The Death of the Middle Class Comedian (with Chris Gethard)

Summary

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Good One Podcast

Episode: "The Death of the Middle Class Comedian (with Chris Gethard)"

Date: January 8, 2026
Host: Jesse David Fox
Guest: Chris Gethard

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Episode Overview

This episode of Good One dives into how technological change and industry consolidation are destroying the path for “middle class comedians”—artists who could make a sustainable but unspectacular living in comedy. Jesse David Fox and Chris Gethard (veteran comic, DIY stalwart, and host of Beautiful Anonymous) dissect why those opportunities have evaporated, how comedians are squeezed by big tech and streaming, and what might come next for artists hoping to make a living in the new creator economy. They provide a frank, passionate, and occasionally hopeful conversation for comedians and artists navigating a landscape that's increasingly stacked against them.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Disappearing Middle Class of Comedy

• Gethard’s Career Trajectory

  • Background: Not a household name but “objectively successful” — countless TV credits, took The Chris Gethard Show from UCB to cable.
  • After years of hard work, opportunities dwindled quietly, not abruptly. Less work, less money:

    “Nothing drastic happened. There just was less work. Essentially it's… the reverse of the frog boiling in water.” (02:17)

• How Tech Platforms & Industry Consolidation Are to Blame

  • Big platforms (Netflix, YouTube, etc.) dangle hope but don’t deliver
    • Netflix specials: “Some of these platforms, you will find people who have actually lost money putting a special up on platforms that the public regards as the biggest platforms in the world.” (07:00)
    • DIY on YouTube is a myth: "YouTube is Google... one of the biggest corporations in the entire world. That's cosplay as DIY." (10:30)
  • Platform manipulation wipes out sustainable jobs:
    • “We all know what musicians deal with right now and envies it? …They don’t make anything per stream. We’re headed the same way." (05:24)

• The "Road to Nowhere"

  • The constant promise that the next milestone (a special, a viral clip) will “break you out”—rarely does
    • “You're building a road to nowhere, and maybe at the end of it, they'll be the thing that will push you through. … Just continue building a road to nowhere.” (07:31)

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Reflections on the Past: What Was Lost

• There Was a Middle

  • 2010s: Web platforms (CollegeHumor, Funny or Die), cable jobs, writing rooms—provided a ladder that’s now kicked away.
    • “There used to be a very clear-cut middle, middle-class job… your Internet supported platform… that would then go try to do branded content or ad sales... This was CollegeHumor, Above Average, The Onion News Network, Funny or Die.” (14:47)

• Facebook’s Fake Metrics & Algorithmic Ruin

  • “Documented fact that they were saying, you're getting huge numbers on Facebook now… but no one's watching the show. …Came out that they were cooking the books. … And it wiped out this idea that, hey, there's a first step…” (15:13)

• Importance of Scenes and Community

  • Second alternative comedy boom: actual local communities, organic audiences, mentoring, apprenticeship
    • “There were versions of this that was able to create organic audiences, organic fan bases built out of, in many ways, a sort of second wave of alternative comedy.” (18:30)

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The Gig Economy Comedian: Modern Realities

• False Promise of Independence and DIY

  • "You can either go through the Netflix route… or YouTube, you put up the money." Both are controlled by corporations who set the terms and extract value.
  • "Google is not the DIY pathway... It's cosplay as DIY." (10:30)

• Algorithmic Life: Hustle and Burnout

  • Comedians told to post constantly for the algorithm, spend thousands on production, act as their own editors and marketers.
  • “You aren't allowed to ever slow down or stop or this all might go away.” (88:21)
  • “You can make a little bit of money along the way. I think that that was the beginning of social media platform manipulation of comedy as an art form.” (17:23)

• Performative Self-Branding & Risk

  • Pressure to go viral by any means—including crowd baiting and thirst traps.
    • “How many artists… have posted thirst traps on Social because it's good for their career? …it's unhealthy and up. And I don't think it's leading to the crowds we want.” (25:17)
  • Virality doesn't translate to sustainable ticket sales: "People who want to consume it 45 to 90 seconds at a time on their phone, don't want to go out and sit through a thing for an hour..." (25:17)

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The System is Rigged—And Getting Worse

• The "Kill Tony" Phenomenon as Symptom

  • Lack of access and opportunity sends desperate comics to extremes:

    "I have met comics who… have driven from New Jersey to Texas to put their name in a bucket, to stand in an outdoor pen… to do one minute… and just batting average wise, it's almost definitely gonna end with someone you admire mocking you…” (36:49)

  • “The mystique that show holds as the only way in is representative of how few ways there are in. And that's bad.” (38:24)

• Algorithm is the Company Store

  • Artists “paid” in engagement, but no real equity, no job security.

    “You make stuff for the algorithm, you keep shoveling it in... It's the closest entertainment I've seen [to] the company store for coal miners.” (85:00)

• Impending AI Disruption

  • Platforms poised to replace creators with AI, further commodifying and devaluing art:

    “In the next two years… the algorithms will all change… AI things that can… do what these platforms are designed to do, which is sell stuff, will take over and fill a lot of this.” (42:00)

• Media Consolidation and Limited Outlets

  • Pitching a TV show now: “I only pitched it to five places… next year, apparently, it will be four.” (54:06)

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Actionable Advice & Possible Solutions

Rebuilding: “The Goal is to Live Realistically”

• Build and Own Your Direct Audience

  • Collect email addresses:

    “Have it all point back to your mailing list, get those email addresses. Because Elon Musk can't buy your email list.” (47:49)

• Physical Media and Alternative Distribution

  • Comics should create zines, books, merch, tangible creative artifacts—products fans can support and hold.
    • “What happens with physical media… maybe you start to find the other people who are interested in things like this through the actual hand to hand transference of physical media.” (48:49)

• Scene-Creation & Collectives

  • Pursue collectives for mutual support—benefits, group-buying power, shared audience.
    • “If your collective gets big enough, you might be able to purchase into a healthcare plan that's cheaper than you could individually. Things like this start to really get my gears turning.” (70:02)

• Transparency About Privilege

  • Be honest if you come from money or have a safety net:

    “If you are privileged and you are wealthy and you're in the arts, you have every right… but I will just say be honest about it because if you occupy that space, someone else can't occupy it.” (66:55)

• Embrace the Day Job

  • “After I lost my health insurance in 2021, I have a day job now and I don't feel like it messes with my ego to say that I helped a nonprofit start an arts program and they give my family health insurance.” (63:17)
  • Decouple art from financial pressure to survive—most sustainable paths will require supplemental income.

Building Community Off Tech Platforms

• Return to Physical and Local Community

  • Local shows, scenes, collectives, and newsletters (even mailed newsletters) can outlast the whims of tech.

• Avoid Overcalculating “Brand” and Politics

  • "The question is not what should my worldview be? It's what is my worldview and how do I make the jokes that either connect with the other people of that worldview, or… explain that worldview to people who don't currently get it." (76:39)

• Unionization and Labor Action

  • “Entertainment is tied to unions and should be more. It's another whole aspect of YouTube… that's Google… and the fact that for some reason Google never has to have any conversations about worker protections… that's insane.” (85:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the System Working Against Artists

  “We are being tricked into feeding a system that is going to do to us what Spotify did to musicians.”
  — Chris Gethard (05:24)

• On Platform Illusion of Community

  “They've bastardized idea of community and they say you're creating community. Yes. But all of them are built on a sort of a radical individualism that made it so there. There is fewer communities.”
  — Jesse David Fox (31:41)

• On False DIY & Artist Exploitation

  “YouTube... it's cosplay as DIY.”
  — Chris Gethard (10:30)

• On Surviving As Resistance

  “One of the most radical things you can do in this environment is survive, refuse to disappear.”
  — Chris Gethard (81:07)

• Reality Check for Artists

  “If I can have objectively the amount of work I've had over the years and lose my insurance and be this scared for my ability to provide for my family, what's it like for people who… haven't had all those things?”
  — Chris Gethard (57:30)

• Advice for Sustainable Living

  “Never adjust your standard of living based on one success.”
  — Chris Gethard (66:55)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 02:47 – Chris Gethard’s broad thesis: artists are being squeezed by corporate interests
• 05:24 – The risk of following the “Spotify for musicians” model for comedians
• 07:00–08:00 – The financial realities of Netflix and “DIY” specials
• 14:47–17:45 – What was lost when the middle class of comedy jobs disappeared
• 25:17 – Virality not translating to real-world audience growth or ticket sales
• 36:49 – The “Kill Tony” phenomenon as symbol of desperation and lack of access
• 42:00–43:47 – Looming threat of AI and total control by tech platforms
• 47:49 – Actionable advice: mailing lists and direct connection with fans
• 54:06 – Media consolidation, shrinking number of outlets for comedy
• 66:55–68:15 – Being honest about privilege; not glamorizing or cosplaying “starving artist”
• 81:07 – Surviving as an act of resistance and inspiration

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Concluding Thoughts

• On Hope:

  • Meaningful, lasting impact comes from inspiring and being inspired by those who come after you—even if mainstream success doesn’t follow.

    “When you meet other artists who have made art you like and you find out that they gave a shit or on any level were inspired by what you made, it is its own fulfillment.” (90:14)

• On Spite:

  • Use anger at the system constructively—to fuel persistence and community building, not withdrawal.

    “If you can get mad enough to quit and choose not to quit, that is the way that those of us feeling that way will all start to… finally find each other. And that will be the beginnings of a different scene.” (74:27)

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Summary prepared for listeners seeking a comprehensive, engaging recap of the episode’s challenges, wisdom, and calls to action for comedians and artists in 2026.

Transcript

[Jesse David Fox]

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[Chris Gethard]

If you get mad every time you pick up your phone and start scrolling, it's not just you.

[Jesse David Fox]

Rage, Babe is kind of the currency or the power that's behind a lot of the content we might see this.

[Chris Gethard]

Week on Explain it to Me from.

[Jesse David Fox]

Vox why the Internet is pissing you off on purpose.

[Chris Gethard]

New episodes Sundays Wherever you get your.

