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

Episode Date: November 30, 2023

Dr. Jordan B Peterson sits down in-person with recently “canceled” comedian Matt Rife. They discuss the incident in question, his viral response, the prominence of crowd work in his act, his early career start at the age of 15, the innovative use of social media to build his name, and the real reason he remains unapologetic for having a sense of humor. Matthew Steven Rife was born in 1995 and is an American standup comedian and actor. He started early, entering a school talent show at the age of 14 after being encouraged by a friend. Finding this to be a success, he went professional the next year at age 15. Using TikTok, he managed to consistently go viral with his stand up and "red flag" crowd work. He then entered the arena full time, using social media to grow his name before producing three straight-to-YouTube comedy specials from 2021 to 2023. This year, he debuted his first Netflix special, "Natural Selection."  - Links - For Matt Rife: On X https://x.com/mattrife?s=20 On Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2mKA8JTOCeodl9bEK7w42Q On Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@matt_rife?lang=en  Full Specials: “Only Fans” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzgFwZEAHZQ “Matthew Steven Rife” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AwsR1iqsuE “Walking Red Flag”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HkmMXprPwI&t=768s Watch “Natural Selection” on Netflix now!

[♪ Music playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing in background, playing young guy, 28 years old, Matt Rife, 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 a 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 appropriate response to that cancellation, to talk about that sort of thing in more detail, and also to detail out the structure of his new tour 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. So welcome to the conversation. All right, so I've been planning this opening, which I don't usually do because I like to do things spontaneously, but I have to get this one right. Okay, so you got to help me get this straight. Okay. So now you're a comedian and you got counseled 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 gonna come on my podcast. That's 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. So, 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 knull 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 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 idiotic users.

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, 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? 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, release endorphins 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 been launching what you do on your specials, and you're continually interacting with the audience, which 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, practicing. But you're doing, 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-rewarded. 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 gonna say, right? I mean, if something strikes you as amusing, you pretty much have to go for it.

And if you're head's full of censorship-related thoughts, you're gonna be not funny in about 15 seconds. So. You have to let the intrusive thoughts win and comedy. You have to. Well, if you're a naturally funny person, the first thing that comes to your mind should be the funniest thing to you most of the comedy. You have to. Well, if you're a naturally funny person, the first thing that comes to your mind should be the funniest thing to you.

Most of the time it can be. Right. And it has to be the first thing. Yeah, you know, if you're writing a multiple choice test by the way, if you second guess your intuition about the right answer, you're more likely to be wrong with the second guess. Is that true?

Yeah, that immediate response tends to be better. Yeah, well, and 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. Absolutely. It has to be a quick relationship with the audience. Yeah, timing is absolutely everything. You want to say the most pointed thing at exactly the right time. And so what do you think, or maybe, I don't know if you've thought about it, what do you think is, first of all,

how broad scale 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 eight billion people in the world. And I would say 90% of the small majority that is upset with me doesn't go to comedy shows

anyway, or wouldn't lie with me as a person anyways, which is fine. Right, that's 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 them to spend eternity and a hell composed of nothing but people like them talking to them. Oh, so Twitter. Yeah, yeah, exactly that.

Right. Right. Right. But that's the thing is it's like 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 scream-o-heavy metal music. Guess how often I think about it or talk about it? Zero percent of the time. You just remove yourself from the situation. I don't see no harm in trying to make people laugh as a general intention.

Yeah, well, I also don't understand exactly 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 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 complaint, some virtue signaling,

or you'll see that with the man in particular. Well, I know I really care a lot. I know. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty obvious. All of yeah, I saw one TikTok video who was like, I, I have a wife and I found this so merely disrespectful. I was like, okay, you cuck. Yeah.

Whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you think you get out of a foreplay? Yeah, what do you want to get more put? Yeah, I'll say to your wife like chill out. You're already marriage. She already respects you. What do you, what do you want? Yeah, well, I used to see when, You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this.

You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this.

You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this.

