Liz Coin was once given a piece of advice about social media that she has never forgotten. A carefully written, well-edited video of hers might get two hundred views. Something filmed in a bathroom might get two million. The advice explained why that was fine.
“Social media people are there to eat potato chips, and when they like your potato chips enough, they’ll come see you in person for their steak dinner.”
Liz Coin
Almost every comedian we interview has an opinion on this. Some owe their careers to the internet. Some feel it is slowly changing what a joke is allowed to be. Most are both at once. This piece puts what they told us in one place.
Jump to: It works · What the algorithm wants · The treadmill · What the internet gets wrong · Followers are not an act · Why the stage still wins · Five rules · Common questions
It works: careers the internet built
The manager Barry Katz watched it start. He worked with Dane Cook in the years when Cook used the internet to reach an audience directly, before any other comedian had thought to. Katz calls him “an amazing visionary when it came to what was coming”. Social media did not exist for comedians before that, he says, and plenty of them now use Cook’s methods without knowing whose they were. Read our interview with Barry Katz.
Byron Bertram spent twenty years as a respected comedian in Vancouver whose name nobody remembered. Then he created a Russian character, Bill Burr shared one of the videos, and his career moved, in his words, to a different level. He does not think the internet prefers silly comedy to clever comedy. It prefers what is easy to remember. “You’re not just another funny guy. You’re funny, but you’ve got this memorable hook.” Read our interview with Byron Bertram.
Paul Elia’s sketches have been watched more than 250 million times. When no streaming service wanted his two stand-up specials, he put them on YouTube himself. Read our interview with Paul Elia.
The comedy magician Jack Grady went on a television talent show knowing he would be rejected. He had looked at his material and decided the judges would like none of it. So he planned the appearance as a clip. “I might as well go on and make a meme.” By his count, the uploads of that audition have been viewed around a billion times. See our press kit for Jack Grady.
Liz Miele puts it plainly. “I’ve made my career off social media. I am grateful for social media.” One of her stories has twelve million views on Facebook. What follows that sentence, though, is a “but”.
What the algorithm wants
Miele is a storyteller. Her average joke runs about four minutes. Short videos on most platforms are capped at around three. She built her following when the platforms favoured longer videos, and watched her growth stall when they switched.
“As soon as they started to go to short form, it stifled my ability to grow my audience, because I haven’t changed. And I don’t want to change because of an algorithm. It changes every couple of months. That’s not authentic.”
Liz Miele
She has studied the platforms for fifteen years and treats them as different rooms. A long story can do well on Facebook. On Instagram, a video over three minutes is shown mostly to people who already follow you. YouTube still rewards a full horizontal video. Knowing where a bit belongs is now part of the job.
Greg Stone described the cost to us with an example from the same day. A friend had cut one of his five-minute bits into a clip. To make it fit, the clip kept the last exchange and dropped everything that led to it. “It’s a different joke,” he said. Long material does not travel well on Instagram, he finds, and neither does anything dirty or subtle. Radio was the opposite. “You can get a six-minute joke going. I love a six-minute story.”
That loss is part of why both of them have been campaigning over a radio channel. We covered it in what happened to SiriusXM’s Raw Dog Comedy.
Liz Coin has made her peace with it by posting sketches and characters, which do far better for her than stand-up clips. She calls herself “a scientist throwing spaghetti at the wall”. Read our interview with Liz Coin.
Judy Carter sees a different pressure. Some comedians now ask themselves how they can out-shock the next person, because shock travels. She does not deny that it gets people noticed. “It’s just not my thing.” Read our interview with Judy Carter, and see where comedians draw the line on dark jokes.
The treadmill
There is also the question of how much material the internet uses up. John Achkar releases a new special almost every year, and says he has no choice. “Before, artists had the luxury to travel with their specials for years. But now, with social media, we have to write constantly.” Read our interview with John Achkar.
Coin describes the trade directly. A bigger following opens doors and brings income. Getting one means becoming a content creator, and that means less time on stage. Diogo Portugal turns each week’s headlines into jokes for his YouTube channel, which later become the spine of a touring show. Read our interview with Diogo Portugal.