[Jesse David Fox]

Podcasts, If you're a creative professional or artist, are even aspiring to be in 2026, you have probably had the thought, how are you going to make money for the rest of my life? Opportunities for artists are going away and very little is guaranteed for those who even get the few chances there were in the first place. And AI is coming and likely will completely upend the creator economy. What is a comedian supposed to do? This is good one I'm Jesse David Fox, senior writer, Vulture and author of ComedyBook. My guest today is Chris Gethard. He's here to have a conversation about how tech overreach and entertainment industry consolidation is leading to the death of the middle class comedian. For decades, Chris was a fixture of the New York alternative comedy scene, first as a performer and formative teacher at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and then with the experimental chaotic Chris Gethard show, which he took from public access to three seasons on cable. Also around this time in 2017, he had the acclaimed Judd Apatow produced HBO special based on his Off Broadway show Career Suicide. All the while he was working consistently as an actor. Now in his 40s with a kid and a mortgage in the New Jersey suburbs, he thought he was going to be one of the people who made it. But then there just were fewer ways for him to make money in comedy, and the ways that did exist offered less. Nothing drastic happened. There just was less work. Essentially it's the reverse of the frog boiling in water that he just slowly died down. Luckily, he has his non comedic call in podcast Beautiful Anonymous, and he was able to get a day job he liked. But Chris knows he's lucky to come up at a time around 2010 when there were opportunities to leverage new technology to grow independently at all. But like so many people. He has learned it was all fool's goal and he's been screaming from the mountaintops about it.

[Chris Gethard]

As much as you're looking to get in the mainstream and play the system, know that the system more than ever right now is trying to play you. So double down on your independence.

[Jesse David Fox]

It's a message people in the industry have started to hear and I wanted to continue that dialogue so we're not caught posting Instagram reels on the sinking Titanic, thinking we're being noble making how to rearrange deck chairs. Tutorials for TikTok. Chris and I talk about what pursuing comedy was like 15 years ago, how things got so bad and what individuals can do to take back control. So here is Chris Gethard. I'm here with Chris Gethard. Thank you for joining me. Thanks for having me ready to get into it. We're going to solve everything.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah. If there's one thing I'm here to do, it's fix all of comedy's problems.

[Jesse David Fox]

Before you did the rant on going down, what were you seeing that inspired the thoughts that led to it?

[Chris Gethard]

I fundamentally think that comedy is being backed into a corner that's not good for artists. I think that's the broad strokes and then there's a million different forms in which that takes. But I think from, from the big corporate players to the other options at our disposal, I don't think that any of them feel like a pathway for an artist in the way that existed. Even you could argue, I mean, certainly 2010, five years ago now, before we even get into any of it, I should also say, like, I'm 45 years old and I'm past my prime and we're gonna see a lot of comments about that and I know, but I do think you can vouch for me that, you know, I would never say that I've ever been, like, the funniest, but I've always been very, very forward thinking. I don't think you can argue that if you know my work. And I really care, I really, really care about artists and comedians in particular. And I think a lot of what I'll say is filtered through the idea of comedy and what it's like to be creating comedy now. I've been someone who I think has been objectively successful by most people's standards. Never a household name, but, you know, there's a lot of people going, who is this guy? You can go look at my IMDb and I think you'll go like, whoa, okay, he's been on a Bunch of shows I've heard of. If you look at the fact that I. I took a show from the UCB theater to public access television in an era that predated Twitch and Patreon and all these things that could have helped me survive and if you look back at it, had to actually build the infrastructure to stream my show on the Internet instead of eminent. It didn't exist then. And then taking it to cable. I think I have a right to speak to sort of DIY ethics and comedy and applications in comedy because I think I have lived it and I think I do care about it. But yeah, I think the game is feeling progressively more rigged right now. And I think if I had to put it in a really succinct way, I'd say kind of feels like we are being tricked into feeding a system that is going to do to us what Spotify did to musicians. I don't think anybody looks at what musicians deal with right now and envies it as far as artists go.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah. I think the other thing that I think beyond caring about comedy is you. You believe in a certain sort of idea of independence.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah.

[Jesse David Fox]

That I think you would agree is sort of being bastardized or the language of independence is being.

[Chris Gethard]

Yes.

[Jesse David Fox]

And.

[Chris Gethard]

And I have, I have believed in it sometimes to my own detriment. I should have moved to. You can point at three or four times in my life when I should have moved to LA and I would have reaped the benefits. Didn't believe in that. You know, there's this dialogue right now which is that a lot of the places that purchase stand up specials go, hey, here's a bunch of money to take your special now already what we're seeing that I didn't get into as much with. With on going down. But we also keep in mind.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

Jesse, you I think have a sense of this and I do. As an artist, you can be on some of the biggest platforms in the world and you're not actually making money because all the production costs come out of your end. Hey, you got a special on Netflix. This is your big shot. You want to hang back and save some money for yourself. Well, what if it doesn't sound right? What if it doesn't look right? What if you didn't rent the right venue so all those costs come out of your end. Talk to artists. You know, you're a journalist. You have more of a right to do this than I do. Like you. I think you know what I'm talking about 100 some of these platforms you will find people who have actually lost money putting a special up on platforms that the public regards as the biggest platforms in the world. Also, keeping in mind, some of those biggest platforms do not give their artists guild covered health insurance or pension for stand up.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

So I have major concerns there, first of all, that you get, you get to. You get hand an artist hundreds of thousands of dollars, but the actual cost of making the special is pretty close to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[Jesse David Fox]

I mean, there's multiple comedians who've discussed or I've heard of who have specials on Netflix and lost money from doing lost money. And I think what is important generally a lot of creative careers are this feeling of you're building a road to nowhere, and maybe at the end of it, they'll be the thing that will push you through. And I think in many ways, the Netflix special was this sort of brass ring. And what it ends up being is just another stop to then continue building a road to nowhere.

[Chris Gethard]

You shoveling because you're like, okay, I'll.

[Jesse David Fox]

Get to Netflix and then, okay, I'll lose money, but now. And maybe it will. Like, but maybe it will not. And like, but what, what these companies are doing, they need people to continue believing that one of these things might break out and 1 out of 100 will break out and their life will be forever set. And that's wonderful. But a lot of people I know are doing some versions of this. They get that thing, even if they make a little bit of money, they're not making $20 million.

[Chris Gethard]

They're very often not even making two months of their rent and expenses.

[Jesse David Fox]

And then so then.

[Chris Gethard]

And they've maybe worked for five years if it's their first thing. You may have worked on that special for five to 10 years of your best material. To not even make a full month's rent, to lose money, to not get health insurance in an art form where we drop dead from mental illness and addiction gets me very mad. As someone who cares about the arts, I also need to say this too, to all the non comedians out there. First of all, if they're listening to your podcast, they probably are fans of comedy. But I also get this. There is a dialogue that maybe artists should never complain because you have a blessed life to be an artist at all. And I just have to go on record and say artists are very often canaries in the coal mine of what societies care about. Right. Healthy cultures have strong connections to the arts. Unhealthy cultures watch their artists grind themselves into dust for no money. All to be told, well, hey, it'll increase your ticket sales. Well, what if I have a family at home and I don't want to be on the road for 40 weeks a year? What if when I go on the road, I start drinking again when I've worked really hard to kick it? What if when I go on the road, somebody's offering me coke and I fight tooth and nail to not do it? What if I'm lonely, lonely as hell and cheat on my spouse? None of these. These things are moral failings that. No, no one forces anyone at gunpoint to do it. But let's not pretend that we all don't romanticize. You know, from John Belushi to Brody Stevens, how often these things happen. It's dangerous and it's up. And then the other option that we're told now I'm getting mad is, well, you can always go the DIY route, right? But the jig has to be up on that. We need to start talking about that more as well. Which we will. The DIY route now is throw it up on YouTube, do it yourself. But we need to start really being vocal about this. YouTube is Google.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

YouTube is a billion dollar company. YouTube's reputation from 20 years ago when they launched of being this, like, hey, avenue to a thing that was very real 20 years ago. They're owned by Google now. We have to stop giving them a pass as like the DIY pathway. Google is not the DIY pathway. It's one of the biggest corporations in the entire world. That's cosplay as diy. And hey, like, so you can either go through the Netflix route where you might not make any money, but that'll increase your ticket sales, or YouTube, you put up the money. But every comedian right now is being told by their peers who are convinced by agents and managers who I think need to protect their. Their artists more by the industry as a whole, by the chatter from the platforms. You're close, you're close, you're close. Make sure you shoot. And this has happened to me, make sure you shoot it with the cameras that are up to the standards of Netflix. Get the sound, the lights, right? Pay for the closed captioning, pay for the right post production, because if they want it, maybe they'll license it. So that's not diy.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

Diy, as far as we know, which was built from the independent music model, right, was like you might sign to Capitol Records and they might give you a $250,000 advance and you choose how you spend it, but if you wanted to go to Discord Records, it wasn't, well, now you pay the $250,000 in case capital wants it. It was like, now you get to go make it for $15,000, you know what I mean? And then maybe it busts out in this way that feels gritty and authentic and cool. And maybe the pathway that I don't think totally exists right now for us. Maybe college radio embraces it, maybe the fanzine world embraces it. Maybe some of these truly independent underground methods of distribution or word spreading get.

[Jesse David Fox]

Your back as a person who has a. Who has pursued a career in journalism at the same time as you're pursuing this career in a comedy. A lot of the things are the same, relevant the idea of their opportunities. And now there are fewer opportunities. People wondering, is there possible to have a sustainable life? What's a few. It's the same thing for us. It's the same thing for most arts professionals. Even people in versions of design, I'm sure experiencing some versions of it, right? Comedians, because they are. There's a low overhead to the basics of stand up. They are fast to all changes. So when there's a new, new technology that can do it, when the new technology changes, they feel it very quickly. And that is why ultimately, like this is a good. It's good to focus on comedy for comedy, but it is an allegory for sort of all versions.

[Chris Gethard]

It is not bullshit to say that, you know, you look at Twitter and one of the first things anybody liked about Twitter was like, hey, this guy Rob Delaney's crushing jokes on Twitter. That's one of the first things anybody heard about it, right? PodC. We are, I'm now living, you know, I'm. We're about to enter year 10 of beautiful anonymous. And I don't envy anybody trying to launch a podcast now versus 10 years ago. Are you really telling me that a video podcast hosted by an A list celebrity where the video has exclusive distribution on Netflix is in the spirit of podcasting? What is that except a non union television show, my friend? What is that except a backdoor that we need to figure out yesterday? All of the games are rigged and they're trying to just become distribution things in the same way that Spotify does and then they can give us our 0.0001 penny a stream. We have not settled for that in the past and it will represent backwards progress if we settle for it now.

[Jesse David Fox]

All right, I want to back up, just provide people who are, who are just pursuing it now, who are younger. They did not know what it was like 20 years ago, 15 years ago. So before you talk about where it has gone, what was it like to start pursuing comedy when you did the. The sort of first 15 years of your career, both the good and bad, but the avenues that were available to you.

