I toured that bit for the past five months in probably, oh God, 200 cities I did that joking and opened with it and it crushed every time, which is why I kept it for the special.

00:51:18.180 Like that's how you gauge a reaction.

00:51:20.420 Look, some jokes won't be funny.

00:51:23.360 I'm currently building a new show right now.

00:51:25.560 I'm constantly, I'm doing so many new jokes right now.

00:51:27.580 Some of them will stay.

00:51:28.200 Some of them won't stay.

00:51:28.860 You have to gauge.

00:51:29.900 Yeah.

00:51:30.140 You have to try to figure out what works and what doesn't.

00:51:33.280 And you have to listen.

00:51:34.560 You have to listen.

00:51:35.480 Yeah, yeah.

00:51:36.220 Okay, so that's a good, well, that's good too because one of the things, so Freud regarded jokes as a route to the unconscious, like as part of the royal road to the unconscious.

00:51:46.800 Well, the reason for that is that you don't get to decide whether you're going to laugh if it's a genuine laugh.

00:51:52.620 If someone says something that's funny, you'll laugh even if you're embarrassed about laughing afterwards, right?

00:51:58.720 So the funniest jokes are actually the ones where you laugh despite yourself.

00:52:03.280 Yeah, of course.

00:52:04.240 Right, right, right.

00:52:04.820 But what that shows is that when you tell a good joke, you're striking someone very rapidly and very hard in a part of their being that can't be faked.

00:52:13.780 So there's something dreadfully honest about comedy because you can't, no one laughs at a joke with a real laugh and you can tell if it's a real laugh unless the joke is actually funny.

00:52:25.640 And so what that also means is, well, you're telling these jokes and collecting the responses.

00:52:29.520 So you had this domestic violence joke and you might say, well, that's risky, but that's not the right question.

00:52:34.620 The right question is, is it actually funny?

00:52:37.740 And another question is, can you rely on the fact that it's funny as an indicator of its moral worth?

00:52:43.980 And I think you can, right?

00:52:45.960 I think that if you tell a joke to repeated audiences and you get a good humored laugh out of that, like a genuine laugh, then that's an indication that you've actually struck the target in the right place.

00:52:57.200 And the people who are complaining about that have more faith in their ideological judgment than they do in the spontaneous reaction of a multitude of people.

00:53:05.260 Yes.

00:53:05.700 Right?

00:53:06.100 But it's entirely, what I love about comedy is it's entirely subjective.

00:53:10.840 And the point is that it makes somebody laugh, right?

00:53:13.700 If it does make one person laugh, it is definitively funny, just not to the masses, which is totally fine.

00:53:21.760 Obviously, the objective of having a stand-up comedy career is to appeal to as many as you possibly can.

00:53:27.720 But your comedic intentions is, if I get a laugh, technically the joke is funny.

00:53:33.560 Now, it's up to me to listen and engage the audience to where I go, hmm, do I leave it as is and I appeal to this one person, which is technically still not wrong, the joke is still funny,

00:53:42.560 or do I do more work on this joke to properly articulate why I think this is funny and why you should laugh at it to try to get everybody else on board?

00:53:51.800 Okay, so when you're screening jokes for continued inclusion, you could imagine a joke that, imagine, let's just like this with pieces of music.

00:54:02.440 There'll be pieces of music that are very, very popular, that spread very rapidly, but that have no legs, right?

00:54:08.460 They're the sort of earworm that you listen to once or twice.

00:54:11.140 TikTok trends.

00:54:11.920 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:54:13.360 When you're selecting jokes, I'm wondering, your criteria can't just be that it makes the most people laugh.

00:54:24.260 Like, I could imagine there are jokes that have a delayed response and the faster people in the audience catch it.

00:54:30.860 Absolutely.

00:54:31.480 Okay, so can you tell, how do you determine which jokes you keep?

00:54:39.660 Like, what kind of response are you looking for?

