Vent: That moment I watched a mob pile on a comedian for a 10-year-old joke

I was scrolling through Twitter last Tuesday when I saw a thread dig up a joke this mid-level comic told at a club back in 2014, and within 3 hours people were calling for him to lose his booking at a local theater in Cleveland. Did anyone actually laugh at the time, or are we just hunting for stuff to be mad about now?

3 comments

3 Comments

holly_henderson861mo ago

Had a buddy who did a bit in 2015 about how his grandma couldn't figure out Netflix. Nothing mean, just old lady struggling with a remote. Someone clipped ten seconds of it last spring and posted it with a caption saying he was making fun of elderly people. Within a week his local open mic dropped him and a community center cancelled a workshop he was supposed to teach. He literally had to make a video explaining the full context just to get a coffee shop to let him perform again. The whole thing was over something that got actual laughs at the time.

haydenbutler23d ago

Gotta be honest, I don't really see it that way... the mob mentality thing is bad for sure, but comedians have been using "context" as a shield for way too long. If your bit has to be explained in a five minute video for people to get it wasn't mean, maybe it just wasn't a great bit.

uma_johnson1mo ago

Isn't it wild how fast people forget context though... I had a similar thing happen to a buddy of mine who did a bit about a local politician back in like 2012, and suddenly last year people were digging it up and calling him a sellout. The joke was literally just making fun of the guy's haircut, but by the time the mob was done with him he lost like two paying gigs and had to lay low for months. Feels like nobody even bothers to watch the actual clip anymore, they just get mad off a screenshot and a bad description.