You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. You can get out of this. But the man that were hypothetically there to support them, man, I tell you, I couldn't even look at some of those guys without having to shut her run up my spine. There's almost nothing worse than a man who tries to worm himself in with the 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, Gadsad, the evolutionary psychologist who works

at Concordia, he called that the sneaky f**ker a routine, yeah, exactly. Well, and that's actually a phrase from evolutionary biology. Well, tell me a funny story that goes along with that. This is hilarious. And so telling. So primatologists who studied orangutans figured out a long time ago that there are two variant male types of orangutans.

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, 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 on the trees but they turn out to be many of them fully mature males whose development into the linebacker is forced

all by the fact that they're not at the top of the pecking order. Right. And so their strategy is sneaky rape. Right. So it doesn't take much of an imagination to map that onto the feminist male who's so on the side of women that 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 stunts their own evolution.

Well, it requires that they take a different pathway to mating success. They can't use dominance, yeah, yeah, yet. 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, 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. 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 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. I mean, I'm not certain of that, but it is the case. And is it almost always women that you interact within the crowd? No, not at all. It's totally a total look at the draw, whatever happens. I mean, women yell out the most for sure, like they'll heckle the most, so that will draw more adamance, crowd work, like that I didn't necessarily intend on doing, but overall, no, it's not that.

Is that something that's particularly characteristic of your shows? Because I would think, yeah, right. Because that's not. Yeah, okay. Well, I've kind of created my own crowd work monster in a way. I've front of my put this perspective for me.

If I got popular from doing crowd work, which was a very specific strategy. I only post my crowd work because I don't feel like burning through material. Comics build for minimum a year, two, three years, but an hour long show, right? 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. 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 to the same circumstance as the same story to tell, right?

And 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 work? Yeah, exactly. Right, right, because you can make them permanent and you said it doesn't interfere with the novelty of a prepared show. Yes. So you do prepare material as well. Yeah, I have two full specials on YouTube that are fully material.

I've only seen the crowd work. You watched the red flags. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I specifically did that special because I got, I was getting popular for doing red flag crowd work just on TikTok 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 flip flops or what, mom 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 work. Now I don't do it anymore. Now there's, I think it's the special, 50 minutes long of me just doing full crowd work for, for 50 minutes with the people in Miami.

And it was a lot of fun. I was happy to close the chapter, though. But it's a wide, 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 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 have a lot of learning and growth to do. Right, right, right.

How long have you been doing comedy professionally? 12 and a half years. So I mean, I have a lot of learning and growth to do. Right, right, right. 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 a 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 to like, Dane Cook and Dave Chappelle were. And 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's 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 the plant town. About 1,200 people. Oh yeah. One stop light that could have easily been a four way stop. Right, right.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's a mark of attainment to have at least four. Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah, I came from a little town in Northern Alberta. It had about 2,500 people. Oh, yes.

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 outskirts of town. Everyone's like, we got a new grocery store. Yeah. They're loving it. Yeah, yeah, they're a central town. Yeah, yeah, I can remember too

that when the Kentucky Fried Chicken came to town, that was also a big deal. When you got a KSZ, that's so funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. In hindsight, it's one of those places growing 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 shows. What's the name of the town? It's called North Lewisburg, Ohio. It's a very, very small town about Mary's, Villa, Ohio, is the closest city to it, I suppose. And I was doing shows not far from there and had to drive past it for two or, like, two months ago and I stopped through there.

Nothing had changed. And I thought that was beautiful. Like, I live in LA now and a tour constantly, but people get so wrapped up in what they think the rest of the world is actually talking about or actually cares about when it's not true at all. I saw kids riding their bikes and running around playing outside when I was driving their time.

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 on their phones scrolling. We become so detached from the rest of the world when we live in certain environments. How long have you lived in LA? It'll be 11 years in January. Oh, okay.

Yeah, after I graduated high school early at 17 and I moved out and just couch surfed the first 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? Mm-hmm. Where? The Columbus Funnybone in Columbus, Ohio. 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 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 liquor 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 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, but 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 gonna risk my liquor license for some kid to come in your towed jokes.

I wouldn't possibly come out of that. But for some odd reason, 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.