00:54:41.920 The most amount of laughter is the best possible outcome.

00:54:46.240 Right, right.

00:54:46.580 However, I don't know how, I don't know how to break this down psychologically, but there's something about comedians that like, and ooh, response.

00:54:55.940 Yeah, right, right, right.

00:54:57.300 He said the thing you're not supposed to say.

00:55:00.340 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:55:01.020 And it is funny.

00:55:02.020 Not laugh out loud funny, but oh my God, he said it funny.

00:55:06.500 Right, right.

00:55:06.640 Now there's shock value.

00:55:07.640 Well, that's sort of a, well, that's, yeah, that's separate from shock value, though, like you're pointing out.

00:55:11.080 It's like, I can't believe he had the gall to say that.

00:55:14.280 That's like the gesture in the king's court fundamentally, right?

00:55:17.280 Is that you've brought to light something that everyone knows or suspects and pointed to it.

00:55:22.380 Right, right.

00:55:23.100 And that is funny that you get an oh response like that.

00:55:26.680 But outrage would be so personal, too.

00:55:28.620 Because that joke about domestic violence, you saw, if you saw the joke for the, I don't know if you saw the whole special or the clip of it, but you saw a laughter reaction, right?

00:55:37.560 Oh, yeah.

00:55:38.220 It was clearly that people thought that was funny.

00:55:40.280 Yes, nobody in the audience had a problem whatsoever.

00:55:42.680 If you watch later in the special, I do a school shooting joke that gets a massive ooh response.

00:55:50.120 And you didn't get canceled for that.

00:55:51.640 Nobody's talking about that.

00:55:52.980 People only care about the things that offend them specifically.

00:55:56.480 They don't care about me hurting somebody else's feelings, potentially.

00:55:59.520 It's very selfish.

00:56:00.500 I find it entirely selfish.

00:56:02.140 You're going to let me make fun of other things and make jokes and make light of certain other dark topics.

00:56:06.320 But the thing that affects you personally is the only thing you're upset about?

00:56:09.780 It's very selfish.

00:56:10.340 Yeah, yeah.

00:56:11.060 And you've got to ask yourself, too.

00:56:13.120 The people that I saw complaining about you, I saw absolutely no evidence in the way they were talking about your joke that they actually were hurt or offended.

00:56:22.360 Whatever they said was, and I've seen this about people complaining on Twitter in particular or in public, they almost always claim offense on the behalf of hypothetical other people who somehow they're acting as allies for or spokespeople for, which is a little bit on the condescending side to begin with, if you ask me.

00:56:42.300 It's like, if they're offended, you know, if a group of women against domestic abuse had conjured up a petition against you, you know, and it was composed of 100,000 sufferers, well, that might be more evidence than some dim-witted TikToker who decided that they were going to be the spokespeople for these hypothetically offended victims.

00:57:01.040 Or the women who feel chained up in the kitchen.

00:57:03.660 And it's also as simple as just being an easy target.

00:57:06.060 Like, a lot of people just want to not like me, so you give them any inkling of that, they go, boom, here's a thing I can attach myself to.

00:57:13.480 Well, yeah, well, it isn't only, I think, that they don't want to like you, it's that you blew up very relatively quickly.

00:57:21.440 Which isn't my fault.

00:57:22.880 No, no, no.

00:57:23.420 I would have loved a progressive rise in my career.

00:57:26.320 I didn't know TikTok was going to do this.

00:57:28.920 Right, right.

00:57:29.640 Well, but you did put in the work.

00:57:31.280 Yes.

00:57:31.780 You know, it didn't happen.

00:57:33.360 It didn't happen exactly overnight.

00:57:34.960 You said you were in the trenches for, what, five years before you had anything approximating real success?

00:57:41.300 How long do you think?

00:57:42.420 I would, real success, I would say in stand-up, real success, probably nine years.

00:57:48.240 Nine years.

00:57:48.800 Okay, okay, okay.

