#greg stekelman

Kurt Cobain and a friend reading Greg Stekelman's A Year in the Life of the Man Who Fell Asleep -- a novel first published in 2006.

Writer/illustrator/freelancer/tweetmaster Greg Stekelman gives his advice.

At the recommendation of Roo Reynolds, I contacted Greg Stekelman, author and funnyman behind the book, the online collection of amusing things and the twitter account, The Man Who Fell Asleep.

In this Q&A, Greg explains what kind of comedy works on the Web and what doesn't, how social media has transformed the online comedy landscape, what makes amusing internet things last beyond the clickgasm of memes, and how the humour on the Web has affected what we think is funny offline.

In his own words:

I've been doing stupid things on the Internet for about 12 years. Back in the days before blogs or facebook or Twitter, where if you wanted to be on the web you had to build the website yourself, out of HTML and sweat, and you were supposed to write ABOUT something, rather than simply telling the world what you are currently having for lunch. I've always written a lot but I hated the idea of writing a novel or tv show and having it just collecting dust on an agent's desk, so I just started bunging all my writing and ideas onto my website. Some of it has stood the test of time and some of it is terrible. Time Out London used to publish my weekly column of things I'd overheard on the London Underground, and I managed to get a book deal out of it as well (Time Out never paid me, and the people who published my book went into  administration - this is a hobby; it has never made me rich).

How has the Web transformed the comedy landscape, in terms of production and consumption?

In some ways the web has made comedy more democratic. You don't have to be part of the Oxbridge/BBC set to make a mark, and I think the great thing about Twitter is that when I joined I followed a load of comedians, and of course they weren't very funny - but then I found people who work in admin, doing photocopying, or are stuck in dead-end jobs in retail, and it turned out that they are comedy geniuses. So I unfollowed the unfunny comedians. I still think that in terms of TV/radio work there is a quite rigid hierarchy, and it depends on who you know and how willing you are to play the game, but in terms of people with raw talent getting exposure, Twitter has been fantastic.

It feels like so much of online comedy appears to be flash-in-the-pan (yet widespread) memes based on amusing images/videos/lists. What online comedy examples can you site that are long-lasting, and why do you think they survive?

A lot of online comedy is about responding to what is happening in the news. And because of that, a lot of it involves 10,000 people making the same joke. And often it's a case of people not being funny, but simply thinking that being topical is enough, or that being the first person to turn a news item into a joke is enough. Still, even the worst topical humour online is still nearly always funnier than Mock The Week.   Often you just get endless memes, with people making variations on the same joke over and over. Sometimes that can be funny - it induces a kind of cabin fever or hysteria - but often it's a case of diminishing returns, where someone does something clever or funny and then a load of imitators make slightly less entertaining versions. I think the comedy that lasts, whether it's online or offline, either has brains or heart. The best satire, stuff like The Onion, doesn't really date, because it's brilliantly written. And stuff that has heart, in that it deals with something raw and emotional, beyond simply being topical or tapping into popular culture, also has a longer shelf-life. A lot of the people I know on the internet are quite lonely and are trying to make a connection, and they respond strongly to comedy that taps into the bleakness and loneliness of modern life.   What's different about what "works" for the online comedy consumer than for the offline comedy consumer? In other words, what is unique about the Web for the producer that affects the audience differently than comedy produced offline?

People have a shorter attention-span on the web. You might watch a TV show for 5 minutes before deciding it's not your cup of tea, whereas on the internet you're lucky to get 5 seconds. People expect to be entertained instantly, but not for very long. There are things that work brilliantly on the web - youtube videos and memes - that fail miserably when put on TV. Those late night shows that round up the best of the web always feel very depressing, like half-empty car boot sales.   There's something quite intimate about the internet. A lot of websites feel like shared secrets, made for (and by) specific little communities, whereas TV feels much more like a one-size-fits-all approach to comedy. Whole families watch TV together, but then each family member might go off and find something on the web that only find funny.   How did the online consumer's expectations of what is funny change between 2001-2006, when you were first writing The Man Who Fell Asleep?

The main thing that changed is that social media took over. And that has been both positive and negative. The positive side of it is that communities form, and ideas are exchanged and things go viral and suddenly the little drawing you did in your bedroom is being viewed by 500,000 people online. The negative aspect of this is that you stop playing the long-game. You stop being patient. Rather than sitting in isolation, honing your magnum opus, you send out 200 tweets a day. It's instant gratification instead of taking your time to produce something worthwhile. Instead of one great pieces of comedy, you get a mountain of clever one-liners.   I also think that it's more of a challenge to create something totally original. Because years ago if you had a funny idea you might compare with one or two other things you'd read or had seen on TV, whereas now you compare it to every single idea out there on the Internet; quite often I have a really funny idea but find that it - or something very similar to it - has already been done by an angry Canadian.   How has online comedy transformed what we perceive to be funny offline?