Rife For Cancellation | Matt Rife | EP 401

it's a modern Twist on an old joke you know what I mean it was it was a real circumstance that happened an exaggerated instance that really happened and I went you know this is this is a classic joke why not give my own personal modern Twist on it and move on the joke's like a minute 30 seconds of people were like all he did was bash women and I purposely did it first in the show to go hey just so you know this is this is the kind of humor I like to tell and if

it's not for you you are so more than welcome to turn off the TV right now [Music] hello everyone I had the opportunity today to welcome and speak with one of the world's most outstanding current comedians young guy 28 years old Matt re who's exploded onto the comedy scene in the last few years after having put his time in the trenches he's been working as a comedian in small clubs and so forth he started when he was 15 so he put in his 10 years before really becoming popular he's been the subject of a relatively

dedicated Council campaign in recent weeks and so we had a chance to discuss that to discuss his witty fast Brave and uh appropriate response to that cancellation to talk about that sort of thing in more detail and also to detail out uh his the the structure of his new tour and his plans for the future and and why he's doing what he's doing and what the role of Comedy is in the broader world so welcome to the conversation all right so I've been I've been planning this opening which I don't usually do because I like

to do things spontaneously but but I H I have to get this one right okay so you got to help me get this straight okay okay so now you're a comedian and you got cancelled for a domestic assault joke and then in response to that instead of apologizing like a good boy you put up a joke ad site about special needs helmets to protect the people who are offended by you and now to get yourself out of trouble you're going to come on my podcast I never your plan I was hoping it would make things

way worse I'm hoping we can drive sales to that very real website about the helmets yes anyways congratulations on that I thought I thought the joke was funny risky and funny and I thought your response was dead on like one of the things I've noticed is that people who are harassed by sensorial minded null wits almost always back down and apologize and then my my sense of that is that a mob comes after them first for whatever hypothetical sin they've committed and then they apologize and a second mob comes after them for that exactly and

then they lessen their own character by the false apology and they embolden these idiot accusers and so why did you decide when when this blew up around you and I mean in some ways it's a tempest in a teapot but when this blew up around you why did you decide to take the strategy that you took why weren't you like racked with guilt and apologetic and because it's just comedy I'm just doing what's funny to me it's never any deeper than that nor should it be for anybody I'm saying things that my imagination drums up

that makes me happy reliefs endorsements in my head that makes my life happier and all I do is share those thoughts with other people in hopes that it makes their life easier well I've I've been watching what you do on your specials and you you're continually interacting with the audience which and correct me if I've got this wrong I mean a lot of the comedians that I've spoken to they spend a lot of time preparing their sets and practicing but you're doing it's it it seems to be something that's much more akin to spontaneous wit

and that's a dangerous thing to do because you could easily be not funny oh high risk High reward yeah yeah well and it's also that because you're doing that you don't have a lot of time to exactly think through what you're going to say right I mean if something strikes you as amusing you pretty much have to go for it and if your if your head's full of censorship related thoughts you're going to be not funny in about 15 seconds so you have to let the intrusive thoughts wi and comedy you have to what what

comes if you're a naturally funny person the first thing that comes to your mind should be the funniest thing to you most the time it commes and it has to be the first thing yeah you know if you're if you're writing a multiple choice test by the way you if you second guess your your what your intuition about the right answer you're more likely to be wrong with the second guess yeah yeah that immediate response yeah that immediate response tends to be better yeah well and it's it's a weird thing because that thing that's comical

inside you that's providing you with the intuition for the jokes it has to be in quick rep timing is everything absolutely it has to be in quick relationship with the audience yeah timing is absolutely everything you want to say the the most pointed thing at exactly the right time and so what do you think or maybe I don't know if You' thought about it what do you think is oh first of all how broadscale do you think this Rebellion against what you said actually is how many people do you think are behind it and why

do you think it's become such a big deal it's probably a few dozen thousand which sounds like a lot until you remember there's 8 billion people in the world yeah and I would say 90% of the small majority that is upset with me doesn't go to comedy shows anyway or wouldn't Vibe with me as a person anyways which is fine they're probably not that funny I watched a couple of them today on YouTube I can imagine oh my God yeah I mean they're the sort of people that you just want to what do you want

for them you want for them you want them to spend eternity in a Hell composed of nothing but people like them talking to them so Twitter yeah yeah exactly that right but that's the thing is it's like whether whether you enjoy what I do or not you don't even have to know it exists 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 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 you don't ever have to think about me you don't have to talk about me I don't like scre heavy metal music guess how often I think about it or talk about it 0% of the time you just remove yourself from the situation I don't I see no harm in trying to make people laugh as a general um intention yeah well I also don't want don't understand exactly from from a purely logical perspective what the

people who are complaining exactly expect from you because as and maybe it is that they a have no sense of humor or and and that's highly likely or that they're doing something we can talk about which is gaining some kind of benefit from their from their from their complaints some virtue signaling I really see that with the men in particular well I know I really care a lot wom yeah I saw one Tik Tok video who was like I I have a wife and I found this sely disrespectful I was like okay you cuck whatever

dude yeah think foreplay yeah what do you want to get more [ __ ] outside of your wife like chill out you're already married she already respects you what what do you want yeah well I used to see when 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 herodin women who were screeching like fish wives 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 shutter run up my spine 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 what was that Gad sad The evolutionary psychologist who works at Concordia he called that the sneaky fire uh routine yeah yeah exactly well and that's actually a phrase from evolutionary biology I'll tell you a funny story that goes along with that this is hilarious and and so

telling so primatologists who study orangutans figured out a long time ago that there are two variant male types of orangutan okay so there's like orangutans tend to hang around in trees they're arboreal but the men the males who become dominant in a given territory get so large sort of like a linebacker football and they have these big fat pads around their face that are circular 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 for who the primatologists thought were

adolescents for a very long time because they look like adolescent males and they hang around in the trees 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 right and so their strategy is sneaky rape Jesus right right so it doesn't take much of an imagination to map that on to 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 so it's almost like their own insecurity and lack of manhood manhood probably isn't the best word to use but it it stunts their own Evolution well it's it it it it it Ena it it requires that they take a different Pathway to mating success they can't use dominance yeah yeah right right right so pathetic yeah yeah yeah so why did you decide to come on my podcast I'm a huge fan man I find you listen you and I have never met I have I've I