00:57:49.860 So we can't say that you blew up like this, but it wasn't sudden.

00:57:54.060 No, it was not sudden.

00:57:54.780 Right, it had a very long developmental curve.

00:57:56.700 Yes, exactly.

00:57:57.580 Right, but that's typical.

00:57:58.620 That's typical of success, right?

00:58:00.160 And even if it doubles, say it doubles every 18 months, if it starts at zero, it takes a long time for that doubling to start to actually show.

00:58:09.220 Yes.

00:58:09.440 Okay, but what that also meant was that, and this is another problem with social media, is that you had accrued a lot of status capital, right?

00:58:17.380 So your status capital would be directly associated with how many people know you, essentially, and appreciate what you do.

00:58:23.240 And what that means is that hangers-on can now leverage that for their own purposes, and the quickest and easiest way to do that is to complain about you publicly in a way that looks like it's compassionate, right?

00:58:34.880 Because there's zero effort on behalf of the person who does that, and what they're doing then is stealing some of your accrued social capital.

00:58:41.880 And what's really appalling about that, as far as I'm concerned, is that they're doing that for their own narcissistic ends, which is why they make public statements on TikTok, let's say, in the hope that they'll go viral.

00:58:54.300 And then they also do that while claiming that compassion rather than narcissism is their fundamental motivation, right?

00:59:01.860 Yeah, it's purely clout-chasing at its definition.

00:59:05.880 To attach yourself to what somebody else has going on for your own selfish gain is so pathetic.

00:59:11.120 You don't have anything else to offer.

00:59:13.120 TikTok is a massive platform of a lot of artistic creators.

00:59:17.620 It's everything from people dancing to philosophers.

00:59:20.840 Right, right.

00:59:21.040 There's so much you can do on there.

00:59:22.800 Well, you can do anything.

00:59:23.440 You can't do any of it without me.

00:59:24.420 Right, right, right.

00:59:25.820 It's so funny to me.

00:59:25.960 Without stealing from you, because that's essentially what it is.

00:59:28.800 Yeah, and completely lying about who you think somebody is.

00:59:32.740 Right.

00:59:33.120 You don't know who somebody is based on a joke they said.

00:59:36.880 Yeah.

00:59:37.340 Sarcasm exists for a reason.

00:59:39.440 I didn't mean the thing I said.

00:59:41.020 I said it because it's funny and not what I actually feel on the inside.

00:59:45.340 So, who makes up the bulk of your audience in your live shows?

00:59:48.860 Is it men or women?

00:59:50.500 It is women.

00:59:52.320 But I would say it's massively changed over the past, I'd say, five or six months.

00:59:57.900 When my TikTok status really started to rise at the top of last year, it was wildly predominantly female.

01:00:05.760 I would say my shows from October of last year until about March of this year were like 90% women.

01:00:13.640 Any idea why?

01:00:16.580 It's anybody's guess.

01:00:17.760 You could say it's my face.

01:00:19.140 You could say it's my humor.

01:00:20.740 I couldn't.

01:00:21.880 What do you think?

01:00:22.500 What do you think?

01:00:23.200 Well, you play.

01:00:23.940 I watched your crowd work.

01:00:25.400 I mean, you're good at playing with the women who poke at you.

01:00:29.340 Yes.

01:00:29.860 They wanted to be roasted.

01:00:30.900 That was a very specific trend a lot of women hopped onto.

01:00:36.340 A woman would heckle, yell something out, and that's obviously annoying, so you retort with a mean response comedically.

01:00:42.300 Yeah.

01:00:42.700 And this caught on.

01:00:44.240 People were really into that.

01:00:45.440 People were coming to shows.

01:00:46.820 Women were coming to shows requesting to be roasted.

01:00:49.440 Now, obviously, I don't mean anything I say.

01:00:52.340 I mean shut up and stop yelling out at shows.

01:00:55.980 Right, right.

