In 2025 a Brazilian comedian was sentenced to more than eight years in prison for jokes in a stand-up special. The conviction was overturned the following year. Most comedians will never face a court, but nearly all of them face a smaller version of the same question every night: is this joke worth telling here, to these people?
We have asked a lot of comedians where the line is. Their answers do not agree. Some say there is no line at all. Some have drawn a firm one for themselves. Almost all of them say the question is being asked the wrong way round. This piece puts their answers together.
Jump to: There is no line, only the room · “A joke is not your opinion” · The lines comedians draw for themselves · How to do it well · What it costs · So where is the line? · Common questions
There is no line, only the room
Danielle Slaughter performs in a three-person show whose title is designed to provoke. We asked her how she knows when she has gone too far, and she rejected the question.
“When you lose the audience, you lost.”
Danielle Slaughter
For her there is no fixed point that a joke crosses. There is only the room, and whether it is still with you. That makes the test practical, not moral, and you find out the answer in real time. She also thinks difficult subjects are worth the risk for a plain reason: “When you dive into the hard stuff, there’s just more funny there.” Read our interview with her trio.
Brendon Lemon gave us the clearest example. At his aunt’s wake he was sitting with her widower and her daughter, the conversation was going well, and he filled a pause by saying that his aunt should really pass away more often. The room fell apart laughing.
“In front of the wrong audience they’d say that’s messed up. In front of the right group of people, it’s lightning striking.”
Brendon Lemon
The joke did not change. The audience did. Read our interview with Brendon Lemon.
The comedy magician Jack Grady told us about the night he got it wrong, a story he said he had not shared publicly before. He does not normally go near race, politics or religion. But at a cancer charity fundraiser, a joke about a celebrity who had died that same day came out of his mouth before he could stop it. Nobody laughed. “I did lose the audience there, definitely.” Looking back, he does not think the joke was the whole problem. “It wasn’t the room to do it in.” See our press kit for Jack Grady.
Larry Charles, who directed Borat, puts the principle in one sentence: “There is no right or wrong when it comes to comedy. There’s only the laughter.” Read our interview with Larry Charles.
“A joke is not your opinion”
The comedian sentenced in Brazil was Léo Lins, over a special that joked about disabled people and minorities. An appeals court acquitted him in February 2026. His friend Diogo Portugal, who runs one of the country’s biggest comedy festivals, booked him straight away, and journalists asked how he could.
“I said, hey, he was acquitted. He’s free. He’s a comedian. He does jokes. He’s got to be at the festival, so we can celebrate the joke. Because a joke is not your opinion. It’s just a joke.”
Diogo Portugal
Portugal has been sued over jokes himself. He is also the first to say that this kind of comedy is not for beginners. New comedians watch someone like Lins and decide they can do the same. “That’s a trap, because they still don’t have the muscles for this.” When it fails, he hears the same excuse: the system is against me. “Sometimes it’s not. Sometimes you’re not ready yet.” Read our interview with Diogo Portugal.
Others take a similar position in their own words. Ian Edwards does not set out to offend, he told us, “but I do feel the need to be a contrarian and push the envelope a little bit. What else am I here for.” Read our interview with Ian Edwards.
John Jacobs says his freedom comes from having “nothing to lose and everything to gain”. He has no stable career to protect. He adds a limit of his own all the same: “I don’t try to upset anyone and I don’t like being negative on stage.” Read our interview with John Jacobs.
Corinne Fisher will not reshape a set to keep a crowd comfortable. “I’m not Burger King, the audience can’t have it their way.” She also rejects the idea that her material is meant to shock. She is trying to make people look at something familiar in a new way, and if that is shocking, she says, it should be a sign that you are living in an echo chamber. Read our interview with Corinne Fisher.
The lines comedians draw for themselves
Even the comedians who say there are no limits turn out to have one or two of their own.
Never the victim. Krystyna Hutchinson has talked about the most difficult subjects imaginable on stage and on her podcast for over a decade, and says she has never held back on subject matter. She has one rule. “The only thing I’m careful about is not making the victim of any kind of abuse the butt of the joke.” She calls getting that wrong a beginner’s mistake, and still checks herself before trying anything new. Read our interview with Krystyna Hutchinson.
Not downwards. Judy Carter, who has taught comedy for decades, described the current fashion to us as comedians asking, “How can I out-shock the next person?” She does not deny that it works. “It’s just not my thing.” Her own rule is direction. She is for putting down people who deserve it, and against punching down. Read our interview with Judy Carter.
Not other people’s stories. John Achkar talks openly on stage about his marriage and divorce. “If I’m the only person involved, there are no limits. But if many people are involved, it’s different.” Read our interview with John Achkar.