I'll be truthfully honest I've 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 the realism of society today and I think that is incredibly rare and I just highly appreciate you oh well thank you I wasn't fishing for compliments but I do appreciate the fact that they emerged well I'm curious partly too because you I think it's fair to say that your primary fan base is women that I mean I'm not

certain of that but it is the case okay and and is it almost always women that you interact with in the crowd no not at all it's totally total luck of the draw whatever happens I mean women yell out the most for sure like they'll Heckle the most so that will draw more uh adamants crowd work like that I didn't necessarily intend on doing but overall no it's just is that something that's particularly characteristic of your shows because I would think yeah right because that's yeah okay well I've kind of I've kind of created my

own crowd workor monster in a way a friend of mine put this in perspective for me if I if I got popular from doing crowd work which which was a very specific strategy a lot of it I only post my crowd because I don't feel like burning through material Comics build for minimum a year two three years an hourong show right I would feel like a total piece of [ __ ] if I if I let you pay money to come see the exact same material you just saw for free online so crowd work being

a very unique circumstance that really isn't to be duplicated at any other show that you do because you're not going to meet the same person who's been the same circumstance has the same story to tell right so this is a very unique thing that you could share and it doesn't burn through any of your material at all so that's why you've been making the specials on YouTube out of crowd workor yeah exactly right right because you can you can make them permanent and you said it doesn't interfere with the novelty of a prepared show so

you do prepared material as well yeah I have two full specials on YouTube that are fully seen the crowd work okay oh you watched the red flags so I specifically did that special because I got I was getting popular for doing Red Flag crowd work just on Tik Tok and it got so bad to the point where I'd be in the middle of working on material and people would be yelling out like do red flags or just yelling out like flipflops or what mama was yelling out their own red flags without any context at all

so I was like fine I'm going to do one special at the biggest Red Flag City there is Miami at the Miami Improv and then that's like the final statement closing the chapter on my red flag crowd workor now I don't do it anymore now there's I think the special is like 50 minutes long of me just doing full crowd work for for 50 minutes with with the people in Miami and it was a lot of fun I was happy to close the chapter though okay why did you close it and why were you happy

to close it because it does ruin the show when people yell out I wanted to go okay I know you like this thing I do so here's that now you have that final product I did this specifically for you guys now let me grow to do the kind of Comedy I I want to do and I'm still growing and I'm still learning I'm 28 years old most Comics that are top of their game today probably just started at the age I'm at right now so I mean I have a lot of learning and growth to

do right right right how how long have you been doing comedy professionally 12 and a half years so since you were 16 15 yeah 15 15 were you funny before that yeah yeah I was always like Class Clown making my friends and family and laugh I didn't know comedy was a career or even a job until I was about 14 and I kind of discovered who like Dane Cook and Dave Chappelle were and those those guys were at the Pinnacle of comedy at that time so I just learned I studied them fell in love with

the art form and I started doing open mics when I was 15 after school on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and everything just kind of snowballed and nobody in my family has ever been to college so there was no pressure to do anything after high school everyone in my hometown kind of does the exact same thing they just work at like how big is your hometown about 1,200 people oh yeah yeah one stoplight that could have easily been a four-way stop never traffic there at all yeah yeah but that's a mark of of attainment to have at

least one yeah yeah I I came from a little town in Northern Alberta it had about 2500 people and it was a big deal when we got our first stop light which was like utterly unnecessary they just got a Dollar General on the out on the outskirts of town and everyone's like we got a new grocery store like they are loving it very simple Town yeah yeah I can remember too that when when the Kentucky Fried Chicken came to town that was also a big deal when you got a KFC that's so funny in hindsight

it's one of those places growing up you go oh this is so boring can't wait to get out of here but looking back I had such a wonderful childhood even going back now I went back maybe a couple of months ago because I had some show what's the name of the town it's called North Lewisburg Ohio it's a very very small town about Maryville Ohio is the closest city to it I suppose um and I was doing shows not far from there and had to drive past it for tour like two months ago and I

stopped through there nothing had changed and I thought that was beautiful like I I I live in LA now and I I tour cons constantly but people get so wrapped up into what they think the rest of the world is actually talking about or actually cares about when it's not true at all I I saw kids riding their bikes and running around playing outside when I'm driving through town I go I haven't seen that in years people weren't on their phones people even people at the gas station when we stopped in the workers in there

were talking hanging out nobody was just on their phone scrolling we become so detached from the rest of the world when we live in certain environments it's how long you lived in La it would be 11 years in January oh okay 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 okay so what did you do in LA okay so first of all you said you started doing open mics when you were about 15 where the Columbus Funny Bone in

Columbus Ohio I I went on the comedy club's website when I kind of figured out open mics were the thing to start with I don't remember or how I found that out I remember going to their website finding out it's 21 and up as most comedy clubs are due to Laker license and the owner's email was on there and like a naive kid I just emailed the owner I was like hey this is my name this is how old I am I know I'm supposed to be 21 and up that if I have like a

parent Guardian with me could I come in to try the open mic and any rational businessman would say no I'm not going to risk my liquor license for some kid to come in here tell a jokes like what could possibly come out of that but for some odd reason and he said yes and it allowed me an opportunity to go and practice and enjoy this new thing that I was just doing for fun I had no idea anything like this could ever happen to me it was just something I was doing for fun to like

make my grandpa laugh and did you make your grandpa laugh oh my God he was my number one fan I I I miss him every single day oh oh yes so so did you have a good time in Columbus doing this I did but it's most like most Midwestern towns there's a there's a ceiling you know and if you have bigger dreams yet you have you have to escape you have to go see what else is out there so so so how so tell me how your career progressed from colum from Columbus how many how

many shows did you do at Club what was the what was the Arc of your of your career so I started when I was 15 and then I got a manager at a comedy club in Atlanta um over Twitter believe it or not well there Twitter was good for something I know make or break you like the one time Twitter has been good for something exactly well this good for getting canceled actually if you want to get cancelled Twitter's ex yeah Jesus that is its primary use what else is he it's just negativity it's the

worst app people who thrive on Twitter rarely do well in life it's so bad I but this was when Twitter was kind of brand new 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 and this was a time where Twitter was so new you could access anybody like this was a time when like Ashton Kutcher was like the only person to had like a million followers on there like at most celebrities had ah maybe 10,000 followers on there you