01:00:56.600 But I'm articulating it in a way that, you know, I'm just making some jokes at your expense.

01:01:01.800 Yeah, yeah.

01:01:02.060 It's caught on so heavily.

01:01:03.520 I think there might be, I don't know if it's a fetish of some kind.

01:01:08.080 I don't know.

01:01:08.360 Maybe it's because you've dared to do it, you know.

01:01:10.400 Maybe.

01:01:10.680 That's possible.

01:01:11.340 Maybe there's an appreciation for being bold.

01:01:13.040 Well, that's what happens with Russell Peters when he's making ethnic jokes.

01:01:16.440 Do you know Russell, by the way?

01:01:17.520 Do I know him?

01:01:18.080 Yeah.

01:01:18.400 Yeah.

01:01:18.800 Really?

01:01:19.000 I don't know him well, but we've spoken.

01:01:20.520 I've known him for years.

01:01:21.320 He's on my podcast.

01:01:22.040 He's a great guy.

01:01:22.720 I've known him for years.

01:01:23.340 Yeah, Russell's great.

01:01:23.780 Great.

01:01:24.220 And he's been unbelievably successful, and he dares to make ethnic jokes to everyone.

01:01:29.080 Yeah.

01:01:29.360 Yeah, is that right?

01:01:30.280 Of course.

01:01:30.460 That doesn't surprise me.

01:01:31.360 And that, by the way, what you just said is wildly important.

01:01:33.420 If you're going to make jokes at a group's expense, you have to be open to making jokes

01:01:37.360 about everybody.

01:01:38.280 Yes, yes.

01:01:38.400 Otherwise, it does feel targeted.

01:01:40.000 Well, and he makes jokes about his own ethnic group more than anyone else's, and they're

01:01:44.540 very pointed and targeted jokes.

01:01:46.040 Just like I make fun of myself probably more than anybody else does.

01:01:49.640 That's what baffles me is when people can't laugh at themselves.

01:01:52.020 Right, right.

01:01:52.180 Nothing makes me laugh harder than when someone's, like, making a good joke about me.

01:01:55.260 Yeah, well, that's the best.

01:01:56.500 I love that.

01:01:56.640 That's one of the things I really liked about British humor.

01:01:59.420 Oh, it's so dry.

01:02:00.040 It's so dry.

01:02:00.600 I love it.

01:02:02.080 It's the best.

01:02:03.240 I went over there, I think it was June of this year, May or June.

01:02:07.500 I don't know if this year feels three years long.

01:02:09.540 Sometime early, late spring, early summer this year, we had a bunch of shows out there,

01:02:13.000 and I fell in love with it.

01:02:15.300 I would love a reason to move to London for, like, a year to just do comedy out there.

01:02:20.160 The audience is so...

01:02:20.760 They have a Comedy Unleashed group there.

01:02:23.260 Well, because the comics in the UK have really come under assault, and a lot of them have

01:02:28.700 been canceled.

01:02:29.240 And so, there's a group in London who's Andrew Doyle.

01:02:35.660 Andrew Doyle runs Comedy Unleashed, and he has that online character, Titania McGrath,

01:02:40.400 who's a satire of a woke feminist.

01:02:43.780 He wrote a book by Titania McGrath, and yeah, she's the worst of the woke feminists.

01:02:49.200 Anyways, he started this group called Comedy Unleashed, and I went to just one of their

01:02:53.460 shows so far in London.

01:02:54.620 I actually read a piece that I wrote for my little two-year-old grandson, who was trying

01:02:59.840 all sorts of things on his head, pretending they were hats like old pieces of fish and

01:03:03.580 so forth.

01:03:04.440 Yeah, but anyways, when you go to the UK again, they're very much worth looking up Comedy Unleashed.

01:03:10.500 I will definitely check them out.