[Chris Gethard]

I am in so many ways, let's be clear, envious of the options at the hands of young creators. You don't have to wait for gatekeepers, you don't have to get. You don't have to audition for a house team at ucb. You don't have to wait for the call from JFL or the Aspen Comedy Festival like when I first started. I am envious of that. You don't need to move to la. You know, even some huge comedians, like all the urban legends that Chad Daniels lives on the surface of a frozen lake in the hinterland of North Dakota, Ali Siddiq, right. Some of the big comedians who I am, there are pathways that are good and healthy and I love it. As far as when I started out, there were perhaps less opportunities at the outset to go try to just bust out. Podcast, Patreon, TikTok, Instagram, whatever. But I so distinctly remember being at UCB when Derek comedy started putting out videos on YouTube. And I remember some of the older generation UCB people being like, who are these college kids? Skipping the line. I was there as things changed. But what I would say was the biggest manipulation of the natural growth of the ecosystem was that there used to be a very clear cut middle, middle class job that I saw kind of bubble up in the petri dish, which was your, your Internet supported platform that was putting out videos that you could get hired to write for or act in. And they would then go try to do branded content or ad sales. This was college humor above average. The Onion News Network, Funny or Die. And there's something that happened that we all know happened that I think should have had more public outcry and honestly more consequence, which was this. Facebook started pumping up the numbers. You can look this up. Documented fact that they were saying, you're getting huge numbers on Facebook now. I was living through this because we had the Chris Gethard show on the Fusion Network at the time and all of our ad budget. They started going, guys, we're getting massive traction on Facebook. And I'm going, but no one's watching the show. Yeah, yeah, we're getting a million views of video on Facebook.

[Jesse David Fox]

And like none of that's translated like.

[Chris Gethard]

Less than the residents of my hometown in New Jersey watching on the television, this doesn't make sense. Came out that they were cooking the books. And what happened in the process of that was all of those middle class platforms were told it used to be the place where those would spread. Then it became you need to pay for Facebook advertising to get the people who have followed you to unlock it. So you had to pay to play on a system based on intentionally manipulated numbers. It was, it's messed up. It's payola. It's. It's. You know, there were laws installed on radio to prevent this type of thing that didn't happen. And to my knowledge there was no consequence for Facebook doing it. And it wiped out this idea that, hey, there's a first step which is your. For me, I got hired at the Onion News Network. It was one of my very first jobs. They didn't pay great, but between that and cobbling together freelance things when they came along, maybe I can book a commercial. Along the way I started finding ways to live, started to see the pay to play model come in. And I would argue that that was probably the earliest headwaters of what we're seeing now, which is you do all the work. You don't mess with the algorithm, you feed the algorithm. If you miss a day on the algorithm, it might mess up your algorithm. So don't ever miss a day. And then you can make a little bit of money along the way. I think that that was the beginning of social media platform manipulation of comedy as an art form.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah. And I mean obviously it hit journalism tremendously. A lot of people over leveraging companies rose and fall fell because of it. The other thing is that is around the same time the streamers were being built and there were a lot of. And there are even still terrestrial networks that had comedy first programming. So you can get a not great job writing eight episodes. You can find there's just more TV shows. You can get maybe writers assistant jobs and. And maybe like there just were options. And it did feel like there was a chance that being a comedian was a reasonable path. Like being a journalist was right. Like and in the mid or which is not to say the most reasonable path but generally a creative feel that there is going to be a market for. Because comedy. Because comedy seemed to do so well on the Internet. The other thing about around the time they were coming up that I wanted to highlight to contrast sort of where we're at was there was the Internet and Twitter sort of starting. But like from let's say 2000 to 2010 scenes were able to Develop actual scenes. So, so yes, you're. There are gatekeepers saying you're not ready for a half hour special. But in that, I mean, literally the one gatekeeper was common central. That was the only people buying half hour special or little things. That was sort of the. The thing that we were chasing. But along the way you had people who were also pursuing a similar thing that were holding each other accountable. There were things you could build, you know, like, and this is not just New York or la, this was Portland, this was Chicago, this was Denver. There were versions of this that was able to create organic audiences, organic fan bases built out of, in many ways, a sort of second wave of alternative comedy. Right. A lot of the grooves were faced, right. Like by Patton doing the Comedians of Comedy tour. There were now avenues where you could tour rock venues. Right. It was very much in the model of like, what Fugazi? What's a minor threat, right?

[Chris Gethard]

Between Garofalo and David Cross looked at the music they liked and said, why don't we do it like the musicians?

[Jesse David Fox]

And then after paving that way, there was a pathway to.

[Chris Gethard]

Yes. And then Eugene did it, and then I did it and then fire. You know what I mean? You could trap links in a chain of New York alt comedy of like, oh, I learned from Eugene, Eugene learned from David, and Janine Firestone, I think would say she got to learn a little bit more because of stuff that I helped establish. And then you started to see the alt stuff, really boom, you know.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah. And there was a. You were building a community of both fans and artists. And that was what defined a lot of the time that then the Internet helped supercharge. So like, oh, you have podcasting or sort of felt an ecosystem. The thing about the idea of middle class comedy jobs or middle class comedy careers, which I, when I heard it was so interesting for people to be sad about. And why is that? Essentially like through all of eternity, there were no middle class comedy jobs. And then for like 10 years there were.

[Chris Gethard]

And we putzed it and they putzed it.

[Jesse David Fox]

And now we're sort of like, as we get into sort of what then happened. It does feel like, well, part of it is not just there aren't opportunities now, is that for 10 years there were opportunities and then created a lot of people who then pursued a thing that then proved there were not necessarily going to.

[Chris Gethard]

Well, I would also argue though that there were still, you know, you still needed to head on these pathways towards traditional success. But for example, one of the first things that ever happened to Me in my career was me and Zach woods were incredibly tight at the time, started putting out a series of videos that I wrote and he starred in. They spread all over the Internet. We were like, oh, my God, it worked. Hundreds of thousands of views. Now, what happened back then was nobody knew. There was no money to be made off of that. But what happened was Comedy Central reached out to us and was like, you're making interesting things. Come in for a meeting. Do you have any ideas? And we got our first little script deal, and we each made a few grand off of it. If I remember right, we each made probably like five grand. Zach and I splitting it as writers, so 10,000 bucks, because they liked our videos and went, hey, we'll give you this. And they attached us with a senior writer. He made some money, too. We got to learn from his experience and effectively apprentice. The idea didn't go anywhere, but we got to see what it was like to write a script, to work with a writer who had done it before, to get on Vice on what we were doing right and wrong. I feel like right now we're seeing in standup specials. It's like, make it yourself and throw it up there. Make it yourself and throw it. Well, people are putting up bad work. People are rushing it. Yeah, people are throwing. How many times have you been on Reddit and seen somebody like, here's my third ever time doing standup. Anybody ever notes for me? Don't ever do that. Why would you do that? Go learn. Get good for a while. We're already starting to see the dialogue now of, hey, it's really interesting. Shane Gillis got tires on the air, and he never got to have any notes because he funded it himself. Shane Gillis also is in the process of selling out the same stadium with the Philadelphia Eagles play. He can do that. He can do that. Most of us can't do that. But that will be held up as like, hey, go make your whole. I feel like today it would be, we make those videos, nobody ever reaches out to us. And if we have an idea for a TV show, the expectation would be, go produce the entire thing yourself. And then maybe, which is, to me, an insane level of financial stress and burden on the artists. Removes anything resembling learning from the people who have come before figuring out how to apprentice. You're also seeing that, you know, the Writers Guild having to fight now because shows won't pay to have writers on sets, which I think is a companion issue. We're going to lose institutional knowledge. Also. We can feed people kind of substandard work 90 seconds at a time, that when you really talk to comedians, even many of them who have busted out will tell you they're not particularly proud of the stuff that they use to feed the algorithm.

[Jesse David Fox]

It's.

[Chris Gethard]

It's wild. It's wild.

[Jesse David Fox]

I mean, I think sort of two things happened at once. There was both a certain sort of propaganda of dream job pursuit that they were telling people sort of around our age for a few decades, that's like, if you love what you do, you won't work a day of your life. Don't hustle for this, but pursue your dreams. And then there was this time period where it seemed like you can pursue your dreams in a reasonable way. And then. So what really was the dream? Why I call it propaganda? It was essentially like, they're like, by calling a dream job, they allowed people to be paid less to do it. And then so a lot of people pursued it, and then they completely removed the stable versions of it. So then there's just a lot of people squeezing to figure out if they can game whatever system now, not realizing the system is a game that is trying to just get as many people to do it. But what. What the real issue is, is in the creation of a new system, they broke down a system that hypothetically was working. So in media, there's a really clear example, which is like essentially all these digital digital publishers. That's sort of what the goals were. The death of a local newspaper is of, you know, has been decades in the making. And I think the version in comedy is death of local scenes. The idea that people could be big in the Boston area and make a living kind of playing New England.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah. Touring throughout that northeast circuit.

[Jesse David Fox]

And instead, it's just sort of like, you can live hypothetically anywhere, but you're just throwing it into this sort of blob.

[Chris Gethard]

Also, they're starting to become a dialog in comedy. That I think is very true as well. Are we participating in that exact thing in a way that is not even working in the sense of, hey, you are theoretically doing this for ticket sales. But I'm not the only artist going, when I have clips bust out. I've had a couple bust out. You don't see the ticket sales. And I've started to hear from other artists, too. People who want to consume it 45 to 90 seconds at a time on their phone, don't want to go out and sit through a thing for an hour where, like you said, the propaganda of, like, this is the way to do it is like if you want to have a good hour long thing, maybe it is not actually true that what you need to be doing is training your audience to go one minute at a time, you know, let alone some of the unhealthy aspects of this. And I don't want to sound like a puritan or, or a Luddite, but I go, ariel Elias, good comic. Why does most of the world know Ariel? Yeah, because some maniac threw a fucking full beer at her head. That's why. We know an artist. That's why. And then it leads to all these great things that Ariel deserves. But that's the example that. How many young comics do you think went out there and went, I gotta say something to get the crowd angry enough to throw something at me. How many artists do we think, and this is a sad one, but we have to start calling this out. How many people do you think have posted thirst traps on Social because it's good for their career? And all of us who are supposedly like progressive thinking artists aren't going, what the is going on? How many people do you think have gone, I would never post this picture except I have a tour coming up. And then they have to sit there and have that anger in their guts. You know, I think that obviously I think there's a lot of bikini photos and I also think queer comics. I've posted a lot of thirst traps that they go, this is not who I am. It's not what I want to do. But if I want to get the algorithm cooking, it's unhealthy and up. And I don't think it's leading to the crowds we want to the ticket sales we want. And like you said, I think it's propaganda. I think it's false diy and I want to see who's either built in a way I haven't picked up on yet, or who's going to build the actual alternative track to the algorithm driven media.