could tweet to somebody and they would see it and they would respond so I would tweet to favorite comics of mine when they were coming through the state of Ohio i' be like hey I'm a big fan I'm a kid can I do a guest spot on your show and some would say no some would thankfully say yes so who gave you an early opportunity DL hugley actually gave me my first ever guest spot uh which was so funny because when I was 15 years old my extent of my DL hugly knowledge was just so

plain where he played a bad attendant his smallest credit to date has to be I had no realization that he was one of the Kings of Comedy like one of the greatest to ever do it and go one of the most famous tours of all time but he was so kind to me he gave me my first guest spot uh my second guest spot was finesse Mitchell and then it was uh Ralphie May was a like like a brother of mine uh he's one that really helped me out in my younger years but through Twitter

uh there was this comedy club owner in Atlanta who knew DL for a very long time and he saw D hugly and I just going back and forth joking back and forth with each other on Twitter he reached out my mom and I drove down from Ohio to Atlanta it's like a 9-h hour drive to come perform at his club for a weekend went there we hit it off really well he explained to me the things he wanted to do for my career and I didn't know any better so I was like yeah what however

you want to help and my mom was also like yeah whatever keeps them off drugs I guess so did that work did did did it keep you off drugs uh until like my early 20s yeah I would say that's not that's probably that's a better time to start fantastic job yeah exactly exact I'm from Ohio I'm lucky I didn't brush my teeth with fent all growing up it was bad Hometown was so trashy diversify your savings with physical precious metals while stockpiling silver in your home safe with Birch gold group's most popular special of the

year now through December 22nd for every $5,000 you spend with Birch gold they'll send you a 1o silver eagle coin for free text Jordan to 989 9898 to claim your eligibility now you can purchase gold and silver and have it shipped directly to your home or have Birch Gold's precious metal specialist help you convert an existing Ira or 401K into a tax sheltered Ira in gold for no money out of pocket and once again they'll send you free silver for every $5,000 you purchase keep it for yourself or give something with real value as a

stocking stuffer this year just text the keyword Jordan to 98 9898 to claim your eligibility with an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and thousands of happy customers now is the time to buy gold from Birch gold text Jordan to 98 9898 and claim your eligibility for free silver on qualifying purchases before December 22nd that's Jordan to 98 [Music] 9898 so he finds me on Twitter we go down there we meet we hit it off and he offers me to come down there the summer between my junior senior year of high school and I

go down there and I live on a Comics couch for three months my entire summer break I go down there and I'm doing nine to 11 shows a week I'm going to the malls I'm I'm passing out free tickets I'm hanging posters up to promote shows I'm going in to the comedy club at 3 pm. to like practice my set while he throws tennis balls at me and honks horns and Jingles anything he can do to distract me to very that was part of the treat the training regimen exactly exactly and I think to this

day I think it helps me keep my composure in the pocket like I'm not thrown for a loop when somebody out something that typical exposure therapy from a psychological perspective right exactly afraid of yeah oh that's cool so what way huh so how did he know to do that do you think that's smart I'm not sure he's he's a fantastic guy his name is Gary ABDO he's he's very prominent in in the comedy community he's he's helped out a lot of people starting out their career like he he was very prominent in Chappelle's early years

he was like a late teenager earthquake so he's probably seen people thrown by hecklers and so forth and by trouble you can't get knocked out of your groove well his Comedy Club down there was called the Uptown Comedy Corner and it was notoriously known as like one of the harshest comedy clubs in the country it's it was a it was a tough environment like they either loved you or they would boo you off stage so for me to go in there as a kid yes you have the novelty of like he's a kid give him

a chance but but only so far yeah so you got to get them in the first couple of minutes otherwise they're not going to sit there and watch you do five or 10 minutes they just they don't they don't have that patience in them so I go down there and I get trained in like one of the harshest environments possible and in doing that I meet more comics who are coming through the club I would pretty much open for like anybody that came through the club down there I met a lot of comics who lived

out of La so then when I went back to high school for my senior year I knew I didn't want to go to college I knew comedy is what I wanted to do so I flew out to Los Angeles and I took the the chess be the California proficiency exam which in certain States is kind of like college where you have to have a certain amount of credits to graduate high school the chesp is essentially a test you can take at any time that basically test you out of high school youve learned everything you need

to learn oh really oh that's a great that's a great option fantastic so I flew out there took the test uh came back I had to wait like two weeks for my results but I I had a good feeling about it so I was I was just going to school for two weeks and just like sleeping throughout class I wouldn't do any of the work I wouldn't take any of the test how old were you at that point I just turned 17 maybe I just turned 17 I was maybe still and so that's after you

came back from La yes right uh came back from taking the test waiting for the results got the results back at like the first week of January moved out to my friend Eric Griffin's couch two weeks after that so I was about H like four or five months early from graduating high school moved out there lived on his couch for the first couple of months then uh then my manager at the time his son graduated film school he moved out to Los Angeles I stayed on his couch for the next year and I was just

going to comedy clubs every single night I would go and just hang out some of them wouldn't even let me hang out inside until finally people would vouch for me people wouldn't show up on the lineup and somebody was like well he's here all right so you're hanging around enough to get your opportunity exactly but funny enough sometimes I would get the opportunity to go on stage and I literally couldn't step foot in the comedy club until they were like announcing and Matt re and then I would have to run through into the comedy club

Go on stage and leave immediately after cuz I wasn't 21 so they still had to abide by like their own rules in a very loophole way and in doing that I just kind of stayed consistent in the scene I was getting more and more prominent stage time I started to book smaller and smaller uh smaller turning into larger um TV appearances which it was some Disney stuff that led to a bunch of MTV stuff and then after I left all my MTV stuff I just became really dedicated to to standup and and transferring over to

to acting and and producing and developing and all that kind of stuff so what did you do for MTV uh my first thing I did on there was wild and out I did four seasons of that I was like the youngest cast member it was right after right after Pete Davidson left there to go to SNL they they needed a white guy and I happened to fit like that exact M went on there learned so much so that's a very strange diversity hire oh of course we're short of white guys yeah let's call M never

he anymore no no that's that's not that's not a likely diversity H but but this it could not have been a better learning experience cuz I was a very insecure shy kid and I was going on the show with Comics this was this was the revamp of wild or not this was after Kevin Hart D Davis Cory hul all these amazing Cat Williams all these um fantastic Comics had left the show and they rebooted it with a lot of comics I knew from the Atlanta scene who were monsters Carlos Miller DC youngfly Chico Bean are

all killers on stage and I had to compete with that and I knew I couldn't but I at least had to hold my ground and in doing that I just went through the gauntlet over there like everyone at that show turned me into man with confidence on stage and I'll I'm so grateful for that I I can't imagine I would have gotten that experience anywhere else so I did a few seasons on the show and the show was fun I enjoyed my experience on there but I had a very Niche role to play every joke