01:03:11.220 Yeah, I think the funniest UK comedians are now associated with Comedy Unleashed, and

01:03:16.040 they have these fora in London that are designed to genuinely be open discourse events, as you

01:03:23.960 can make a joke about any damn thing you want, and everyone who comes there knows that and

01:03:28.660 appreciates it.

01:03:29.100 I love that, Mike.

01:03:29.780 Yeah, yeah, well, it makes the shows very funny, too, as you might imagine.

01:03:32.580 Yeah, because everyone goes, and they're on the same page.

01:03:34.520 Let's just have some fun.

01:03:36.520 Yeah.

01:03:36.680 I would love to do a streaming platform like that someday, where creators can go on there,

01:03:41.560 and it's just, it's whatever kind of humor you want.

01:03:44.420 Same kind of setup as like a porn website.

01:03:46.220 You go on there, you click 18 and up, right?

01:03:49.120 You know what you're getting into.

01:03:50.900 Same with this website.

01:03:51.700 You go on there, you realize you're going to hear some crude shit, but it's all in

01:03:55.300 the- Well, you should bloody well know that if you go to a comedy show.

01:03:57.680 You would think.

01:03:58.420 Well, you would think so.

01:03:58.860 I mean, listen, I've never had a problem at a live show, ever.

01:04:02.880 I have never once had anybody have a stand up and be like, that was not okay to say.

01:04:09.060 Oh, yeah.

01:04:09.560 Not once.

01:04:10.200 Almost 13 years of doing comedy, not once has that happened.

01:04:12.340 Oh, you're obviously not pushing the envelope hard enough.

01:04:15.280 Jordan Peterson said it first.

01:04:16.560 I love my new hour that I'm working on right now.

01:04:20.860 It's so much edgier.

01:04:23.360 It blows my mind.

01:04:24.620 People chose this one thing to attach themselves on to.

01:04:27.760 And I just, I just think it's-

01:04:29.920 Oh, well, it's going to, it's going to redound to your credit anyways, particularly because

01:04:33.360 you didn't apologize.

01:04:34.180 So all that's going to happen, as far as I can tell, is that this will bring a lot more

01:04:38.580 attention to your work and people will be thrilled about the fact that you didn't apologize.

01:04:43.480 One of the things that I've noticed repeatedly, because I've gone through repeated attempts

01:04:48.620 to cancel me, is that it is, can be quite an intense experience when it, in the immediate

01:04:55.380 aftermath of its occurrence.

01:04:57.520 And that's somewhat off-putting and destabilizing because you don't exactly know how far out

01:05:03.500 it's going to spread or what the consequences would be.

01:05:05.780 But if you didn't do anything wrong and you don't apologize, or maybe you make light of

01:05:13.580 it in some creative way, then the probability that it will turn around and flip in your

01:05:18.180 direction if you can tolerate the weight is extremely high.

01:05:21.840 And I don't think that part of the reason I'm bringing this up is because I don't think

01:05:24.660 that people who are in the throes of being canceled understand this.

01:05:29.020 You can imagine historically, if an angry mob of your neighbors showed up on your doorstep

01:05:35.380 with pitchforks and flames, and there was like 40 of them, it would probably be a good

01:05:40.000 time to think, these people wouldn't have gone to all that time and effort, in all likelihood,

01:05:44.920 had I not done something wrong, right?

01:05:47.660 But now you can whip up a Twitter mob in no time whatsoever, with no effort, at no cost

01:05:52.980 to yourself, and probably some benefit.

01:05:54.860 And so your instinctual responses to being mobbed are wrong, right?

01:06:00.060 Yeah, because it doesn't translate to the real world.

01:06:02.680 Right, right, right.

01:06:03.520 I just walked through two very packed airports and did nothing but take like 45 pictures.

01:06:09.880 Right.

01:06:10.080 Nothing but a positive response.

01:06:11.880 Right.

01:06:12.220 Have you had any negative responses?

01:06:14.500 You said you had no negative responses to anything you've ever said so far when you're

01:06:19.060 actually on stage.