Mm-hmm. And did you make your grandpa laugh? Oh my God, he was my number one fan. I miss him every single day. Oh, oh yes. So did you have a good time in Columbus doing this? I did, but it's like most Midwestern towns, there's a ceiling. And if you have bigger dreams, you have to escape.

You have to go see what else is out there. So tell me how your career progressed from Columbus. How many shows did you do at Columbus? What was the arc of your career? 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. I know. There's Twitter was good for something. I know, make a break. That's like the one time Twitter has been good for something. Exactly. Well,

there's a lot of time. I'm forgetting canceled actually. If you want to get canceled, it's kind of it's actually it's huge. Yeah. Jesus. That is it. It's primary use. What else is it? It's just negativity. It's the worst app. People who thrive on Twitter. What else is it? It's just negativity. It's the worst app. People who thrive on Twitter rarely do well in life. It's so bad. But this is 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 with a Cleveland, Toledo, Dayton, Cincinnati or Columbus. And this is a time where Twitter was so new, you could access anybody. Like, this was the time when like, Ashton Kutcher was the only person to have a million followers on there. Like, at most celebrities had, I mean, 10,000 followers on it, you could tweet to somebody and they would see it and they would respond.

So I would tweet to favorite comics in mind when they were coming through the state of Ohio. I'd 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, which was so funny, because when I was 15 years old,

my extent of my DL Hugley knowledge was just sole plane, and where he played a bathroom attendant. His smallest credit to date has to be. I had no realization that he was one of the kings of comedy, 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 him my first guest spot. My second guest spot was Phines Mitchell and then it was Ralphie May, was a brother of mine. He's one that really helped me out in my younger years. but through Twitter, there was this comedy club owner

in Atlanta who knew DL for a very long time. And he saw DL, he would go in, I just going back and forth, choking back and forth with each other on Twitter. He reached out, my mom and I drove down from Ohio to Atlanta, I was like nine 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 you wanted to do for my career and I didn't know any better. So I was like, yeah, however you want to help, and my mom was also like, yeah, whatever keeps them off drugs, I guess. So did that work? Did it keep you off drugs? Until like my early 20s. Yeah. Well, that's not bad. That's probably better. He did a fantastic job. Exactly. exactly. I'm from Ohio. I'm lucky I didn't brush my teeth with fentanyl growing up. It was bad. A hometown was so trashy.

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 and 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 passing out free tickets.

I'm paying posters up to promote shows. 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. Anything he can do to distract me to. Oh yeah. That was part of the training regimen. Exactly, exactly. And I think to this day, I think it helps me keep my composure in the pocket.

I'm not thrown for a loop when somebody else has something else. Typical exposure, therapy from a psychological perspective. Exactly. Yeah, say you're afraid of. Yeah, oh, that's cool. So how did he know to do that, do you think? That's smart. I'm not sure.

He's a fantastic guy. His name's Gary Abdo. He's very prominent in the comedy community. He's helped out a lot of people starting out their career. He was very prominent in Chappelle's early years. He was like a late teenager, Earthweight. So he's probably seen people thrown by hecklers and so forth and by trouble. Absolutely.

Can you knock out of your groove? Well, his comedy club down there was called Uptown Comedy Corner and it was notoriously known as like one of the harshest comedy clubs in the country. It was a tough environment. They had to love you or they would boo you off. Oh, yeah. 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. Right. Right. But only you.

But only you. So far. Yeah. So you've got to get him in the first couple of minutes otherwise they're not going to sit there and watch you do five or ten minutes. They just 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. Then in doing that, I meet more comics who would come with you 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 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 Chesapeake, like California proficiency exam, which in certain states, it's kind of like college where you have to have a certain amount of credits to graduate high school.

The Chesapeake is essentially a test. You can have to have a certain amount of credits to graduate high school. The Chesapeas essentially a test, you can take it any time that basically test you out of high school. You've learned everything you need to learn. Oh, oh, really? Oh, that's a great option. That's fantastic. So I flew out there, took the test, came back,

I had to wait like two weeks for my results, but I had a good feeling about it. So 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 tests. How old were you at that point? I just turned 70.