I said had to be about me being a white guy on the show if I ever to constrained yes anytime I try to step out of it people will be like what are you doing I'm like Oh I thought I was gonna do like a clever joke and they're like no no no no no do do the thing you're here to do and although I enjoyed it and I had built a little bit of a name for myself I was like this isn't what that's an interesting set of constraints right I mean it's very tight

set of constraints and one of the um 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 best example I know of that is so there's a Japanese poetry form known as Haiku which has very strict rules well MIT nerds set up a website decades ago now that was devoted to Haik cou that could only be about the lunch and meet spam and there's like 50,000 Haus there's literally 50,000 haikus online in the online Haiku spam archive and they're hilarious but

partly they're hilarious because well it's bad enough that you have to just do ha cou that's like pointless and and constraining to begin with but then to restrict it even further so specific well yeah well it forces a kind of wit and so I can imagine that having the constraint of only being ble to make jokes about being the white guy must have also been one of the things that sharpened your wit I think so too and I think unless I'm misconstruing this I I think that's probably why crowd work works the best for me

because I'm very constrained like I I have to talk about I have to answer what they're saying to me with a funny response in association with what they're talking about I don't I don't have vast options it has to be now and it has to do what they're saying okay so you said that you were a shy kid and obviously the last thing in some ways that you would expect a shy kid to be doing is to be doing online standup comedy comedy in front of live audiences and then Taping that that's specifically devoted to

crowd work 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 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 and and how is it that you Orient yourself towards the audience so you don't become self-conscious when you're now now you'll be come self-conscious because we're deing no no not at all not at all so so I'm curious about

how how you keep yourself not focusing on whether or not you're being funny for example when you're interacting with the audience it's purely confidence whether it's real or fake confidence I think when I was younger I did develop a fake confidence right I uh I I was bullied a lot in high school not like getting shoved into lockers but to the point where I I wasn't any in anybody's group you know I was plast clown I was the butt of a lot of people's Jokes which didn't hurt at least I I I tell myself but

I think that's where you learn you learn to to to deflect right you you have two options in a moment when somebody makes a joke expense you can either laugh along and play into it and go with it or you can be embarrassed and everybody sees you're embarrassed embar yeah right that just invites F abuse 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 think it doesn't bother

me because obviously like so I'm going to challenge your supposition that that was false well because the thing about being funny is that if you're false you're not funny and if you're not funny and you're being bullied you're just going to get bullied worse so you were obviously it seems like you were able to generate responses that were witty and that were funny but purely a defense mechanism I think it wasn't for the point of like oh I hope I get a good joke off here I think it was I have to deflect what them

saying a mean thing with me saying a funny thing right but that is a that is so I would say that is a good that's actually a very sophisticated defense because I mean one of the things that people do guys do this particularly and like relatively rough working job working class jobs is they'll throw pointed barbs at 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 or are you the sort of person that can roll with a joke and

maybe even say something funny and so I wouldn't say that the ability to do that is false I would say that's a sophisticated it's more sophisticated form of Defense Than Physical aggression 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 toss it back oh well thank you yeah I mean it was it was a totally subconscious skill set I had no idea until right now apparently what I was even doing so a thank

you and B I think it starts then and then the longer you do stand up you realize you're funny eventually you do realize you're funny Chris Rock talks about this all the time when he talks about uh when comedians can't tell a joke on stage and it doesn't work after a certain point you know your funny you're just not saying your joke correctly where the audience perceives it the way you want them to Perce so you don't you don't experience moments of global doubt exactly it's localized exactly so I think after a while I mean

after doing comedy for 12 years and having had shows of uproar laughter and standing ovations you know you're capable of being funny and putting on a good show right right so I think that confidence is paired with the control of an audience when you're on stage with a microphone people are there to watch and listen to you they're also hoping you'll be funny except for the odd troll so they're on your they could be on your side yes 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 right right they're going to give you more of the benefit of the do yeah well and It's Tricky too responding to a crowd like that too because you have to be funny well and this is I suppose in some ways why you've gotten into trouble you have to be in funny you have to be funny but you can't be too mean right you can't hit a fly with a sledgehammer

your response has to be proportionate I mean you up the ante a little bit that's my my presumption you up the anti a little bit when someone says something smart but you don't come out with like the Long Knives and hack someone to bits of course right CU that'll turn them again CU 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 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 you you have to be playing with disaster in order to be funny right the things you say this is one of the things I used to really like about Sarah Silverman 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 to lay it out even though it was like rude and unacceptable beyond belief

I think comedy is purely down to intent when people are bullying you like when high schoolers are are making fun of something about you that's a totally different intent even though they are making a joke their intention is that you're going to feel a certain kind of way that is what differ differentiates it from standup comedy 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 some people heal totally differently when it comes to certain topics I

get that and I accept that I'm not for you but 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 and second getting touchy about that and then shielding yourself from any exposure to that is not the way to being cured quite the contrary you know like if it's bad better if you've had a traumatic experience in your life not to protect yourself unduly from from situations that might bring that back up but to voluntarily expose

yourself to situations where that's likely to be the case and so it's it's it might be understandable in that people have been hurt but it's counterproductive even with regard to their own recovery oh ab and you know partly what comedy does too it has this psychological function is that it does provide an in sort of like it's sort of like horror movie in some ways you know 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 but you're not you're paying

for the experience of the Mastery of your fear right and you have right well and then in comedy you see the same sort of thing happening is the comedians are always toying with the Forbidden and the reason for that in part the reason the audience participates is because well we often have to deal with the Forbidden and often some of the things we forbid aren't things that we should be avoiding or forbidding so um Russell Peters he's a good example Peters when he does his huge stadium shows it's so interesting to watch them because he

tells racist jokes Non-Stop and you can you can feel that there's a palpable demand in the audience from the ethnic group that he hasn't yet skewed to be skewed so that they can show that they can take a joke that they're in on the joke right right so and so the comedians they have that function of putting forward what would you say unpalatable truths right in a place where everyone's there to do that voluntarily that's part of the game how far can we push things and then to get all [ __ ] about that and

to try to cancel someone in consequence I saw this one guy on YouTube who's complaining about you you know he said first of all oh may maybe you'll recognize him he said that you know you built your career um as an ally of women that was basically his point now that you've betrayed him youve betrayed them with your jokes about domestic abuse and so he was playing this you know I'm the friend of women sort of game yeah but he's violating that contract too which is that everybody's there in a comedy club To Play With