01:06:20.280 Yeah.

01:06:20.700 Well, what about out in the actual world?

01:06:22.900 Not once.

01:06:23.600 It's never once has somebody come up to me and said, hey, I didn't like the thing you

01:06:26.960 said.

01:06:27.520 Because that kind of social, I don't know if you want to call it, a mixture of social

01:06:34.180 awareness and accountability doesn't translate to the real world.

01:06:40.580 People know.

01:06:41.940 It also takes a lot of gall to do that.

01:06:44.120 You come up to someone and say, you know that thing you said, even though you don't know

01:06:47.760 who they are.

01:06:48.620 Imagine you see a street performer, right?

01:06:49.920 They're playing violin on a street corner.

01:06:51.940 They've got their case out with cash, right?

01:06:54.080 Say you hate violin.

01:06:55.800 Violin drives you nuts.

01:06:57.900 Maybe he's not even good at playing violin.

01:07:00.580 What do you do?

01:07:01.600 You keep walking, right?

01:07:03.760 No sane, decent human being stops and goes, you're fucking awful, dude.

01:07:09.140 Kill yourself.

01:07:09.800 What are you doing out here?

01:07:11.140 You're making my life miserable until I just look a different direction.

01:07:15.560 That's an insane thing to do.

01:07:17.080 And most people know not to do that.

01:07:19.720 But obviously, the internet creates this, this is what I would believe to be false confidence

01:07:24.880 and believing that they're safe behind this imaginary source of social media, that they

01:07:30.440 don't face any repercussions because their profile picture is an anime character and everything's

01:07:35.560 a private profile.

01:07:36.620 There's no consequence of saying what they say.

01:07:39.040 There's no consequence for leveling an accusation.

01:07:41.560 Yeah, it's really bad.

01:07:42.580 Yeah, versus the real world, if you come up to me, I can have an intellectual conversation

01:07:46.800 with you as to why I disagree with you.

01:07:48.980 Yes, or I could smack the shit out of it.

01:07:51.760 Right, right.

01:07:52.340 That is also a consequence that is viable.

01:07:55.100 Yeah.

01:07:55.520 And that doesn't weigh on anybody on the internet.

01:07:59.000 So it's easier for people to talk shit on there versus the real world where people

01:08:02.720 actually aren't even bothered.

01:08:04.140 And also, I had to figure most of these people who talk shit on the internet and actively try

01:08:07.880 to cancel people and have no life, they're not out in the real world.

01:08:11.800 They're in their house doing absolutely nothing.

01:08:15.040 So you don't have to worry about that.

01:08:17.100 Yeah, and they've got, they definitely have the mentality of like mean girl high school

01:08:21.420 bullies.

01:08:22.120 Yeah.

01:08:22.540 Right?

01:08:22.840 We're going to shame.

01:08:23.840 We're going to reputation savage.

01:08:25.440 We're going to exclude.

01:08:26.600 Those are all...

01:08:27.140 Go ahead.

01:08:27.720 Put so much energy in your life into thinking about me and how much you don't like me.

01:08:31.380 What a waste of your life.

01:08:32.400 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:08:33.900 So now you said too, that when you posted your response to the criticisms, you posted

01:08:41.260 something, I think, that's wildly funny, by the way.

01:08:44.500 And so maybe you could explain that to this particular crowd.

01:08:47.880 But you also told me in the intervening time between the two podcasts that that wasn't a

01:08:53.760 calculated response, that you relied on your instinct for what was funny.

01:08:57.420 So explain what you did.

01:08:59.380 So funny.

01:09:00.720 You sound like a principal who my parents came here.

01:09:02.960 Tell them what you did.

01:09:03.560 That's right.

01:09:03.880 That's right.

01:09:04.380 Yeah, yeah.

01:09:04.860 Exactly.

01:09:05.600 Lay it out, man.

01:09:06.220 But the principal actually loves it.

01:09:07.360 This is perfect.