[Jesse David Fox]

We tell people the only way to sort of build a fan base is through this. And you're. And then that's your job, right? So you're like, okay, I have to figure out how it works and things work. I mean, there's so many things that work that. I mean, I had Gianmarco on, right? So Giamarco is an example of a person who's figured out how to work it and. Right.

[Chris Gethard]

Good for him. And I like him. He will be held up as the next five years for why everyone should try to do that. But if you talk to him about the amount of money he put into it saved, the amount of work he put into it. The game plan he had over years and years and years. That was not easy what he did.

[Jesse David Fox]

No, I mean he also, from what I understand of remember his narrative, like he was able to sort of have a head start because he had really big, big commercial campaign right before he sort of did this pursuit. And then he has the thing that I always think about, about right now, Sam Reich was talking to Gin Marco and Sam Rice was saying essentially social media has turned, demanded all artists be entrepreneurs, but they reward the people who are the best entrepreneurs. And Gin Marco is an entrepreneur and he's quite good at it. And he understood how they had how to play the game without it hurting him and not necessarily touching his art. And he talked about, he knew that if he did more jokes about whatever his identity was, that would be another thing. Because you're. All you're doing is trying to hit algorithm passageways. Yep. Right.

[Chris Gethard]

But then he's tall, he's great looking. Clearly he's one of the ones who is comfortable with a thirst trap. God bless Donna.

[Jesse David Fox]

And it just is another thing you're playing when you're trying to find random people. But also what people are probably realizing now is what like the case every single time there's a new way for comedians find success online is actually there's room for 30 people to have success that way or 10 or 1 or whatever it is. And actually all the people who are willing to buy tickets already have bought those tickets and now they're just looking for more people on feed. Or what is probably also the case is, I don't know, the first 90,000 people who saw crowd work videos and decided they want to see live comedy. It is very possible that they want to see those first community did it. But it's possible that now those first same people who now are getting tons of it are like actually now I don't need to see it live. I think we're actually in a way that sort of killed the comedy boom of the 80s. Right. So much exposure to comedy of a lesser quality. This is not. That's not to say that crowd work is the worst thing in the world, but it is worse than good stand up comedy you might see in a live venue. I think anyone would agree to that. And so then was the thing also.

[Chris Gethard]

Can we put this out here?

[Jesse David Fox]

Sure.

[Chris Gethard]

There was a comic who used to bait crowds into fights, who was held up with scorn by the entire standup comedy for years. And you know who I'm talking about. For years it was men, all those heckler fight videos that Steve Hofstadter is doing.

[Jesse David Fox]

Right.

[Chris Gethard]

I don't know Steve that well. I'm friends with a guy who works with him really well, I've never met Steve. I got no skin in the game. For years he was the heckle video guy. And comics used to be such purists. How could he do that? If you see the live show, he's actually looking for a fight. And that's when he starts the video. And it was held up this thing. Turns out he was just like five years ahead of everybody else.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah, I mean like Gin Marco on this podcast called him a visionary. And it in so much as he figured out how these things work, which the. By calling him visionary in that way, you are adhering to the rules of the system that is created by these people. Right. There's a quote. So the quote that starts the book, our band could be your life is a quote from William Blake, which is, I must create a system or be enslaved by another man's right. So like algorithms is they're built like slot machines for both creators and for the audience. And all they're doing is trying to essentially being like, work so hard and maybe you'll get a lottery ticket and maybe that lottery ticket will build to something. But really the house always wins and the goal is to keep you on it and to judge success by their systems and. Right. So what does it mean to judge an artist by tax value systems? It means growth at all costs. And the larger the number means more than a small number that is more loyal to you because it is growth at all costs. It doesn't matter. Like the story of the shitification of Facebook is if we. We get more people and give them a worse experience, it is still a bigger number than.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah.

[Jesse David Fox]

Than a small number and having a good experience. No one is setting out to do that, or very few people are setting out to do that. But that is the value system that I don't think anyone specifically intentionally did. But that is going to be what happens when your goal is to essentially build upon a sort of tech model of what your career would look like. This is the other thing social media has famously done, which is they've bastardized idea of community and they say you're creating community. Yes. But all of them are built on a sort of a radical individualism that made it so there. There is fewer communities.

[Chris Gethard]

The thing about saber rattling and negativity, although. Although we do every Time I bring this up, we to also say because my, my podcast listeners have heard me go on this rant and the beautiful anonymous listeners are very lovely. Do you need to also point out though, you know, there's been political revolutions that social media has helped connect people. Things like MeToo, things like Black Lives Matter. Social media probably did help. Like I, I don't want to discount those, but it almost feels like for all the good ones, there's also lunatic anti vaxxers and anti science people and all these other people aping that in a way that's just empty calories with these negative communities. I am very grateful to be here, but even right now, like you asked me to come, this is the first time I've kind of publicly talked shit in a while and you're like, come talk shit here.

[Jesse David Fox]

You know what I mean?

[Chris Gethard]

Like, it does. I watched it pop off when I did the stuff on Going down and I'm like, I do a lot of very positive things that get no traction. I've started a nonprofit to try to help kids in schools with comedy. The Internet does not care. No algorithm gives a about anything. I post about that. But when I go on my friend's trans centered underground talk show and say like, hey, as like a crusty old DIY guy, like we need to start calling out that, like we don't have a real version of it right now. This is a fake bastardized thing that they're still in control of. They're weaponizing it against us. It's not going to end well. When I talk and get angry, all the views go up. You know.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah, I, and I do think the back office conversation will be more positive or more realistically positive. But I do think it is interesting that these algorithms can realize it is fine to platform dissent, but not platform the solutions to the problems. Right. So if we were to put up portions of this on social media, I'm sure the parts where we complain will do quite well. I think the portions where we say maybe we should build fan bases not on social media won't do as well, even though that's the part that people need to hear.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah, I think you are right. The clip version of this will be very different than anyone who sits and listens to the full version of this. It just will. You'll hear frustration and thoughtfulness, but the stuff that we know will pop on the plat. And let's also. Can I also call this out and give you the visits and edit this out if you have to for me to come on and be like, we need basically more workers rights and more worker empowerment and less clickbaity stuff on a podcast distributed by Vox Media. There is some irony to that, right? Well, I mean, like, we're all trapped in a fucking matrix system.

[Jesse David Fox]

It's so funny because the next question is the most clickbaity of it. But I do feel like we need to get to it. There's a quote in our bandicooter life which is like, conspiracy needs three people. A movement needs six bands or whatever. Right? Six good comedians in a city can create a scene in some way. And that could really change a lot of things. But before we get to the positive, one last I do think we need.

[Chris Gethard]

Let's do it. Let's get these views.

[Jesse David Fox]

Well, the thing that I think needs to be addressed because I do think there might be people be like, well, there is already a solution in place. It has been proven. This is the way comedians can become famous. And it's called Kill Tony.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah.

[Jesse David Fox]

How do you feel about Kill Tony?

[Chris Gethard]

I often feel the first thing I want to say before I even wade into this hornet's nest is that I think you can find a number of examples. You know, there is a little bit of a code in comedy of don't with other people's success and money. Don't threaten their ticket sales. I've been doing this 25 years. I've always prescribed to that. I will say, I think there are people who have attacked me on podcasts, hurt my ticket sales, who are the ones who claim they are the real comedians. And they go, that's the emo dude. I go, you broke the like you, you with my ticket sales when I had a kid.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

So like, I don't fuck with other people's money. Kill Tony is a massively successful show. I surprisingly, for a guy who is kind of like Mr. Emo storytelling man, I like a roast. I like a mean joke. I like a well crafted dark moment. I can say just personal, lived experience that when I moved back to Jersey to raise my kid, started doing a lot more shows out in Jersey because who wants to pay a toll and a congestion tax every time you have a new joke you want to try? And I have met comics who I think are really good and really hard working who I go, ooh, you remind me of me when I was in college. You remind me of that person that, like, wants to go for it. And you come from a working class neighborhood in Jersey. The city's really intimidating to you. I have met comics who I Can tell you for effect.

[Jesse David Fox]

Go.

[Chris Gethard]

I don't bother with New York City because I don't know where the stage time is for me who have driven from New Jersey to Texas to put their name in a bucket, to stand in an outdoor pen so that maybe they get a chance to do one minute and just batting average wise, it's almost definitely gonna end with someone you admire mocking you on a massively successful show. But maybe if you crush it on that minute, it could change your life. Do I get why they go for it? Yeah. Do I think it's very, very concerning that that's the option that working class comics see in my neck of the woods, that if I was that 19 year old kid from a working class neighborhood right now, like I was back in the day. I'm 45 now. When I was 19, discovered improv was like, oh, I like this at college, realized I could take the train to the city, take classes, did it. If I was a 19 year old today, I might think that the thing I have to do is drive from New Jersey to Texas to stand like cattle in a pen and maybe, maybe have it succeed. On that fundamental level, I think Kill Tony's influence is outsized. And I would have to imagine that while I never met him and I can't imagine he and I are getting lunch anytime soon, I would have to imagine that Tony Hinchcliffe would probably say, like, yeah, I don't want this to be a thing that people think is the only option. And comics do people give him for speaking at msg. And I do think that was wild. That being said, I recently hosted a fundraising benefit for Mikey Cheryl in the New Jersey governor's race. Like, you know, like we all. Everybody does. You know what I mean?

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

So, like, outside of any moral differences, I have ethical standards. I don't want to fuck with Tony Hinchcliffe's money. You know, Do I hear that some of the Kill Tony comics who have been platformed have a strange hit rate of like, people saying there's been abuse or horrible behavior? I don't like all those stories as a scene. It's clearly not my scene. And I hear that there are some very, very, some elements where people have not felt safe or good. That's. That's not my good. But I can just say, comedy veteran wise, I can say very much out loud, the mystique that show holds as the only way in is representative of how few ways there are in. And that's bad. Yeah, that's bad.