Disaster and and you know you're essentially supposed to go along with that yeah I just don't understand how the environment isn't taken into consideration like that is the environment is the context think of Comedy like a store like a restaurant front right you go in there the food's not for you you you can leave you didn't have to stop in here it's such comedy is such a niche field it's not I wouldn't consider standup comedy a mainstream art form I wouldn't it's not film it's not television it's not music it's not as globally celebrated in

in every household you know so I think I I it just blows my mind that people can't just let it be if it's not for you it's not for you well I see what's happening I think like even this guy that that that um that criticized you in the the manner that I just described I found what he had to say and him for that matter contempt I thought it was pathetic 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 so one of the problems is this is a huge problem on the social media side is that we've put undo access to status in the hands of people who will misuse accusations to Garner attention you know and you might say well why would people want that kind of negative attention 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

but what that just shows is how much people want attention 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 more attention than they could ever acrew given their own status and abilities and so what to do about that I have no idea although apologizing is a bad idea yeah absolutely not I I'll never apologize for a joke ever I I I just find the prioritization of human beings to be so Fu you're on this Earth for 80 years

let's call it on average whatever it was was that what's the average 83 something like 80 funny years 80 after that they're not so funny I disagree I think after 80 you get to be funnier you get to excuse you can [ __ ] wherever you want after 90 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 when you have a world at your hands of all the things you do like what an

absolute waste of energy time and emotion starting a business can be tough especially knowing how to run your online storefront thanks to Shopify it's easier than ever Shopify is the global Commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business from the launch your online shop stage all the way to the did we just hit a million orders stage Shopify is there to help you grow our marketing team uses Shopify every day to sell our merchandise and we love how easy it is to add more items ship products and track conversions Shopify helps

you turn browsers into buyers with the internet's best converting checkout up to 36% better compared to other leading Commerce platforms no matter how big you want to grow Shopify gives you everything you need to take control and take your business to the next level sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com jbp go to shopify.com jbp now to grow your business no matter what stage you're at that's shopify.com jvp [Music] so what why do you think why do you think you were inclined when you when this Tempest in a tea party merged

to make arguably even a worse joke because I think I which I'm very I'm very pleased about by the way I thought that was actually a master stroke because you topped what you were being accused of by picking on an even lower status Group which I thought was I disagree okay go ahead I disagree when people think that joke was intended to make fun of special needs people that is that's no no I'm not I'm I'm definitely not making that assumption but that was the risk of the misinterpretation course inevitably what happened I go but

it was a risk it was a daring and risky move and I also thought it was hilarious but now but the thing is that is often not what happens I mean I've seen celebrity after celebrity who are cornered by a small minority of Their audience right abjectly apologize and so did you first of all did you have any guilt about the domestic violence joke which by the way I also thought was very funny cuz it's a completely madeup story 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 and I went this this is crazy how do you describe this hum is is there a definition or a label for the kind of humor that you just say the worst possible scenario it's funny because it's ridiculous because you know it's not true because you know know it's not what you mean you know it's not the right thing that is what makes it funny what it how how is that how what is that Lev what is that style of Comedy kind

of irony it's a kind of iry irony it's not not fully sarcasm it's not totally satire no no but it's a wildly common sense of humor like a lot of people share that together and that is who I want yeah well that's part of that's part of ridicule I would say like you know the the exagger of something it's also you know if you take okay so you took this scenario that you saw at a restaurant blew it up into something beyond what it was see it's another form of exposure there too because obviously domestic

violence is a terrible thing and there's nothing funny about someone with a black eye except under very restricted circumstances but being able to see one of the things that you do when you set up a terrible scenario 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 and then you signal that even though you know it was a terrible scenario there's part of you that can rise above it and transcend it right and to make light of it and I

don't think there is anything really more admirable in human beings than their ability to make light of a tragedy and and light doesn't mean to minimize its importance it means to transform something that's truly negative into something that's manageable and comical one of the things I've seen with people who've undergone very deeply traumatic experiences is that you know that they've recovered from their absolute catastrophe when they can start making a joke about it and my daughter for example had a very rough childhood in adolescent she was very very ill and she can tell the worst

parts of her experiences in a manner that's like it'll bring tears of laughter to your eyes it's screamingly funny partly CU it's so partly cuz it's so awful you just can't believe it right but partly because in recounting it and sharing it you also signal that it can be talked about it can be faced and it can be transcended and got by and that's what you're doing in real time on a comedy stage it's like yeah we share this snake pit of Hell that we all live in from time to time but that doesn't mean

that we have to dive in and wallow in it we can make light of it and that's what great comedians do continually and so I thought that's what you did with the domestic violence joke and you added some nice kitchen related misogyny to that very rapidly which was a good it's a it's a modern Twist on an old joke you know what I mean it was it was a real circumstance that happened I'm sorry a a an exaggerated instance that really happened and I went you know this is this is a classic joke why not

give my own personal modern Twist on it and move on the joke's like a minute and 30 seconds of people were like all he did was bash women for an hour I go did you did you get to the come there's so much come in the middle of the show then we talk about airplanes and ghosts and monsters it's it was such a minute thing that I go hey just and I purposely did it first in the show to go hey just so you know this is this is the kind of humor I like to

tell and if it's not for you you are so more than welcome to turn off the TV right now I don't want you to fall in love with me and then get and then paint a a wrong perspective of who you think I am and then halfway through the show he goes oh he ruined it I'd rather tell you up front like Hey we're going to do some dark humor this is how I personally Jimmy Carr does that too he often starts out with like the worst thing he can possibly say just to establish the