01:09:08.540 So now I have to convince my parents not to whoop my ass.

01:09:11.260 Basically, this thing happened.

01:09:12.600 There was an outrage over a joke that was wildly misperceived.

01:09:16.560 And that's fine.

01:09:17.500 You're allowed to like or not like a joke.

01:09:19.040 Totally okay.

01:09:20.140 And in response to that, I posted...

01:09:23.740 When you get canceled or somebody is upset about a joke you tell, you're supposed to

01:09:28.120 apologize.

01:09:28.720 People want you to back down and shame you and recognize what you've done wrong.

01:09:33.640 And I don't believe I did anything wrong whatsoever.

01:09:37.040 So it made me really feel like the people who were offended by this were, for lack of

01:09:41.820 better words, and to be quite frank, weak-minded.

01:09:43.940 So I posted a photo of me on stage, thought it was a good photo, with a link at the bottom

01:09:50.820 of it.

01:09:51.060 And the caption was saying, if I've ever offended you with a joke I've told, here's a link to

01:09:56.500 my official apology.

01:09:58.100 And the link description should have been a dead giveaway.

01:10:00.720 It said, click to solve your issue.

01:10:02.200 And when you click on the link, it redirected you to a store, an online storefront.

01:10:08.120 Click to solve your issue.

01:10:09.000 That's funny.

01:10:09.520 Very specific.

01:10:10.260 Because it's a little ambiguous.

01:10:11.580 Of course.

01:10:12.120 And then you click on the link and it redirects you to an online storefront for special needs

01:10:16.900 helmets.

01:10:18.380 I thought this was very funny.

01:10:20.140 And again, misconstrue.

01:10:21.580 People instinctually, again, people get triggered by subject matter than what the joke actually

01:10:26.440 is.

01:10:26.740 Everybody took that as I was making fun of special needs people.

01:10:29.160 No, I don't have anything to say about special needs people.

01:10:33.100 No, you're making fun of people claiming special needs for their emotional fragility inappropriately.

01:10:38.340 Exactly.

01:10:39.280 I'm saying you need this way more than they do.

01:10:43.260 Yeah, right.

01:10:43.840 And the best part is, is that you clicked on it.

01:10:47.120 You f***ing idiot.

01:10:48.020 That's right.

01:10:48.240 They could have special needs earplugs that they could wear to comedy shows where you actually

01:10:51.980 couldn't hear the comedian.

01:10:52.340 They filter out all the words.

01:10:53.740 Yeah, all of them.

01:10:54.400 AI generates what they want to hear.

01:10:56.920 Oh, that'll happen soon enough.

01:10:58.560 That's right.

01:10:59.040 You'll be able to get an AI.

01:11:00.260 That's right.

01:11:00.720 AI sensor.

01:11:01.680 But that's what you're, that's technically what your algorithm is.

01:11:04.000 Yeah, that's right.

01:11:04.380 It shows you what you want to see.

01:11:05.960 It tells you what you want to hear.

01:11:07.880 I was, the night that I was like the number one trending thing on Twitter, like a night

01:11:13.840 before last, I think it was, I texted my friend and I was like, yeesh.

01:11:17.340 And he sent me a screenshot of his.

01:11:18.840 I wasn't even top 25.

01:11:20.140 He goes, this isn't, nobody cares, dude.

01:11:22.880 Right.

01:11:23.220 It's in your circle because it's your profile.

01:11:25.360 You're going to hear about it, obviously, but it's not to the extent that people think.

01:11:29.040 So yes, I posted this misdirect of an apology and it couldn't have went better.

01:11:33.320 I was literally just sitting passenger seat in a car ride with my friends.

01:11:37.700 And I just thought it would be a funny thing to do.

01:11:41.640 It took me no more than 45 seconds to think of doing that.

01:11:44.540 I went, I go, hey, is this funny?

01:11:46.360 And he cracked up laughing.