Maybe I just turned 17. I was maybe still 16. And so that's after you came back from LA? Yes. Right. It came back from taking the test, waiting for the results, got the results back. It like the first week of January moved out

to my friend Aragifan's couch two weeks after that. So I was about four or five months early from graduating high school, moved out to my friend, Aragriffin's couch two weeks after that. So I was about four or five months early from graduating high school, moved out there, lived on his couch for the first couple of months, 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 tell us something. Well, he's 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're announcing and Matt Reich. And then I would have to run through into the comedy club, go on stage and leave immediately

after because I wasn't 21. So they still had to abide by 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 a book smaller and smaller, smaller turning into larger TV appearances, which 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 stand up

and transferring over to acting and producing and developing and all that kind of stuff. So what did you do for MTV? My first thing I did on there was Wild N' Out. I did four seasons of that. I was the youngest cast member. It was right after Pete Davidson left there to go to SNL, they needed a white guy. And I happened to fit like that exact mold went on there, learned so much.

So that's a very strange diversity hire. Oh, of course. Yeah, we're short of white guys. Yeah, let's call Matt. He's part of you more. Yeah, no, no, that's not a likely diversity hire. But this could not have been a better learning experience because I was a very insecure shy kid and I was going on to show with comics This was this was the revamp of wow now this was after Kevin Hart D Ray Davis Cory Holcomb all these amazing cat Williams all these

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 Young Fly, Chico Bean are all killers on stage. And I had to compete with them. 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 a man with confidence on stage.

And I'm so grateful for that. 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

the white guy on the show. If I ever tried to step out. I'm very constrained. Yes. In each time I try to step out of it, people will be like, what are you doing? And I'm like, oh, I thought I was gonna do like a clever joke.

No, no, no, no, no, 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 I wanted to do. Well, that's an interesting set of constraints, right? I mean, it's very tight set of constraints. 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. Next example I know of that is, so there's a Japanese poetry form known as Hikou, which has very strict rules. Well, MIT nerds set up a website decades ago now that was devoted to Hikou that could only be about the luncheon meets spam. And there's like 50,000 Haikus. There's literally 50,000 Haikus online in the online Haikou spam archive. And they're hilarious. But partly they're hilarious because, well, it's bad enough that

you have to just do Haikou because that's like pointless 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 have only been able 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 think that's probably why crowd work works the best for me, because I'm very constrained. Like 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 have vast options. It has to be now and it has to be 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 stand-up committee 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 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 doing this. No, not at all. 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. It's purely confidence, whether it's real or fake confidence. I think when I was younger, I did develop a fake confidence.

Yes, right. I was bullied a lot in high school, not like getting shoved into lockers, but to the point where I wasn't in anybody's group, you know, I was bullied a lot in high school, not like getting shoved into lockers, but to the point where I wasn't in anybody's group. You know, I was class clown. 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 learned it to deflect, right?

You have two options at a moment when somebody makes a joke, you can either laugh along and play into it and go with it or you can be embarrassed and everybody sees your embarrassing, which is even more embarrassing. Yeah, right. That just invites her to abuse. Yeah. 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 as joke, it won't hurt or people can't tell.

So why is false? Because obviously, like, so I'm going why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, why, were able to generate responses that were witty and that were funny. But surely 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 isn't. 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 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? 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 to toss it back. Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, it was a totally subconscious skill set. I had no idea until right now, apparently, what I was, back. I want to thank you. Yeah, I mean, it was a totally subconscious skill set. I had no idea. It went till 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, when comedians can't tell a joke on stage and it doesn't work. After a certain point, you know you're funny. You're just not saying you're joke correctly.

Right. For sure. Right. So you don't experience moments of global doubt. Exactly. It's localized. Exactly. Yeah.

So I think after a while, I mean, after doing comedy for 12 years and having had shows of uproarous laughter and standing ovation, you know you're capable of being funny and putting on a good show. 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. Right. There is also helping you'll be funny, except for the old controls. 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 gonna give you more of the benefit of the doubt. Exactly. Yeah, well, and it's tricky to respond into 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.