boundaries why not yeah I I I I find I find it wildly important to make light of of dark situations I feel like you have two options to deal with the situation 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 if the word or topic even gets set around you you get so triggered and uncomfortable it ruins your day or and the day of every went around you yes or you can find a way to laugh about it

find a way to heal that way next time somebody brings it up maybe you have something positive to say about your experience or how you've or how you've come to deal with it that can then lead to other people healing through the same way when my grandpa passed away my friends knew my friends bombarded me with dead grandfather jokes they knew that was going to help me laugh and get through that and it was the toughest moment of my entire life and to this that's also a testament in many ways way to your character because

your friends knew that even under those dire circumstances 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 precisely when when I used I lectured at Harvard for a long time on owitz and that's about as dark a topic as you can possibly manage and I had the a voice in the back of my mind constantly it was dead serious lectures right and the voice said continually if you were truly a master of this topic you could deal with it

with a light touch and I thought oh my god really like really I'm going to talk about how prison guards took Delight in torturing people at owitz and I'm going to do that with a light touch and I realized after thinking about that for a very long time like decades really that you aren't a master of something until you can deal with a with a light touch no matter how dark a subject that it is and like obviously the darker the subject the more Mastery you have to have in order to make light of it

clearly right without going sideways but but I still do think it's a sign of Mastery and that's why people enjoy the laughter so much right because it is a signal of of Mastery often over tragedy and what's forbidden and what's dark 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 because what you're doing if you're a comic is actually helping people not hurting them and you can tell you're helping them because they laugh oh

of course and it doesn't need to be for the masses if you reach even just a few people you're doing the right thing I like I said at the beginning of the podcast everything I do is just to make okay so I'm curious about that because well obviously the people who apologize for offending someone with their art or their comedy must have doubts about their own intent right so someone comes along and Jabs them and says maybe you're just a mean son of a [ __ ] go well you know maybe I should be more

careful maybe they're feeling a bit depressed whatever they do step back and doubt themselves so you know and you could say that there are two reasons that someone called for their misbehavior might doubt themselves one would be that they're narcissistic and the other would be that they're actually confident in their intent okay now you've indicated a number of times while we've talked that you are confident in your intent yeah okay so so so if I was uh like uh uh persistent skeptic I would say well you clearly offended 12,000 people that was the number you

came up with why are you so confident in your intent that your belief in the your own goodness in relationship to Comedy trumps the fact that like 12,000 people are telling you that you said something offensive because if 12,000 people are sending that I would say a 100,000 people are saying they loved it and they've been through domestic violence situations and they found the joke very funny that they are actually able to deal with that situation in a comedic light right and I I commend that bravery I can only imagine what it takes to get

through something like that but if I can help in any way even if it was on accident that's I I feel great okay okay so 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 but also that a marked majority of people agreed with that they if God laughs in the club where well that's kind of how you know right

people actually that bit for the past five months in probably oh God 200 cities I did that joking and opened with it and crushed every time which is why I kept it for the special like that's that's how you gauge a reaction look some jokes won't be funny I've i' I'm currently building a new show right now I'm constantly I'm doing so many new jokes right now some of them will stay some of them won't stay you have to gauge you have to try to figure out what works and what doesn't you have to listen

you have to listen yeah yeah 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 a as a as part of the royal road to the unconscious well the reason for that is that you don't you don't get to decide whether you're going to laugh if it's a genuine laugh if someone says something that's funny you'll laugh even if you're embarrassed about laughing afterwards right so the funniest jokes are actually the ones where you laugh despite yourself yeah of course right

right 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 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 and so what that also means is while you're telling these jokes and collecting the responses so you had this domestic violence joke and you might say well that's risky but that's not the

right question the right question is is it actually funny and another question is can you rely on the fact that it's funny as an indicator of its moral worth and I think you can right I think that if you tell a joke to repeated audiences and you get a goodh 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 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 yes right but it's entirely what I love about comedy is it's entirely subjective and the point is that it makes somebody laugh right if it does make one person laugh it is definitively funny just not to the masses which is totally fine obviously the objective of having a stand up comedy career is to appeal to as many as you possibly can but your comedic intentions is is if I get a laugh technically the joke is funny now it's up to me to listen and gauge the audience where I go hm do I leave

it as is and I appeal to this one person which is technically still not wrong the joke is still funny 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 okay so when you're when you're screening jokes for continued inclusion you could imagine a joke that imagine it's l like this with pieces of music there'll be pieces of music that are very very popular that spread very rapidly but that have no legs right

they're the sort of earworm that you listen to once or twice catchy yeah yeah when when you're selecting when you're selecting jokes I'm wondering what are your criteria can't just be that it makes the most people laugh like I could imagine there are jokes that have a delayed response and the faster people in the audience catch it absolutely okay so can can you can you tell how do you determine which jokes you keep like what kind of response are you looking for the most amount of laughter is the best possible outcome however and I don't

know how I don't know how to break this down psychologically but there's something about comedians that like and oo response he said the thing not supposed to say yeah and it is funny not laugh out loud funny but oh my God he said it fny well that's yeah that that's separate from shock value though like you're pointing out it's like I can't believe he had the goal to say that that's like the gesture in the king's court fundamentally right is that you've brought to light something that everyone knows or suspects and pointed to it right

right and that is funny that you get an an old response like that but outr would be so personal too because that that joke about domestic you saw if 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 oh yeah no a thought that was funny yes nobody in the audience had a problem whatsoever if you watch later in the special I do a school shooting joke that gets a massive who response and you didn't get canell for

that nobody's talking about that people only care about the things that offend them specifically they don't care about me hurting somebody else's feelings potentially it's very selfish find it entirely selfish you're going to let me make fun of other things and make jokes and make light of certain other dark topics but the thing that affects you personally is the only thing you're upset about very yeah yeah you well you got to ask yourself too if I 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 whatever they said was and I've seen this about people complaining on on Twitter in particular or in public they almost always always claim offense on the behalf of hypothetical other people yeah who somehow they're acting as allies for or spokes people for which is a little bit on the condescending side to begin with if you ask me it's like if they're offended yeah you know if if a group of women against domestic abuse had conjured up a petition against you you know and it was composed of