01:11:47.600 I went, nah, fuck it.

01:11:48.540 I also thought that most of the outrage was happening just on Twitter and TikTok.

01:11:53.140 Like Instagram is a far more personal app, I think.

01:11:55.800 And so the fact that people even saw that and took it to other platforms, I thought was

01:12:01.120 insane.

01:12:01.780 But also proved my point even more that people who don't even like my comedy or have never

01:12:07.460 even heard of me saw the outrage and my response to it and went, oh, that's actually funny.

01:12:13.520 Right, right, right.

01:12:14.000 So it actually gained me a lot of fans because most of the world, I would feel confident in

01:12:20.480 saying the majority of people are sick of this shit.

01:12:23.280 Well, most people are actually hoping that a comedian will be funny rather than politically

01:12:29.720 correct.

01:12:30.140 Right, well, this is the problem.

01:12:31.940 I think this is the misapprehension of people who apologize when they're accused because

01:12:37.560 your case is, well, perhaps you irritated some people by not apologizing.

01:12:43.120 But first of all, there are people that you really don't mind irritating and they weren't

01:12:46.220 really irritated to begin with.

01:12:47.520 So it's all a lie anyway.

01:12:48.460 Nor were they fans in the first place.

01:12:49.540 Right, exactly.

01:12:50.740 And so when you apologize, in principle, you signal to those people that you've kowtowed

01:12:55.440 and bowed down.

01:12:56.660 But you forego the opportunity to appeal to a much broader realm of people, which you think

01:13:02.700 would be more sensible if you were trying to protect or develop your career.

01:13:06.360 The people who look at what you've done and think, oh, well, that's funny enough, so

01:13:09.820 maybe I'll go check out this guy that I've never heard of.

01:13:12.300 I'm sure you attracted like 10,000 fans for every person you turned off.

01:13:17.480 Oh, yeah.

01:13:19.120 Analytically, I have gained more fans than I have lost across all platforms.

01:13:24.680 The extremities of everybody involved in this outrage has been nothing but beneficial.

01:13:31.760 Because even if you didn't like the domestic violence joke that I got in trouble for, which

01:13:35.880 is fair, even I think it's not the best joke I've ever written at all.

01:13:39.360 It's probably the worst joke in the special.

01:13:42.500 And that's fine.

01:13:43.500 I do other things.

01:13:44.540 I have plenty of other jokes that are for other people.

01:13:46.280 The response being a perfect example of that.

01:13:48.260 Even if people go, well, that's not funny.

01:13:50.680 But that joke of his is.

01:13:51.880 Right, right, right.

01:13:52.360 The extremities are so loud and so against each other that once one group of people, whatever

01:14:00.280 you want to call them, people love to make it about the left or the right or whatever.

01:14:03.700 I'm a very unpolitical person.

01:14:05.120 I don't really use those terms, so they might not be correctly used here.

01:14:08.040 But say the left is so outraged about something, the right instinctually goes, you're being so

01:14:14.580 ridiculous about this.

01:14:15.600 If you hate this, I'm going to support this because I see nothing wrong with it.

01:14:18.960 So in doing that, they've completely balanced each other out.

01:14:22.760 Right, right.

01:14:23.380 Well, right.

01:14:23.920 And you probably brought your work to the attention of a whole demographic that wouldn't have

01:14:27.900 necessarily known who you were.

01:14:29.320 So many people commenting, I didn't know who this kid was.

01:14:31.720 I actually didn't like him before.

01:14:33.500 But I like this joke that he told.

01:14:35.860 Or I dislike you so much that the enemy of my enemy is not my friend.

01:14:41.140 Right, right, right.

01:14:48.960 I like this joke that you like.

01:14:49.800 Right, right.

01:14:50.380 Right.

01:15:10.320 Right.

01:15:11.700 Right.

01:15:16.640 Right.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - November 30, 2023

401. Rife For Cancellation ｜ Matt Rife

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