What the internet gets wrong about live comedy
Heckling. Going by the clips, comedians are heckled constantly. Corinne Fisher says that is not what real rooms are like. Most disruption is people chatting among themselves, or someone trying to join in. Professional rooms have security. Read our interview with Fisher and Krystyna Hutchinson.
Crowd work. Feeds are full of it, because it is new every night and gives away none of the written act. Barry Katz enjoys it and did nothing else when he hosted. But he set our readers a task: write down the ten most influential comedians, dead or alive, and search for their crowd work clips. “You know how many clips you’ll find? Zero.”
Anger. Byron Bertram gets online comments calling for him to be cancelled, from people who have misread his character. In person he has had almost none. The people in the room, he says, come up and thank him.
Followers are not an act
CeeKay Brown did 180 shows in her first year and is careful about one thing in particular.
“I don’t want my social media presence to be bigger than where I am as a comic.”
CeeKay Brown
Read our interview with CeeKay Brown. Katz makes the same point from the manager’s side. A clip can get a comedian booked to headline within months. The hard part is what comes next. “It’s one thing to win when the lights are shining the brightest. It’s another thing to follow it up with another equal or better performance, and then another.”
Others treat the internet as a tool with one purpose. Stephan Dyer has recorded three specials and is in no hurry to make a fourth. “My priority is creating content that gets people into seats.” Read our interview with Stephan Dyer.
Jackie Joy works in marketing and says the two jobs cannot be separated. “I’m about 80% marketing and 20% comedian.” She produces her own shows and they sell out. Without that, she doubts she would be headlining anything yet. Read our interview with Jackie Joy.
Why the stage still wins
None of the comedians we spoke to got into this to film themselves. Liz Miele says so directly. Videos of comedians telling jokes to a phone camera are fine, she says, “but that’s not what I got into this for. I like the laughs. I like the in-person conversation. I like performing.”
She plays rooms of one, two and three hundred seats, and thinks that is where the connection is. At an arena show, unless you are in the first few rows, you are watching someone the size of an ant. In a small room she can see who she is talking to.
Stacie Burrows measures success the same way. She is not waiting for a streaming special. What she counts is the people who write to her a year later to say they are coming back. The real job, she says, is finding your audience and talking to them properly. Read our interview with Stacie Burrows.
Five rules for comedians and social media
- Clips are the potato chips. The show is the dinner. A clip’s job is to bring someone to a room. Judge it by that, and not by its view count.
- The clip is not the joke. Stone’s five-minute bit became a different joke when it was cut. Keep writing the long version. It is the one you will perform.
- Put each bit where it fits. Miele treats the platforms as separate rooms with separate tastes. A story that fails on one may do very well on another.
- Do not let the following outrun the act. Brown’s rule. An audience that arrives before you are ready will not come twice.
- Use it to fill your own room. Joy and Dyer both aim their content at one result, which is people in seats at shows they control.
For the work that has to exist before any of this matters, see how 25 comedians write their jokes. For what it takes to last, see how comedians keep going.
Common questions about comedians and social media
Do comedians need social media?
Most working comedians now use it to sell tickets, and several told us it built their careers. None of them think it replaces stage time. The ones who use it best treat it as advertising for a live show.
Why do comedians post so much crowd work?
Crowd work is different every night, so posting it does not give away written material that the comedian still needs for a tour or a special. It is also short and easy to follow without context, which suits short video.
Does going viral make a comedy career?
It can open the door. Byron Bertram and Jack Grady both saw their bookings change after one video. But Barry Katz and CeeKay Brown make the same warning: the comedian still has to deliver an hour that is as good as the clip, night after night.
Why do long jokes do badly on social media?
Most platforms favour videos under about three minutes, and many stand-up stories run longer. Cutting them down removes the setup, which changes the joke. Liz Miele and Greg Stone both told us this is why radio and full specials still matter to them.
For more conversations like these, see all our comedian interviews.