a 100,000 sufferers well that might be more evidence than some dimwitted tick tocker who decided that they were going to be the spokespeople for these hypo hypothetically offended the women who feel chained up in the kitchen and it's also as simple as just being an easy target like I'm a lot of people just want to not like me so you give them any inkling of that they go boom here's the thing I can attach myself well well 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 like I mean I know is my fault I would have loved a progressive rise in my career I didn't know Tik Tok was going to do this right right well but you did put in the work yes you know it it it didn't happen it didn't happen exactly overnight you said You' you know you were you were in the trenches for what 5 years before you had anything approximating real success how long do you think uh I would real Su real success I would say in standup real success probably nine years

nine years okay okay so we can't say that you blew up like this but it wasn't sudden no it had a very long developmental curve in then right but that's typical that's typical of success right it even if it doubles say it doubles every 18 months if it starts at zero takes a long time for that doubling to start to actually show okay but what that also meant was that and this is another problem with social media is that you had acred a lot of status Capital right so your status Capital would be directly associated

with how many people know you essentially and appreciate what you do 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 because there's zero effort on behalf of the person who does that and what they're doing then is stealing some of your acrude Social Capital and 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 Tik Tok let's say in the hope that they'll go viral and then they also do that well complaining claiming that compassion rather than narcissism is their fundamental motivation right ugly it's purely clout chasing at it at its definition to attach yourself to what somebody else has going on for your own selfish gain is so pathetic you don't have anything else to offer Tik Tok is a massive platform of a lot of artistic creators you can't it's everything from people dancing to philosophers like there's so much you can do

on there do any of it without me right right right right without stealing from you cuz that's essentially what it is and and completely lying about who you think somebody is you don't know who somebody is based on a joke they said sarcasm ex exists for a reason I didn't mean the thing I said I said it because it's funny and not what I actually feel on the inside so who makes up the bulk of your audience in your live shows is it men or women uh it is it is women but I would say

it's massively changed over the past I'd say five or six months when when my Tik Tok status really started to at the top of last year it was wildly predominantly female I would say my shows from October of last year till about March of this year were like 90% women any idea why it's anybody's guess you could say it's my face you could say it's my humor it's I I couldn't what do you think what do you think well you play I I watched your crowd work I mean you're good at you're good at playing

with the women who poke at you yes you roasted that was a very that was a very specific Trend a lot of women a lot of women hopped on to like a woman would would Heckle would yell something out and that's obviously annoying so you rort with a mean response comedically yeah and this caught on people were really into that like people were coming to shows women were coming to shows requesting to be roasted now obviously I don't mean anything I say I mean shut up and stop yelling out at shows but I'm articulating it

in a way that you know I'm just making some jokes at your expense it's caught on so heavily I think there might be I don't know if it's a fetish or of some kind maybe it's because you dared to do it you know that's possible maybe there's an appreciation for for well that's what happens with Russell Peters when he's making ethnic do you know Russell by the way do I know him yeah yeah I don't know him well but we spoke on my podcast he's a great guy I've know him years Russell's great great and

he's been unbelievably successful and he dares to make jokes to everyone yeah yeah is that right of course that doesn't surprise me and that by the way what you just said is wildly important if you're going to make jokes at a group's expense you have to be open to making jokes about everybody otherwise it does feel targeted well and he he makes jokes about his own ethnic group more than anyone else's and they're very pointed and targeted just like I make fun of myself probably more than anybody else does that's what baffles me is when

people can't laugh at themselves nothing makes me laugh harder than when someone's like making good that's the that's one of the things I really liked about British humor is that the Brit love it it's the best I went over there I think it was June of this year May or June I this year feels three years long sometime early late spring early summer this year we had a bunch of shows out there and I fell in love with it I would love a reason to move to London for like a year to just do comedy

out there the the audience they have a comedy Unleashed group there well because the com the comics in the UK have really come under assault and a lot of them have been canceled and so there's a group in London um who now the the who's this Andrew Doyle Andrew Doyle runs comedy Unleashed and he has that online character Tania McGrath who's a satire of a woke feminist he wrote a book that by Tania McGrath and yeah she's the worst of the woke feminists anyways he started this group called comedy Unleashed and I went to one

of just one of their shows so far in London I actually read a piece that I wrote for my little 2-year-old grandson who was trying to sorts of things on his head pretending they were hats like old pieces of fish and so forth and yeah but anyways if if that when you go to the UK again they're very much worth looking up comedy Unleashed I definitely check I think the funniest UK comedians are now associated with comedy Unleashed and they have these fora in London that are designed to genuinely be open discourse events as you

can make a joke about any damn thing you want and everyone who comes there knows that and appreciates it love that well they're very makes the shows very funny too as you because everyone goes and they're on the same page let's just let's just have some fun I would love to do a streaming platform like that someday where where creators can go on there and it's just it's whatever kind of humor you want think same kind of setup as like a porn website you go on there you click 18 and you click 18 and up

right you know what you're getting into same with this website you go on there you realize you're going to hear some crude [ __ ] well you should bloody well know that if you go to a comedy show you would think I mean listen I've never had a problem at a live show ever I have never once had anybody have a stand up and be like that was not okay to say almost 13 years of doing comedy not once you're obviously not pushing the envelope hard enough Jordan Peterson said it first I love my new

hour that I'm working on right now so much edgier it it blows my mind people chose this one thing to attach themselves on to and I just I I just think it's well it's going to it's going to redown to your credit anyways particularly because you didn't apologize so all that's going to happen as far as I can tell is that this will bring a lot more attention to your work and people will be thrilled about the fact that you didn't apologize one of the things that I've noticed repeatedly because I've gone through repeated attempts

to cancel me is that it is can be quite an intense experience when it in the immediate aftermath of its occurrence and that's somewhat offut and destabilizing because you don't exactly know how far out it's going to spread or what the consequences would be but if you didn't do anything wrong and you don't apologize or maybe you make light of it in some creative way then the probability that it will turn around and flip in your direction if you can tolerate the weight is extremely high I don't think that part of the reason I'm bringing

this up is because I don't think that people who are in the throws of being canel understand this CU you can imag imagine historically if an angry mob of your neighbors showed up on your doorstep with pitchforks and flames and there was like 40 of them it would probably be a good time to think these people wouldn't have gone to all that time and effort in all likelihood had I not done something wrong right but now you can whip up a Twitter mob in no time whatsoever at no with no effort at no cost to