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. Of course. Your response has to be proportionate. I mean, you have to ante a little bit, that's my presumption. You have to ante a little bit when someone says something smart, but you don't come out with like the long knives and hacks someone to bid. Of course. Right, because that'll turn

them again, 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. 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 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. 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 rude and unacceptable beyond belief. I think comedy is purely down to intent. When people are bullying you, like when high schoolers are making fun of something about you, it'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 differentiates it from stand-up 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 if you have a getting touchy about that, even if you've been hurt, getting touchy about that, first of all, that's the 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 be cured. Quite the contrary, you know, and getting touch you about that and then shielding yourself from any exposure to that is not the way to being cured, quite the contrary. Like if 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,

but to voluntarily expose yourself to situations where that's likely to be the case. And so it might be understandable in that people have been hurt, but it's counterproductive, even with regard to their own recovery. Oh, absolutely. And then, you know, partly what comedy does, too, it has this psychological function is that it does provide an, 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 to, 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 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 nonstop and you can,

you can feel that there's a palpable demand in the audience from the ethnic group that he hasn't yet skewered to be skewered so that they can show that they can take a joke, that they're in on the joke, right? Right. And so, and so the comedians, they have that function of putting forward, what would you say, unpellable 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 bitchy 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 one. Oh, maybe you'll recognize him. He said that, you know, you built your career as an ally of women. That was basically his point. Now that you betrayed them with your jokes about domestic abuse. And so he was playing this, you know, I'm the friend of women sort of gay. But he's violating that contract too, which is that everybody's there in a comedy club to play with disaster.

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 for like a restaurant front, right, you go in there, the food's not for 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 a set of 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 every household, you know? So I think, it just blows my mind

that people can't just let it be. It's not for you. It's not for you. Well, I see what's happening, I think, 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. 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 undue 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 way more attention, then they could ever accrue 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'll never apologize for a joke ever. I just find the prioritization of human beings to be so fucked. You're on this earth for 80 years, let's call it on average, whatever it was at, what's the average, 83? It's on my side. 80 funny years.

80 funny years. That's so funny. I disagree, I think after 80, you get to be funnier. You get to excuse. You can shit 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. So why do you think you were inclined when this campus in a tea pot emerged to make arguably even a worse joke? Because I think, which I'm very pleased about, by the way, I thought that was actually a masterstroke. Because you talked what you were being accused of by picking on an even lower status group. Which I thought was a-

I disagree. Okay, go ahead. I disagree. When people think that joke was intended to make fun of special needs people, that's- No, no, I'm definitely not making that assumption. Oh, okay. But that was the risk of the misinterpretation. Of course.

No, I thought it was. I thought it was. No, no, no, no, no. 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 always often not what happens. I mean, I've seen celebrity after celebrity who are cornered by a small minority of their audience, right?

Objectly apologize. And so, did you, first of all, did you have any guilt about the domestic violence joke, which by the way, I also told him it's very funny. Because it's a completely made up story. Like, 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 is crazy.

How do you describe this? 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 it's not what you mean. You know it's not the right thing. That is what makes it funny. What is that love, what is that style of comedy?

Well, it's a kind of irony. It's a kind of irony. It's not a 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 ridicule, I would say. Like, you know, the exaggeration of something. It's also, you know, if you take, okay, so you took this scenario that you saw at a restaurant and 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 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 adolescence. 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 because it's so, partly because it's so awful.

You just can't believe it, of course. But partly because in recounting it, sharing it, you also signaled that it can be talked about, it can be faced and it can be transcendent 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 adding some nice kitchen related misogyny to that very rapidly, which was good. It's a modern twist on an old joke. You know what I mean? It was a real circumstance that happened. I'm sorry. An exaggerated instance that really happened. and I went, you know,

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 that people were like, all he did was bash women for an hour. I go, did you get to the come? Right. There's so much come in the middle of the show. We talk about airplanes and ghosts and monsters. It was such a minute thing that I go, hey, just, and I purposely did much come in the middle of the show. They would talk about airplanes and ghosts and monsters. 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 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 wrong perspective before you think I am. And then halfway through the show, he goes, all he ruined it. I'd rather tell you upfront, like, hey, we're going to do some darts you learned because

this is how I personally- Jimmy Carr goes to the office of Darlian. He's like the worst thing he can possibly say, just establish the boundaries. Why not, yeah. I find it wildly important to make light of dark situations. I feel like you have two options to deal with the situation. I find it wildly important to make light of dark situations. I feel like you have two options to deal the situation. You 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 everyone 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 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 laughing through that. And it was the toughest moment of my entire life.

