#matt ruby

Good comics and comedy nerds know when something is lame AF – and that self-policing is vital for the craft. Yet those exact same bits are often what kill on social media – heckler vids and bits about race, dating, sex, drugs, ethnic stereotypes, etc. The masses on social media are like the worst kind of club crowd – one that’s dumb, drunk, and only wants to hear lowest common denominator material. Note: I’m not saying you can’t do great bits on those topics (and to be fair, I have jokes about all of the above), but it’s a struggle to find a unique p.o.v. and stay out of hackland when you swim in those waters. When we measure worth by Likes, quality starts to feel irrelevant; we determine success/failure via binary data. A view is just a view, a follow is just a follow, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh. Maybe that’s just something I gotta wrap my mind around and get over. If you’re trying to do fine dining in a fast food world, that’s your mistake.

Onstage, an audience gets to know you. They learn who you are and hear a joke like this alongside dozens of other bits. Same in a standup special. Yet on social media, people are seeing this clip randomly, with zero context. They just see some dude with a shaved head prattling on about racialized language. It’s easy to clock the tension but miss the release. Without the nuance of a full set, everything starts to feel more third railish. Watching a whole Don Rickles set makes him seem fun, watching just one of his jokes in isolation makes him seem cruel. I like a little bit of shock value, but when it’s isolated from the rest of my act, I worry about how that can lead toward bad outcomes – especially since the algorithm can be a pipeline from edgy comedy to hate spewers.

Mark Normand and Matt Ruby's "Schtick or Treat" is taping for Audiblt and Seeso next week