[Jesse David Fox]

And it's also representative of like, it is a perfect metaphor for American capitalism in that they're like, okay, to succeed. This is the shit you have to go through, right? You have to be brutalized for the. Maybe the chance.

[Chris Gethard]

It's literally go west to Texas and try to strike oil.

[Jesse David Fox]

And the thing is, just like all the other things we're talking about, the people in early will have the. Will have had the most opportunities to have that success. The more you do it, it becomes like the Voice and becomes like American Idol, where actually the winner is the show. My desire to talk about it now is there probably a good amount of people who believe, okay, I think I can figure out what to do right now. Whatever. I'll learn how to edit video and I'll just do it. And I want to stop at this moment. We're talking. This will be the first episode of the year. This is a good time to think about the year coming or New Year's resolution.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah.

[Jesse David Fox]

Y.

[Chris Gethard]

How do we truly. How do we build a true underground?

[Jesse David Fox]

If you look at the last 10 years of tech, the things change every two years. And if you're right now, depending on what it is right now, you're in for a lot of hurt. Why I want to talk about. There's sort of two things. So the first is the idea of what is called the slow cancellation of the future. It's by the cultural theorist Mark Fisher, and he was mostly talking about how all music now and when he was writing 10 years ago, has to be remixes of old music. And so I will quote him because I think it's relevant. So the slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied by a deflation of expectations. The feeling of belatedness, of living after the gold rush, is an omnipresent as it is disavowed. Compare the fallow terrain of the current moment with the fecundity of previous periods, and you'll quickly be accused of nostalgia. But the reliance of current artists on styles that were established long ago suggests the current moment is in the grips of formal nostalgia. Which is to say that, like, it feels like every comedian I talk to thinks it is a bad time. And there's a thing in the book of in our band Computer Life, where essentially alternative rock built out of punk rock and the scenes was building for a half a decade. And in specifically in dc, there's a bunch of people being like, I don't like this scene. I don't recognize this scene. This is at Discord Records.

[Chris Gethard]

Hence Fugazi.

[Jesse David Fox]

Right?

[Chris Gethard]

Revolution Summer.

[Jesse David Fox]

Revolution Summer. Right. So that's the thing where they think.

[Chris Gethard]

About this a lot and that. And I'm very pretentious about it and I'm not trying to be comedy Ian Mackay, but I think about Ian Makai a lot.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah. Where they're like, we need to like.

[Chris Gethard]

Actively make some marked changes. People can't be getting hurt in the pit. Women can't be getting grabbed by kids on the dance floor. Things need to chill out. They actively made a point of saying it out loud and then going and making it happen.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah. And that. So that is why I wanted to bring it up. Because on the Verge podcast they essentially talk about it anytime in the next two years. It could be tomorrow, it could be in, you know, 700 days. The algorithms will all change. A switch will be flipped where the kind of AI we already have access to when you Google something will just be the only option you get. Or basically you have to try really hard to find regular Google results. But regular Google results be completely unusable because of AI. Not only that is the tech companies have spent so long devaluing art and developing the creator of art, not creators as we use it that that AI creators or AI things that can essentially do what these platforms are designed to do, which is sell stuff, will take over and fill a lot of this. Take over the careers that a lot of people had. This goes back to your idea that like people would say they're being independent when their entire business is dependent on Google Meta and TikTok. Right. And then.

[Chris Gethard]

And it feels real, but it's.

[Jesse David Fox]

They can say we're not doing that anymore and not can. They will do that.

[Chris Gethard]

Yep.

[Jesse David Fox]

And if you don't have a listserv or whatever, you will have zero chance.

[Chris Gethard]

So I just read something and I don't know if it was like histrionic fear baiting or if it was real that some of those platforms are now starting to think about charging money for you to get word out to your fans on.

[Jesse David Fox]

Seems like they should.

[Chris Gethard]

That it never should.

[Jesse David Fox]

But they can't and they will.

[Chris Gethard]

And it hasn't been the standard before. But hey, you've spent five years building up your 100,000 followers. So are you really going to abandon it just because we're asking you for $20 a month? You set us up and we took the bait.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

You know, I am your host, Stassi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Steven because he's so evil.

[Jesse David Fox]

I do think he is Misunderstood.

[Chris Gethard]

You see everyone face consequences. It's intoxicating. The writers just know how to trick. Yeah, there's always a twist in this show. Nothing you would expect. Tell Me Lies, the official podcast, January 6th. And stream the new season of Tell Me Lies January 13th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.

[Jesse David Fox]

For most of the history of television, if you missed a show, you just missed it. It was over, it was gone. But then this little company called TiVo came along and gave people superpowers. You could pause live television, you could rewind it, you could save it it and watch it later. It was incredible. And the people who had it could.

[Chris Gethard]

Not stop talking about it.

[Jesse David Fox]

This week on Version History, a new chat show about old technology, we talk about the history of TiVo and how.

[Chris Gethard]

It is that a company whose products.

[Jesse David Fox]

Actually no one ever really had or used became one of the most iconic stories in tech. All that on Version History. Wherever you get podcasts. This week on Net Worth and Chill, I'm giving you an exclusive sneak peek.

[Chris Gethard]

At my new book, well endowed, hitting shelves February 3rd. I wrote this book because I believe.

[Jesse David Fox]

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[Chris Gethard]

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[Jesse David Fox]

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[Chris Gethard]

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[Jesse David Fox]

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[Chris Gethard]

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[Jesse David Fox]

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[Chris Gethard]

Pre order well endowed.

[Jesse David Fox]

Now, wherever books are sold and get ready to transform your relationship with money, listen to this week's episode.

[Chris Gethard]

Wherever you get your podcasts or watch.

[Jesse David Fox]

On YouTube.com, lots of times people want Nirvana, right? They go, who's the next nirvana? Who will, like, open people's eyes and everything will be good again? But truly, the answer is you need 10 years of black Flag, Minor Threat, Fugazi, the Pixies. Like all these things, you need to essentially, what happened in the 1980s and why we have to look back because this is the last time something like this happened. Also, politically, it was a similar moment. Moment which was there was no path and people just invented the path. They turned things that were not venues into venues. They turned people who are not promoters into promoters and they turned graphic designers into like. All these things were done by words. Yeah. So as a DIY person, as we talk about now, now we're at the positive moment of like, what can.

[Chris Gethard]

This is when everyone will Turn it off. Now that we've stopped.

[Jesse David Fox]

I would never say, give up your dreams. Don't give up hope. But you, you. Your hope cannot be reliant on the system as it currently is. So this is a right. What are the things? What is the first thing you would tell a comedian and aspiring director?

[Chris Gethard]

Well, they come to me often. I. It's been so strange for me to have started as like a boy wonder of the New York improv scene, and now I am old DIY uncle to the young artists. And there was a stretch, Jesse, where I was very. The Gethard show got canceled and I was lame for years. People were not buying what I was selling. And now there's artists who are. Are entering their careers with these frustrations. And I'm starting to get asked for advice as, like, old man diy. So there's a bunch of stuff I would say. I. I have hired somebody to be like, how do I fix my social media? I'm in my 40s. I don't get it. And one of the main things that I've been told is have it all point back to your mailing list, get those email addresses. Because Elon Musk can't buy your email list. If someone likes you, you go get them. Make sure you know how to get in touch with them personally. Have a strong email list. Prioritize that over your Instagram, over your TikTok, over your Twitter, your blue sky, whatever. Because Twitter's the big example. We all spent years building that, and a lunatic bought it.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

I am also extraordinarily interested in seeing people who make a return to physical media. Things that are intentionally created to not be disposable. I think that that is a statement that needs to be made more and more right now. TikTok doesn't matter. If you got 5 million views next week, they won't remember it. Your biggest thing ever. Disposable. What's next? What's next? What's next? What's coming downstream, Right? Who's gonna give me the physical media? And I think musicians have figured this out, right? You saw that as Spotify started taking money out of their exposure. Money. Vinyl comes roaring back. Because I can hand it to you, I can sign it, you can watch it spin if you want to. If you don't even have a record player, you can still hang it on the wall. It's physical. And then what happens with physical media? Right? If I make a little magazine and I sell it at my shows and I figure out how to do that on the cheap. And you keep that on your coffee table or you keep that next to your toilet. Then the next person who comes over picks it up and goes, what's this? Oh, that's this artist I really like. And they're making stuff like that. And maybe you start to find the other people who are interested in things like this through the actual hand to hand transference of physical media. I'm very interested in seeing who's going to start an information gathering service that mimics what you know, I believe one of the precursor sites that flow split cider, right, that flowed into, I think Vulture bought split cider. At a certain point that felt like, oh, this is sort of scene reports from different scenes and reviews of different things. I want to see who's going to be bold enough to make an actual physical, non Internet comedy breakdown. I would be so interested. And I don't know that I necessarily have the energy to do it, but to go, who's going to make a thing that if I send them $2 a month they mail me a thing that goes, here's all the weekly shows that aren't Ticketmaster, that aren't run by shitheads, where you don't have to worry about any credible sexual assault accusations from the host. Like, if you're a person who's forward thinking and just wants to go out and have a good time, here's the physical thing. And you're not being manipulated by an algorithm right now to be told this. You know who's going to do it? Who goes, I'll do the New York report. And then I know a person in Boston and I know a person in Denver and a person in San Francisco. And this will expand from like one legal size double sheet to like an actual comedy fanzine that's like, hey, if you even know about this, this, it means you're going to be in a room with other people who know about it and nobody's going to throw a fucking beer can at the comedian because you found out about it through this. Not that this is not to say like, I'm actually very impressed by Don't Tell by sesh comedy. Some of these sort of independent feeling shows that have used the algorithms. I don't know much about the people who run them, but I am impressed. I think there's something there that I like. Who's going to give me a thing where I go, this is so far removed from the Internet that I'm unfolding it from an envelope. That would be fascinating to me. I think we need that Actual alternative pathway. Similarly, I want to know the directory of venues who are saying, we don't stomach that. We don't account for it. We don't trifle with the monopolies. We have resisted being bought out by the increasing ticket monopolies out there. I want to know where that directory of venues is. I'm not patting myself on the back too hard, but I work with a booking agent who comes from the punk rock world where we fight tooth and nail to avoid Ticketmaster fees at all times. So many movements, both political and artistic, have come when people find interesting ways to control information off the grid. One of the things about the American Revolution that I got so nerdy about was that you realize part of what got it over the finish line of enthusiasm was when Benjamin Franklin insisted on building postal roads so you could send mail directly from Boston to South Carolina. It didn't have to go through London. London no longer controlled the flow of information. One of my favorite documentaries of all time is Style wars, which is a look at the Bronx graffiti movement from the start in the mid-70s up until the mid-80s. And I look at that and I go, man, that is a part of the world that was forgotten. And then a bunch of artistic kids went, we exist. Like, to me, the premise behind most of it is, we will not allow you to forget that we exist. I have a name. You will know my name. I exist. You can't forget us. What is the pathway of information? That's a true alternative. Because I hate to bust the bubble and I want people to keep making money, but YouTube ain't DIY. Yeah, ticket sales through Live Nation, not DIY being on platforms controlled by Mark Zuckerberg, they might feel DIY today. The second he personally decides that things are happening that he doesn't want out there, they're gone. I also don't like the algorithms on this sense, Jesse. And I think you'll agree with this. I can't stand how much comedians censor their own captions. That when you say fucking and I see forking on the bottom. I thought this was a culture that we go about.