And to this day. See, that's also a testament in many ways 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 I used, I lectured at Harvard for a long time on Auschwitz. And that's about as dark a topic as you can possibly manage. And I had the 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 Auschwitz. And I'm going to do that with a light touch.

And I realize, 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 it 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, literally, right, without going sideways. But what 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 mastery, often over tragedy, and what's forbidden, 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. Like I said at the beginning of the podcast, everything I do is just to make people laugh, right? 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 bitch

and they 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 like a 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 your own goodness in relationship to comedy trumps the fact that like 12,000 people are telling you that you said something

offensive? Because of 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 and they found the joke very funny that they are actually able to deal with that situation in a comedic light. Right, right. And 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 feel ready. Right, 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 market majority of people agreed with that. They had God laughs in the club where, well, that's kind of how you know, right? People actually laughed a bit for the past five months in probably, oh God, 200 cities. I put that joke in. Right, right. And opened with it and crushed every time, which is why I kept it for the special.

Like that's how you gauge a reaction. Look, some jokes won't be funny. I'm currently building a new show right now. I'm constantly, I'm doing so many new jokes right now. Someone will stay, someone will stay. You have to gauge. You have to try to figure out what works and what doesn't. And you have to listen.

You have to listen. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's good. Well, that's good too, because one of the things so Freud regarded jokes as a root to the unconscious, like as part of the royal road to the unconscious world. Well, the reason for that is that you don't, you don't get the 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, well, 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 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. And the people who are complaining about that

have more faith in their ideological judgment than they do in this spontaneous reaction of a multitude of people. Yes. 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 an extended comedy career is to appeal to as many as you possibly can. But your comedic intentions is if I get a laugh, technically the joke is funny. Now it's up to me to listen and engage the audience where I go, 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 screening jokes for continued inclusion, you could imagine a joke that... Imagine, it's less 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. It's just catchy. Yeah, yeah. 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. Like, okay, so 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, I don't know how I don't know how to break this down psychologically, but there's something about

comedians that like and who. Yeah, right. Right. Right. Right. The thing that's an idiot you're supposed to see. Yeah. Yeah. And it is funny. Not laugh out loud funny, but oh my God. He said it. Right. Well, that's sort of about you. Well, that's, yeah, 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, right. And that is funny, that you get an old response like that instead of a joke. But instead of a joke, personal too, because that joke about domestic violence, you saw, if you saw the joke up 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 one really could put that on. It was really good. I thought that was funny. Yes. Nobody about it is how to problem whatsoever. No. If you watch later in the special, I do a school shooting joke that gets a massive hoorous fots.

And you didn't get canceled 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. I 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. It's very sad. Yeah, yeah. You got to ask yourself too. 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 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, it's like if they're offended. 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 TikTok or who decided they were going to be the spokespeople for these hypophend, hypothetically offended victims, you know, of the women who feel chained up in the kitchen. And it's also as simple as just being an easy target. Like I am, well, 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, yeah, I mean, 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 just my fault. No, no, I would have loved a progressive rise in my career. I don't no TikTok was gonna do this. Right, right. Well, but you did put in the work. Yes.

It didn't happen, it didn't happen exactly overnight. You said you were in the trenches for what, five years? Before you had anything approximating real success, how long do you think? I would, real success, well, I know real success. I would say in stand up 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. Exactly, right, but that's typical. That's typical of success, right? And 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, social media, is that you had accrued 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. 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. 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. And then they also do that while complaining, claiming that compassion rather than narcissism is their fundamental motivation, right? Very ugly game. It's truly clout chasing at its definition, to attach yourself to what somebody else has going on

for their own selfish gain. It's so pathetic. You don't have anything else to offer. TikTok is a massive platform of a lot of artistic creators. You can't, it's everything from people dancing to philosophers. Right, right. So much you can do on there. You can do anything without me.