yourself and probably some benefit and so your instinctual responses to being mobbed are wrong yeah it doesn't it doesn't translate to the real world I just walked through two very packed airports and did nothing but take like 45 pictures nothing but a positive response you you have you had any negative responses you said you had no negative responses to anything you've ever said so far when you're actually on stage yeah but what about out in the actual world not once never once has somebody come up to me and said hey I didn't like the thing

you said cuz that kind of so social what I don't know if you want to call it between a mixture of social awareness and accountability doesn't translate to the real world people know takes a lot of gold to do that a come up to someone and say you know that thing you said even though you don't know who they are imagine you see a street performer right they're playing violin on a street corner they've got their case out with cash right say you f hate violin violin drives you nuts maybe he's not even good at

playing violin in what do you do you keep walking right no sane decent human being stops and goes you're [ __ ] awful to kill yourself what are you doing out here you're making my life miserable until I just look a different direction that's an insane thing to do and most people know not to do to do that but obviously the internet creates this this this is what I would believe to be false confidence and and believing that they're safe behind this imaginary source of social media that they don't face any repercussions because their profile

picture is an anime character and everything's a private profile there's no consequence saying what they say there's no consequence for leveling an accusation yeah it's really bad yeah versus the real word if you come up to me I can have an intellectual conversation with you as to why I disagree with you yes or or I could smack the [ __ ] out that is also a consequence that is is viable and that doesn't weigh on anybody on the internet so it's easier for people to talk [ __ ] on there versus the real world where

people actually aren't even bothered and also I had I had to figure most these people who talk [ __ ] on the internet and actively try to cancel people and have no life they're not out in the real world they're in their house doing absolutely nothing so you don't have to worry about that yeah and they've got they definitely have the mentality of like mean girl High School bullies yeah right we're going to shame we're reputation Savage we're going to exclude those are all go ahead put so much energy in your life into things thinking

about me and how much you don't like me what a waste of your life yeah yeah yeah so now you said too that when you posted your response to the criticisms you posted something I think that's wildly funny by the way and so maybe you could explain that to the to the to this particular crowd but you also told me in the intervening time between the two podcasts that that wasn't a calculated response that you relied on your instinct for what was funny so explain what you did so so funny you sound like a principal

who my parents came here tell them what you did right yeah exactly lay it out man but the principal actually loves it this is perfect um so now I have to convince my parents not to whoop my ass basically this this thing happened there was an outrage over a joke that was wildly misperceived and that's fine you're allowed to like or not like a joke totally okay and in response to that I posted every when you get canceled or or somebody is upset about a joke you tell you're supposed to apologize people want you to

back down and shame you and and recognize what you've done wrong and I don't believe I did anything wrong whatsoever so it made me really feel like the people who were offended by this were for lack of better words and to be quite Frank weak-minded so I posted a photo of me on stage thought it was a good photo with a link at the bottom of it and the caption was saying if I've ever offended you with a joke I've told here's a link to my official apology and the link description should have been a

dead giveaway it said click to solve your issue and when you click on the link it redirected you to a a a store solve your issue that's funny very specific because it's a little ambiguous of course and then you click on the link and it redirects you to a an online storefront for special needs helmets I thought this was very funny and again misconstrue people and instinctually again people get triggered by subject matter than what the joke actually is everybody took that as I was making fun of special needs people mhm no I don't have

anything to say about Mak fun of people claiming special needs for their emotional fragility in appropriately exactly I'm saying andely you need this way more than they do right and the best part is is that you clicked on it youing idiot they could have special needs earplugs that they could wear to comedy shows where you actually couldn't hear fil all the words all of them it AI generates what they want to hear that'll happen soon enough that's right you'll be able to an AI That's AI sensor but that's what your that's technically what your algorithm

is it shows you what you want to see it it it it tells you what you want to hear I was the night that uh I was like the number one trending thing on Twitter uh like uh night before last I think it was I texted my friend and I was like yeses and he sent me a screenshot of his I wasn't even top 25 he goes this isn't nobody cares dude right it's in your circle because it's your profile you're going to hear about it obviously but it's it's not to the extent of people

think so yes I I posted this misdirect of an apology and it it couldn't have went better I was literally just sitting passenger side passenger seat in a car ride with my friends and I I was I just thought it would be a funny thing to do it took me no more than 45 seconds to think of doing that I go hey is this funny and he cracked up laughing and I went n [ __ ] it I also thought that most of the outrage was happening just on Twitter and Tik Tok like Instagram is

a far more personal app I think and so the fact that people even saw that and and took it to other plat forms I thought was insane but also proved my point even more that people who don't even like my comedy or have never even heard of me saw the outrage and my response to it and went oh that's actually funny so it actually gained me a lot of fans because most of the world I would I would feel confident in saying the majority of people are sick of this [ __ ] well Mo most

people are actually hoping that a comedian will be funny rather than ially correct right well this is the problem I think this is the misapprehension of people who apologize when they're accused because your case is well perhaps you irritated some people by not apologizing but first of all there are people that you really don't mind irritating and they weren't really irritated to begin with so it's all a lie anyway nor were they fans in the first place right exactly and so when you apologize in principle you signal to those people that you've cow toow and

bowed down but you forgo the opportunity to appeal to to a much broader realm of people which You' think would be more sensible if you were trying to protect or develop your career the people who look at what you've done and think oh well that's funny enough so maybe I'll go check out this guy that I've never heard of I'm sure you attracted like 10,000 fans for every person you turned off yeah analytically I've I have gained more fans than I have lost across all platforms the extremities of everybody involved in this outrage has been

nothing but beneficial because even if you didn't like that the domestic violence joke that I got in trouble for which is fair even I think it's not the best joke I've ever written at all it's not it's it's probably the worst joke in the special and that's fine I do other things I have plenty of other jokes that are for other people the response being a perfect example that they even if people go well that's not funny but that joke of his is the extremities are so loud and so against each other that once one

group of people whatever you want to call them people love to make it about the left or the right or whatever I'm a very unpolitical person I don't really use those terms so they might not be correctly used here but say the left is so outraged about something the right instinctually goes you're being so ridiculous about this if you hate this I'm going to support this because I see nothing wrong with it so in doing that they've completely balanced each other out right right well right and you probably brought your work to the attention of

a whole demographic that wouldn't have necessarily known who you were so many people commenting I didn't know who this kid was I actually didn't like him before but I like this joke that he told or or I or I dislike you so much that the enemy of my enemy is not my friend right right right [Music]