[Jesse David Fox]

Even the edgiest comedians will bleep out curses.

[Chris Gethard]

And the edgiest comedians are the ones sitting here going, free speech. Our words are our weapons. I look at Roy Wood Jr. And I gas up Roy a lot. Roy's a friend of mine, but I think he's brilliant. And I'm sitting here, I go like, you look at Woody Guthrie's guitar. Those old images of this machine kills fascists. I'M like comedians at our best. I think a guy Roy does that.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

I think the best comedians in their primes, I think Chappelle at his best. That's why we love them. Carlin and Prior and Lenny Bruce. Our words are our fucking weapons. And I gotta write cork in a caption so that TikTok doesn't bury it. What kind of admission of fucking weakness and defeat is that? You know, like, get us out of here.

[Jesse David Fox]

Well, I do think it's. It's tied to what I thought was interesting about your rant, was it started from the position of free speech. Right. I think a lot of people think of this as sort of like, oh, this is just sort of art Bourgeo Yuaji artists complaining about. But you connect it directly to first Kimmel and Colbert as sort of like the desire center speech. And what, what was the value of independence?

[Chris Gethard]

Kennedy center, npr, pbs. You see all of it and you see this media consolidation. People are sitting here going, like, what does it matter? Is it Paramount or Netflix that buys HBO for standups for writers? Like, I. I just pitched a TV show recently, and I only pitched it to five places, and that was a.

[Jesse David Fox]

Pretty good hit rate.

[Chris Gethard]

Great. And next year, apparently, it will be four. Yeah, we all know how standups are talking right now. Netflix gets you the most exposure. If you can really bust out on YouTube, that's actually some people's number one or number two right now. HBO used to be the king. Netflix is now kind of the apex predator. But hbo, you still get the prestige. Well, Netflix now owns that one, which means that the regulation of where the art can go, who can see it, what's allowed to be seen, is under the thumb of people who we don't know and we can't trust. And that's been proven by who buys these platforms.

[Jesse David Fox]

I put out a call on social media for questions, and you see other people having success. And I put in air quotes, because the thing that social media does more than anything else is create a perception of success regardless of there's actual monetary success. And they're like, do I have to do this type of thing? Do I have to do this thing? And what I would say to all these people is, it's sort of the wrong question. Like, we sort of like, like have to take a step back. And what I would tell people is like, truly act as if it is over. Remember what it felt like in the 90s.

[Chris Gethard]

Rebuild. We're in a rebuild. Whoever starts thinking like, man, we need to rebuild this, you will be the next group of artists that define what the next phase is. But the rebuild starts. To me, it's almost like the Warren Buffett quote of, like, hey, when the market bursts, that's when you get in. Now's the time to see what that rebuild is. Cause I think we're at the end of what was the podcast Patreon social thing, right? But even look at podcasts. I'm sorry. When I. When I read deals that it's like Netflix now has rights to 26 video distribution, I go, we're. Podcasting's kind of done. It's kind. I don't know if it's done, but it's different. So what's the next thing? Like? Those questions reflect we're chasing the terms they're dictating to us. And I need to know who are going to be the young artists with fire in their guts and some anger about this, who are going to go like, probably the greatest example we have from the second comedy boom is what Daniel Kitson has done in England, right? Who not. Not as many Americans know Kitson. But Kitson I don't think has ever posted on social media. I don't think he's ever released a special. He has a very strong mailing list. And if you want to see that motherfucker, you go see him live. And he's brilliant when you do. He did it totally his own terms. You know, there's certainly handfuls of people who are. I think I get a lot of credit for being a relatively DIY guy who has sold out pretty responsibly in the times when I've sold out. I think Kyle Kanane for many, many years did it. Kyle will now tell you. I've talked with Kyle. He's like, I do clubs now. Like, it's so much energy to book stuff that I do clubs. But I don't want to put words in Kyle's mouth, but I think if there was, like, a really strong movement, you'd get a guy that good to be like, yeah, these are my people. We're back. Let's do it. You know? But I think it's a young person's thing in some ways, right?

[Jesse David Fox]

Well, it's interesting because I think there'd be people listening to this. He's like, yeah, of course. You guys telling us what to do. You guys are set not telling.

[Chris Gethard]

Begging you.

[Jesse David Fox]

And I think the reason I am interested in this conversation is that I can. I can tell from many sides how we are just kicking the can down the road, hoping that Somewhere along the way, something will lock in that will work. But along the way, we're, like, destroying the things that were kind of working.

[Chris Gethard]

For it for me again, so people understand why I'm really not trying to sit here and go, like, do this, kids. I'm not trying to be that guy. I hosted a TV show on cable for three seasons. I acted in roles on the Office and Parks and Rec and Broad City and a whole bunch more Space Force and all movie roles. I was a guest writer on SNL as far back as 2007. I have a podcast that blew up for years. And when my son was one year old, I lost my health insurance, and I have a mortgage. And I talk to young artists right now who. I realize the idea that they're ever going to own a house. They're like, what are you talking about? And they're not putting on a show.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

That their reality is, like, I'm an artist. I never get to own a house. I probably never get to have a kid. I want to. I want those things, but that's. I chose this instead. I sit here and go, man, I'm not trying to pat myself on the back for the career I've had, but if I can have objectively the amount of work I've had over the years and lose my insurance and be this scared for my ability to provide for my family, what's it like for people who. Who haven't had all those things? I know for a fact, and maybe I shouldn't air this out, but I think it'll make you chuckle. There was a stretch where we were trying to unionize Earwolf before a lot of us left. At one point, Adam Conover and I weren't. He was kind of saying, I wanted to go this way. And I'm going, adam, this is for people like me who are losing their health insurance. And the SAG rep called me back a few months later. She was like, I want you to know that your name has now been brought up at the Screen Actors Guild as, like, a case study. And I'm like, why? She's like, I told everybody the story you relayed about how you lost your health insurance. And everybody kind of went and looked at the breakdown of. You've been a member since 2002. You've done all these gigs. If this guy is losing his insurance, like, where is the bar at right now? I don't want to make it all about me, and I don't want it to be like, these kids got to get out here. And be punk rock like I was. I'm running scared and I've done a lot of shit and hustled hard as hell. And I don't, I don't, I've never been the most successful guy but you can objectively look at my resume and go, that guy lost his insurance. So I have to imagine that if, if I'm any sort of barometer, it's so hard.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

Because I shouldn't be sweat. Even the union called me and was like, you shouldn't be sweating it this hard. They even were like, the hell's going on? I'm like, you tell me a question.

[Jesse David Fox]

I got was, does one have to live in New York or la?

[Chris Gethard]

I think increasingly less so. And that's one of the positive sides of everything that's happening right now. I certainly think Chicago, Denver, San Francisco are strong possibilities now. But if there's one person who's given me hope and again, I don't know that he would like my comedy. But the fact that in our algorithmic world, Ali Siddiq is Texas based and put out a eight or nine hour long special, effectively I go, that seems like kind of the most punk rock pushback I've seen out of maybe anybody. I really love him, him. And he doesn't know my name. I'm certain. You talk about somebody who rebuilt an infrastructure that's kind of the shining example for everybody right now. Yeah, Everybody's putting out 45 second clips. I'll put out a multi part special that pieces together as one that takes you.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah. And, and builds an audience who comes to show wanting that, wanting that.

[Chris Gethard]

They don't want to heckle him, they want to hear his long ass story.

[Jesse David Fox]

Because the, the alternative is if you do succeed at doing something you don't want to do now you're traveling, not you're not an artist anymore. Right. The whole goal was you wanted to express yourself how you wanted to and now you have to express yourself in the way that they want you. I mean what I would say to sort of New York and LA thing is is two things. One, you please don't live in those cities. Like truly. Like there's so many great comedians that are, are an extension of. For a time period they had scenes that were describing. Right. So it's like the first wave there in San Francisco. This alternative scene in San Francisco became a thing. But also it's like, like Portland, Chicago, Denver, you need to find places where you can live cheaply. Right. The era of the Internet that we were talking about. Did not create more people who want to be a comedian. It created more people who thought comedian could be their job.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah.

[Jesse David Fox]

Not even job, their career. And I do think we have to take a step back and say, what if it's not that? Let's divorce success, your artistic success from your popularity and your commercial success. And that's. That's sucks. That is worse than if everything can be it. But like currently we do not have this social safety net. Like in again, I'll quote in our band could be life. I can't remember. There's like the goal is not to live large. The goal is to live realistically.

[Chris Gethard]

Oh yeah.

[Jesse David Fox]

So it's like this is how so many artists of so many types do it. There are so many painters in this country who paint after work or in the weekends or they can kind of make a modest living because they found 10,000 total people over the course of their lifetime that will spend $2,000 on a painting. Right. Like I do think if you're raised on social media, you see big numbers, you go, I need to have 500,000 followers to be a success. Because that's what Netflix wants me to.

[Chris Gethard]

1000 people who love you.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

And I have survived because of a passionate and dwindling number of people. I have people who have followed me for 15 years. And when I see them, I know their names. I know they've had my back hard. And I feel so lucky about that. After I lost my health insurance in. In 2021, I have a day job now and I don't feel like it messes with my ego to say that I helped a non profit start an arts program and they give my family health insurance.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

As far as day jobs go, it's a pretty good one. But again, not coming off as complainy, I hope. Hopefully coming off as a good dad. But there might be people aware enough of comedy to know who I am going, that guy got a day job. Yeah. And I don't think I was being ridiculous doing so. I think if I wanted to continue to make art, I needed to make sure my kid was allowed to get sick and the arts were no longer a pathway towards that. Scary as hell. A lot of the best comedy I see is coming from places that aren't New York and LA anymore. If you want to come to New York, it should be to get really good as fast as you can. There's no other city I can think of in the world where you go the South Brooklyn New Yorker subscribers, the North Brooklyn weirdos, the Germans and Australians, the bridge and tunnel tourists, the comedy seller. Hardcore fans. Within a week I can know what they all think of a joke. New York is beautiful for that. Move here because of the skill building, don't move here because of the success.