Right, right, right. Right, without stealing from you. Because that's essentially what it is. And completely lying about who you think somebody is. You don't know who somebody is based on a joke they said. Sarcasm 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? It is women, but I would say it's massively changed over the past, I'd say, five or six months. When my TikTok status really started to rise at the top of last year, it was wildly predominantly female. I would say my shows from October of last year to about March of this 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 couldn't. What do you think? What do you think? I watched your crowd work. I mean, you're good at playing with the women who poke at you.

Yes. They want to be roasted. They want to be roasted. That was a very specific trend. A lot of women hopped on to, like a woman would heckle a yell or something out, and that's obviously annoying. So you were torred with a mean response comedically. 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. Right, right. But I'm articulating it in a way that, you know, I'm just making some jokes at your expense. Yeah, it's caught on so heavily.

I think there might be, I don't know if it's a fetish or some kind of a war or a war. I don't know, maybe it's because you dare to do it, you know. Maybe that's possible. There's an appreciation for for being bold. Yeah, well, that's what I'm just. Russell Peters, when he's making ethnic jokes. Do you have Russell, by the way? Do I know him? Yeah, yeah. I don't know him well, but we've spoken. I've known him for years. He's on my podcast. He's a great guy. I've known him for years. Yeah, Russell's great. Great, and he's been unbelievably successful and he dares to make an adjunct everyone. Yeah, Russell's great. Great, and he's been unbelievably successful, and he dares to make us enjoy everyone. Yeah, is that right?

Of course. And that, by the way, what you just said is wild and poor. If you're gonna make jokes at a group's expense, you have to be open to making jokes about everybody. Otherwise, it does feel tired. Yeah, well, and 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 equals me as when people can't laugh at themselves. Nothing makes me laugh harder than when someone's like making good news with the best of them. That's one of the things I really liked about British humor. It was the Brits, all so good at taking a look at themselves. It's the best.

I went over there, I think it was June of this year, May or June, I don't know, this year feels three years long. Sometime early, a 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 audience. They have a comedy unleashed group there. Well, because 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, who's Andrew Doyle, Andrew Doyle runs Comedy Unleashed. And he has that online character, Tatanya McGrath, who's a satire of a woke feminist. He wrote a book by Tatania McGrath. And yeah, she's the worst of the

woke feminist. 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 two-year-old grandson who was trying all sorts of things on his head pretending they were hats like old pieces of fish and so forth. Yeah, but anyways, if that when you go to the UK again, they're very much worth looking up comedy unleashed. I will definitely tell you that. Yeah, 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. I love that. Yeah, yeah. While there makes the show, it's very funny too, as you might imagine.

Because everyone goes and they're on the same page. Let's just have some fun. Yeah. I would love to do a streaming platform like that someday where creators can go on there and it's just, it's whatever kind of humor you want. The same kind of setup as like a porn website. You go on though, you click 18 and you click 18 and up, right?

You know what you're getting into. Same with this website. You go on though, you realize you're gonna hear some crude shit. But it's all in the- Well, you should. Well, know that if you go to a comedy show. You would think- Well, you would think-

I mean, listen, I've never had a problem at a live show ever. I have never once had anybody have it stand up and be like that was not okay to say. Oh, we have almost 13 years of doing comedy. Not one of that happened. Oh, you're obviously not pushing the envelope hard enough. Jordan Peterson said at first, I love my new hour that I'm working on right now. He's so much angier. It blows my mind. People chose this one thing to attach themselves onto. And I just, I just think it's a really beautiful story. Oh, well, it's gonna, it's gonna redound to your credit anyways,

particularly because you didn't apologize. So all that's gonna 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, is that it can be quite an intense experience in the immediate aftermath of

its own currents, and that's somewhat off-putting 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 canceled understand this because you could 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 at no time whatsoever, at no with no effort, at no cost to yourself, and probably some benefit.