Clean by choice. Stephan Dyer works without sex, politics, religion or swearing, partly because he performs for companies. He does not think it costs him laughs. “If the material is authentic and well-written, it still works.” Read our interview with Stephan Dyer.
Light on purpose. Seann Walsh made two specials about the hardest years of his life, and is proud of them. He hopes never to do it again. “I want people to come and see me and escape anything serious about their lives.” Read our interview with Seann Walsh.
How to do it well
Jason Salmon’s five rules for a sensitive topic
We asked Jason Salmon how a comedian should handle subjects that audiences are quick to take offence at. He answered with a numbered list.
- Be very funny. A lazy joke about a sensitive subject will offend someone, and you will have earned it.
- The sensitive topic is the setup. The humanity is the punchline. The subject can open the joke, but the laugh has to come from something human.
- Be funnier than you thought rule one meant.
- Make it about yourself. “People have a hard time getting angry at your personal experience.”
- Remember rules one and three, and be ten times funnier than that.
Rule four came from experience. When he joked about what men do and what women do, people objected. When he changed it to what he does and what his wife does, the same people recognised themselves. Read our interview with Jason Salmon.
Earn it first
Tori Morancay’s show has material she herself calls disgusting, and she holds it back until late in the hour. By then the audience knows her childhood and her history, and the same lines land as explanation and not as provocation. Told cold, she says, people would only find them gross. One night a woman in the audience gagged out loud. Morancay was delighted, and the woman laughed for the rest of the show. Read our interview with Tori Morancay.
Stay in your lane
The manager Barry Katz once persuaded a comedian to cut a single harsh line from an hour special. His reasoning was about fit. If a line is over the edge and that is not what the comedian is known for, he says, take it out, “because that’s not their lane”. If it is their lane, as it was for Bill Hicks, “lean into it”. Read our interview with Barry Katz.
Be ready to say it
Tom Nemec once lost a room in the middle of a good set when he moved on to material about his family. He could not work out why until he watched the recording. “I saw my face change.” His mood had shifted and the audience felt it. He now thinks he was not yet able to carry that material. Krystyna Hutchinson waited years before staging the worst night of her life for the same reason, and says she can always tell when a comedian has not healed from what they are describing. We wrote more about that in how comedians turn their worst moments into comedy. Read our interview with Tom Nemec.
What it costs
Pushing has a price, and several comedians have paid it.
- Paul Elia received threats from within his own community over sketches about it. “I held firm and didn’t pull the material.” What he learned is that the people who stay become more loyal than any audience he could have won by playing safe. Read our interview with Paul Elia.
- John Jacobs was attacked on stage by an audience member in 2025 and pressed charges. He no longer argues with hecklers.
- Byron Bertram, who plays a Russian character, gets online comments calling for him to be cancelled, from people who assume the act is something it is not. In person he has had almost none. Read our interview with Byron Bertram.
- Manu Maciel treats backlash as part of the job. Comedy pulls an emotional response, she says, so if some people love it, others will hate it. “We all have haters, so the real question is: who are yours?” Read our interview with Manu Maciel.
So where is the line?
Put together, the answers come to something more useful than a list of banned subjects.
- The line is in the room, not in the subject. The same joke is a triumph at a family wake and a disaster at a charity fundraiser.
- The darker the subject, the funnier the joke has to be. Three of Salmon’s five rules say the same thing for a reason.
- Aim at yourself or upwards. Hutchinson, Carter and Salmon all arrive at this from different directions.
- Earn the right in the set and in your career. Morancay earns it within the hour. Portugal says it takes years.
- Know your own limit before the audience shows it to you. Almost every comedian here has one, including the ones who say there are none.
For the performer who built a career on making audiences uncomfortable, see why comedians still talk about Andy Kaufman. For the craft underneath all of this, see how 25 comedians write their jokes.
Common questions about dark comedy
Can comedians joke about anything?
Most working comedians say yes in principle, with conditions. The joke has to be good enough for the subject, it has to suit the audience in front of them, and many keep a personal rule, such as never making a victim the target.
What does punching down mean in comedy?
Punching down means making a joke at the expense of people with less power or status than the comedian. Punching up means aiming at the powerful. Judy Carter told us she is happy to mock people who deserve it and will not punch down.
How do comedians know when a joke has gone too far?
The audience tells them. Danielle Slaughter’s test is whether she still has the room. A joke that loses it has failed, whatever the subject. Comedians usually find the limit by trying material in small rooms first.
Is dark comedy harder to write than clean comedy?
Both are hard in different ways. Dark material needs a stronger joke to justify it. Clean material cannot lean on shock at all. Stephan Dyer, who works clean, and Jason Salmon, who takes on sensitive subjects, give the same advice: write it well.
For more conversations like these, see all our comedian interviews.