[Jesse David Fox]

I think some people are being like, do I have to do this to become famous? And there's no way, way to tell anyone how to become famous. Like you can be famous and have truly be losing a lot of money because like people don't understand. I just think about there are people who I just think, oh, they have a certain amount of success, even like mainstream success and. But shows don't pay as much as they used to. They're small episode runs. But they kind of quit doing stand ups to do it. But they have to spend tons of money on a publicist and a stylist, right? And then the show lasts four years as critically acclaimed the entire time and now they're five years out. And then how do they make money? Right? Look, it is possible that you will work really hard and that that hard work will allow you to get a lottery ticket that might make it so you can have this life and cool. Like if you, especially if you come from money, you probably are like that's the other.

[Chris Gethard]

Well, the unspoken thing of a lot of this too is it is easier to get those jobs if you are blessed enough to have someone else paying your revenue rent. It just is. And I'm not mad. And I've actually seen examples of comedians who come from wealth who build a lot of opportunities for their scene. Some comedians where I've seen them take for coming from a wealthy background and I go, but they also created a whole scene that so many other people got opportunities from. There's ways to use your privilege wisely. But let's also be honest. I think one of the things that's frustrating a lot of people who are not, that is there's also in New York in particular a lot of starving artist cosplay. And that is image building that I understand. But it also I think skews the reality of what young artists see on their way in and does more harm than good.

[Jesse David Fox]

It is hard for everybody. So if you come for money, it is still hard for you. But then it creates a perception that it's one type of hard. And also like, like, you know, to really make it is you have to really go for it. You have to go all in. And that all in thing has worked for people. But to do it is a tremendous risk for a lot of people. And I Do think increasingly I will tell people to not do that. I had a day job until I got this job. And it. I am not of the temperament to go all in on a thing and hope that it sort of works out, but it just is less and less likely. And the thing that you have to remember is, is even if it does work out, you get your first big break, whatever it is. You get a don't tell set. You get 700,000 people watch your special on YouTube. After that, you still might need your day job. And you. And 10 years into that day job, it's probably a better day job than it was. If you keep on getting a different day job every three years, I think.

[Chris Gethard]

You have to do a few things. I think never adjust your standard of living based on one success. When I got Big Lake, which was my sitcom in 2010, I was living with my college friend and we lived in Woodside and I had a bedroom with no closet and I remained in that bedroom with no closet for years after that, even though I had the money of having done 10 episodes of a sitcom. When the Chris Gethard show finally started to break and make money, the only reason it got there was because I had saved all that money and could fund a public access show out of pocket because I was smart enough to go, I don't need fanciness. I need to fucking survive. And I think that remains true for everybody today. And I also want to say, if you are privileged and you are wealthy and you're in the arts, you have every right to. And I'm not trying to be a class warrior and say that, but I will just say be honest about it because if you occupy that space, someone else can't occupy it. Like even me. Do I come, I always say I came from a pretty working class family in North Jersey. That is true. I can also recognize that My parents lived 40 minutes away until I was 36 or 37 years old. Like, if I ever truly struck out on rent, I had a place to go 40 minutes from here, 30 minutes from here. And I could probably still keep doing shows and rebuild and feel like, God damn, I'm living with my parents again. But those are privileges I had. You know, I can recognize that some of the cosplay is removing oxygen from.

[Jesse David Fox]

In many ways it's like if you have the money, use it to create more space. Much of the alternative comedy infrastructure is built around people at successful Hollywood careers that put it into this, right? Like Pen Oswald was able to do the Comedians of Comedy tour because he Made money on King of Queens. Now, he could have just hoarded that money or used it to sort of in ways that would just make him more popular. But for whatever reason, he did this and it's helpful.

[Chris Gethard]

Anyone who takes a chance and does that, no matter where you start, that's a good thing and you deserve kudos for it.

[Jesse David Fox]

What can or can we not learn from Dropout?

[Chris Gethard]

Dropout has given me hope. I'm not sure if Sam's mad at me. I'm going down. I made a joke about how it was something along the lines of, like, the only healthy work environment shouldn't be predicated on your knowledge of magic. The Gathering. I emailed Sam about it. I didn't hear back. I'm assuming he's busy. But outside of any of the content of Joppa, I mean, God damn it. Worker owned. I hear they pay you to audition. Even if you just have a minor bit part. You gotta share in the profits of the company.

[Jesse David Fox]

Thing that was craziest than when I wrote a story about them was because they profit share to anyone they pay. They profit share to people who audition but do not get cast.

[Chris Gethard]

Sick. It's a utopia. Now. You need to be Sam Reich. His dad is a financial genius and he had enough balls to drop out of high school and go for it. Like, that's a rare combination of personality traits. I'm a great admirer of Sam. And Sam, I did email you and say I hope that joke didn't land the wrong way. And if it did, I apologize. You know, I'm a friend. But I think there's so much to be thought of as far as the collective aspect of it.

[Jesse David Fox]

If we remove the scale that Netflix is on and go back to some version of 1000, 1000 people paying you $10 a month can maybe have a career or. Oh, all of us have a similar sensibility. Can we do one plus one plus one?

[Chris Gethard]

Because I don't want to compete for the $5 a month from the other six artists I actually like. I do think that collectives have ability to box out space for things like if your collective gets big enough, you might be able to purchase into a healthcare plan that's cheaper than you could individually. Things like this start to really get my gears turning. Who are these other artist collectives going to be? You know, we keep bringing up our band Could Be youe Life, which I think any artist who read it, whether you like punk rock or not, alternative rock or not, you would be inspired. Like Discord Records. If you buy that Record, you know, it meant a certain thing. The money's going certain places, and it's not going certain places who are going to be the artist collectives that start to define that for themselves. Some of that will lead to dreck, Some of that will lead to pretentiousness. But some of that might lead towards incredibly healthy examples of artists helping each other survive and support one another. That I think are going to lead to much healthier questions than the people that go, do I have to move to New York and build a streaming studio to be a joke teller? That's a panicky thing.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah. I mean, another thing I learned from the book as an audience member is what they realize is if you have fewer people, each of those people matter more. Right. And that is creating a very different relationship to. My goal is to have a million followers. I literally never know. They're all faceless. If I have a million, I can get 10% of them to click to this. And of those 10%, I just need 2% to do click to this. And once you get to. And that is anti human. Right.

[Chris Gethard]

It's also anti comedian. We all know. And I'll leave it to the Internet to guess who I'm talking about. Which they love. They love shit talk with no name behind it. This will pop off out of. Again, very positive conversation. This is about to pop off. You and I both know the stories told in the comedy world of some comics who are very, very wealthy right now with their 10 million faceless followers, who. The story goes. And this is conjecture, this is hearsay, that they have actively said, I'll say a bunch of shit I don't believe. I know it's going to pop off, but you're hurting the world. You're platforming shit you don't believe and saying it out loud and telling people, watch this work. And then. And it does. No wonder I'm so wary of the system. No wonder I hate it. If it's a game you can play to the detriment of your own values in exchange for money. Get the out of here with that. And we all have heard stories. And I'll let people guess. Some of them will guess correctly, I'm sure. Some of them incorrectly. But you've heard those stories, too. That there are people who at a point in their career went, yeah, no, I think I'm gonna start. I think I'm gonna start catering to this group because they get really angry online.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah.

[Chris Gethard]

And I can be the comedian for the angry online.

[Jesse David Fox]

Dude. It's like, it's just being the joker, right? It's sort of like I don't care if the system sucks. I might as well benefit from it. The hard thing is our suggestion is harder than the suggestion of just sell out completely. Oh, I mean, it's easy. Hopefully you'll be able to sleep better at night, but maybe not, you know, like the person who sells it completely might have a very nice bed.

[Chris Gethard]

I lost my health insurance. I'm not as successful as I think I thought I was going to be. If I'm being totally vulnerable. I think there was a stretch of life where it felt like I was pretty close to being in the club of people who were going to work consistently. And then it. It whiffed. Happens to some of us. I thought really long and hard about why. Probably some choices I made along the way. Probably some stubbornness that I can't let go of. Probably insisting on never moving to LA was a bad choice for that. But at the very least, I sleep pretty soundly at night as far as who I am and how I've made my money. So I got that.

[Jesse David Fox]

In your rant you talk about the power of spite.

[Chris Gethard]

My rant? My one of many, yes.

[Jesse David Fox]

The rant we're talking about.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah.

[Jesse David Fox]

Can you talk about the power of spite?

[Chris Gethard]

I think spite is ultimately a negative, but for a lot of artists, it might be the last thing you're holding onto. A lot of artists who will feel the financial intimidation of being an artist right now will quit. A lot of artists who feel like they are participating in a system that's exploitative of them will quit. A lot of artists who, like I said, go, I don't want to. I don't want to post pictures of myself in a thong to have to be successful. This is up. Will want to quit. And if you're one of the people who goes, this system seems like it's in a really unhealthy place. It actually is making me mad enough to quit. I would say that if you can get mad enough to quit and choose not to quit, that is the way that those of us feeling that way will all start to. To finally find each other. And that will be the beginnings of a different scene. Right. Potentially.

[Jesse David Fox]

A question I got and I'll read directly was, can you make ends meet by 100% standing your ground with a liberal and progressive worldview?