And so your instinctual response is to being mobbed or wrong. Yeah. Right. So it doesn't translate to the real world, but I just went through two very packed airports and did nothing but take like 45 pictures. Right. Nothing but a positive response. Have you had any negative responses?

You said you had no negative responses to anything you've ever said so far. And a lot of stuff. We'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. Because that kind of social, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't know what I'm talking about, a mixture of social awareness and accountability doesn't translate to the real world. People know, they also take that a lot of goal to do that. They come up to someone and say, you know that thing you said,

even though you don't know who they are. Matt, you see a street performance, right? They're playing violin on a street corner. They've got their case out with cash, right? Say you fucking hate violin. Violin drives you nuts. And he's not even good at playing violin. What do you do?

You keep walking, right? No sane, decent human being stops and goes, you're fucking awful, dude. 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 that, but obviously the internet creates this, this is what I would believe to be false confidence. 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 of saying what they say. There's no consequence for leveling in accusation.

Oh, of course. 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 shit at. Right, right. That is also a consequence that is viable. And that doesn't weigh on anybody on the internet.

So it's easier for people to talk shit on there versus the real world where people actually aren't even bothered. And also, I had to figure, most of these people who talk shit 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. It's just so sad. We're going to shame, we're going to reputation, savage, we're going to exclude. Those are all, go ahead. Plus so much energy in your life and to thinking about me and how much you don't like me. What a waste of your life. 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 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 funny.

You sound like a prince of whoa. My parents gave me so much you did. That's right, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Lay it out now. But the prince of wash really loves it. This is perfect. So now I have to convince my parents not me so much you did. That's right, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Glare it out now. But the friends of my actually loves it. This is perfect. So now I have to convince my parents not to what my ass.

Basically, 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, when you get canceled or somebody is upset about a joke you tell, you're supposed to apologize. People want you to back down and shame you 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 mind it. So I posted a photo of me on stage, but 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 store and online store. That's right. Clicked to store 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 an online store front for special needs helmets.

I thought this was very funny. And again, misconstrued 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. No. I don't have anything to say about special needs people. You're making fun of people claiming special needs for their emotional fragility inappropriately. Exactly. I'm saying. And quite nice. You need this way more than they do. Yeah, right. And the best part is, is that you clicked on it. You think they could have special needs ear plugs that they could wear to comedy shows.

They could not feel the community. They could feel the community. Yeah, all of the AI generates what they want to hear. That will happen soon enough. That's right, you'll be able to get an AI. Well, that's right. AI sensor. But that's what your, that's technically what your algorithm is.

Yeah, that's right. It shows you what you want to see. It tells you what you want to hear. I was the night that I was like the number one trending thing on Twitter, like night before last I think it was. I texted my friend and I was like, 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 about it, obviously, but it's not to the extent of people think. So, yes, I posted this misdirect of an apology and it couldn't have went better. I was literally just sitting passenger seat in a car ride with my friends

and I thought it would be a funny thing to do. It took me no more than 45 seconds to think of doing that. I went, I go, hey, is this funny? And he cracked up laughing and I went, nah, fuck it. I also thought that most of the outrage was happening just on Twitter and TikTok. Like Instagram's a far more personal app, I think. And so the fact that people even saw that

and took it to other platforms, 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 in my response to it and went, oh, that's actually funny. Right, right. It actually gained me a lot of fans because most of the world, I would feel confident in saying the majority of people are sick of this. Well, most people are actually hoping that a comedian will be funny, rather than politically

correct. 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. And over the fans of the first right. Exactly. And so when you apologize in principle, you signal to those people that you've cowed out and bowed down, but you forego the opportunity to appeal 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. Yeah. And, politically, I have gained more fans that 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 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 of that. I think even if people go, well, that's fine. I do other things. I have plenty other jokes that are for other people. The response being a perfect example of that. I think even if people go, well, that's not funny. But that joke of his, and the extremities are so loud

and so against each other that once, one group of people, whatever you wanna call them, people love to make it about the left or the right, 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 or the right or the right. 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 as 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 I dislike you so much that the enemy of my enemy is not my friend. Right, right. Right. Right, right.