[Chris Gethard]

I don't know that I have the most progressive and liberal worldview. I am an interesting case because I think by the standards of comedy in 2011 and 2012, when I started my public access show. I was very progress aggressive. I'm. I'm like a. A pretty cheesy white suburban dad at this point. Some. You know, I just did a show for the uso and a bunch of people on Instagram got mad at me and were like, this is a betrayal of who you are. And I was like, I don't know, man. It's a bunch of kids who, like, had no way out of their small towns, and they signed up and I got asked to help them, and I went. People were like, this is up, man. You're supposed to be super progressive. So I'm getting the sense I don't have the most progressive worldview. But I would just say this. I still have to believe in my heart you can make a living with your honest worldview. And if your honest worldview is a very liberal, progressive one, I think you can. And I think you'll find your people like. I'm always so impressed by Kate Willett. Kate Willett is a comic that every time we do shows together, I'm so happy to see Kate. Kate is pretty much a communist, I think if you talk to her, you know, and I love Kate. I think I'm progressive and liberal, but I wouldn't say it's the defining aspect of my approach to things. That being said, I'm also a literal elected union rep, so in some ways, maybe I am more than not. But my point being, if it's engineered, maybe not. If it's honest, sure. People sense honesty. People sense authenticity. If you're making a calculated move of, like, maybe I can corner the liberal progressive thing in the way that some of the Kiltoni guys managed to jump on a more conservative bro culture. Sure, you're calculating that might work, might not, but it's not that interesting to me. The question is not what should my worldview be? It's what is my worldview and how do I make the jokes that either connect with the other people of that worldview or more challengingly, explain that worldview to the people who don't currently get it and invite them in to understand you a little bit. If it's honest, it's honest. If it's not, it's not. All of the calculating. How do I calculate my worldview to work?

[Jesse David Fox]

Work.

[Chris Gethard]

This is algorithmic that that conversation doesn't happen before the algorithm, I don't think.

[Jesse David Fox]

The thing that I have thought about a lot vis a vis this question, and again, the. The founding or the creating of the alternative music scene in the 1980s is a lot of those bands were really political. Some of those bands were not political. Being political was beneficial to some of the bands because that is the cohort they built. Being not political is beneficial to some of those bands. But I do think, think social media had, for one reason or the other, convinced people that your scene needs to be homogenous to a political worldview. And this is not to say you must have fascists in your alternative comedy scene or you suck or whatever. It's just to say that, like, it is maybe not the best way to bind a community together is by having one clear worldview. And that is. And in the history of community organizing, it is, the organizing part was combining different worldviews. And I think, like, a lot of how the alternative music scene was built was there were like, the punks who were like, they were Hollywood punks and there's like, Southern California punks. And they. They realized they both like Black Flag and Black Flag got to succeed because of a combining of disparate punk punk groups or whatever, from what I understand. And I do think, yes, you should be true to yourself as an artist. And I do think social media is asking you to not be true to yourself as an artist. But like, I would say, like, tech is hurting everyone's life, including moderate people. And you can create a scene that is in opposition to the way in which social media is infecting comedy. That does not have to be. Everyone has the exact same beliefs about whatever specific political.

[Chris Gethard]

I would really, as an artist, resist the urge to calculate from the start of your career, how do I become an archetype or an avatar for blank that is not an enviable role. And there I think the question's probably being asked on some level because some people have in recent times, run towards a perceived conservative bro y version of comedy and become the avatars for that.

[Jesse David Fox]

Even if they. They do not espouse the political worldviews. They've definitely have figured a way of massaging how they present themselves.

[Chris Gethard]

I mean, some people just actively who, let's be honest, weren't making money before, they did that, making a lot of money now, and went, this is my way in. You're also seeing an interesting thing now where some of the bigger people associated with that world, we're watching them realize this might be fucked up, and you're watching which ones are able to separate themselves in a way that's organic. It's interesting. It's interesting times. But I'll also say this as someone who's way more lefty than righty. Certainly there are certainly comics who have made their whole thing. I'm the progressive comic where I go. That is comedically insufferable as well, if the jokes aren't there. But then there's people where it's really honest to them.

[Jesse David Fox]

If your question is, can you do that and then sell out a basketball arena, I have no idea. You'll sell out the amount of people that want the type of comedy you are. Your desire as an artist to just express yourself. And. And it's very possible you'll find 2000 people who like it, who want both your style of comedy and your political worldview. And hopefully those 2,000 people will go, this is exactly the comedy I like. And they will sustain your entire life.

[Chris Gethard]

I can tell you I've done shows in an anarchist book and fanzine store in Gainesville, Florida, that you can definitely sell out those 40 seats. But is that the career you want?

[Jesse David Fox]

And that'll be to you. So I want to end here. So one of the things you see said in your rant, this rant.

[Chris Gethard]

I like that you always say your rant.

[Jesse David Fox]

It adds gravitas to it.

[Chris Gethard]

Let's also keep in mind the reason that rant popped off was because marginalized artists from a specifically attacked group using underground media platformed it. Put it in front of a bunch of people who haven't heard me screaming about this for 15 years. And that is important to say that going down is the reason that this is at the attention it's at. And it's because of some artists who are doing exactly the type of shit that you and I are kind of like desperately begging more people to do right now.

[Jesse David Fox]

In the rant you say trying to make art in this environment, and one of the most radical things you can do in this environment is survive, refuse to disappear. What does that mean?

[Chris Gethard]

So many factors we've talked about today add up to a feeling that art is not worth pursuing. And I think that is hitting people who are further along in their commitment to trying to be an artist than it has prior. Some of this is the all right, I guess I better start doing a certain type of material, posting things where I look a certain way, trying to follow these tracks. Also the financial burdens that are being shifted to the artist. There are so many reasons to go screw this. Either it feels impossible or it's going to financially up the later half of my life or it doesn't prescribe to my values. Like there's the I'm going to butcher the quote. It's from a very long time ago. I lived a hard life so my son could live. One of the last links in that is, is so that my great grandson could be an artist. Right. Effectively I'm butchering the, you know, the one I'm paraphrasing. I wish I was smart enough to have the whole thing in my head. But I think if you are somebody who has a feeling that you need to like honor and you know, if you, if you come from a working class family, if you saw your parents work super fucking hard to give you a chance and you're going, I gotta post pictures of myself in a fucking bikini and find $70,000 to fund a YouTube special that might get 4,000 views. And if I really want it to pop off, I guess the thing that's working right now is man, trans kids shouldn't be in locker rooms. Like, there's so many reasons to feel dismal about that. I don't want to be conspiracy theorists, but I think there's a vested interest for people to be able to control dialogues and be able to control what art is made about out. Be able to control what artists feel is productive to say. And rather than feel insane and go away, make the art you really want to make because that will be the seed that is planted that might grow into something that, that you will feel more comfortable participating in or seeing.

[Jesse David Fox]

So in, in your rant you, you say the algorithm is the company store in many ways.

[Chris Gethard]

Yeah.

[Jesse David Fox]

Can you, can you describe, describe what that means, discuss what that means.

[Chris Gethard]

So if anybody knows the history of labor struggles in this country, you know, Harlan County USA is really, I mean one I think regard as one of the best documentaries ever. But I do not want to co opt the struggles of coal miners. But again, everybody likes to say the complainy entertainers, the Writers Guild, Screen Actors Guild, they go on strike for reasons just being around 25 years, I was very often on strike lines where the teamsters and IATSE members, I was often the person that had worked with the most of them. I remember one of the teamsters telling me, they know they can get bad press and paint you guys as fancy, but whatever you guys fold on makes it harder for the rest of us to fight for. So don't quit. If we're doing it, you do it. It's eye opening. You know, entertainment is tied to unions and should be more. It's another whole aspect of YouTube. I'll just put it out there. There, that's Google. And the fact that for some reason Google Never has to have any conversations about worker protections. To me, that's insane. That's Google. It's got to be a way to start protecting their, at at the very least, their most successful people. But the company store for a lot of particularly coal miners. About a century ago, when you come to this town, the entire town is owned by the coal mine. You rent your house from the coal mine mine. You buy your food from a store that is supplied by the coal mine. You are in fact paid in what is called scrip. It is not American currency. It is a currency that only has value in the context of the coal mine. You are held hostage effectively. You can't save up weeks and weeks and weeks of scrip and go, you know what? This job is not for me. I want to switch to a different industry and go get my. No, they own your house.

[Jesse David Fox]

House.

[Chris Gethard]

They, they own the food you need to buy. They got you by the balls. And that was one of the massive things that there were labor struggles where people were, you know, actively shooting guns at each other. Strike breakers sent in to knock heads and kill people. So I don't want to co opt the struggles of people who are, you know, mid 20th century Appalachia, who are living much harder, you know, getting black lawn. I don't want to claim that struggle, but I think I'd be doing disservice as a, as a pretty dedicated union member to not at the very least try to connect workers rights of today with workers rights of them. And I do think that this idea of you make stuff for the algorithm, you keep shoveling it in, you build it to a certain length and we'll keep feeding you back, is not of the severity of what coal miners face. And I never want to co opt or struggle or pretend that it is, but it's the closest entertainment I've seen. Hey, you come work for us. Whether that's Netflix and some comedians losing money from their specials, which we know happens, I think people will be shocked to hear that and go, they must, they must be speaking incorrectly. No, it's going to come out more and more.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah. Because they're licensing more and more the specials that are not the big specials of comedians they worked with a million times. They're licensed.

[Chris Gethard]

Most of the artists get a flat fee and all the production comes out of that. They, they go, and, and it's very company store to me. Here's a chunk of money, but you go make the whole thing. And if you don't make a dollar off of it, you don't complain like that to me very much feels like our version.

[Jesse David Fox]

You're putting content into a social media feed. We own the content because it's on our feed.

[Chris Gethard]

You don't have access to information on the followers. You don't.

[Jesse David Fox]

We're putting our content in front of those followers. If you leave, Steve, if you stop posting and your account still exists, there will be people who, because they followed you, will be getting our stuff.

[Chris Gethard]

I did a tour about a year ago, year and a half ago, brought a friend of mine on the road. He's in his 20s and he does really, really well on TikTok, mostly doing sketch. He was starting to get asked to book the headline rooms, and he came to me and he was like, I'm saying no to these gigs and leaving money on the table because I know I don't know how it works out there. And I thought that was very smart and very much a reflection of his priorities, being in the right place to not take the easy money. I said, do you want to come open for me? And you get a little bit of a crash course. Birbiglia did that for me. When I was switching from Improv 2014, I opened for Birbiglia. All different size rooms. He's able to tell me, okay, this room has a balcony. Here's how your sight lines are different. Okay, here's how we're meeting this type of person backstage. This is what's really going on. Like, all these things that you need to apprentice don't learn. So I took my friend out six or seven dates in the Midwest. I said, quick crash course. You get a sense of how to handle people out there, handle situations. But I wound up very concerned. We'd be driving from one city to the other. And he's sitting in the back seat editing. He's like, what time is soundcheck tonight? And I tell him, he's like, oh, can you drop me at the hotel first? Why? I need reliable WI fi. Cuz if I don't post before that, the algorithm might be fine.

[Jesse David Fox]

Up.

[Chris Gethard]

Okay. And then after the show, more editing. And then the next morning, shooting something really quick and in some ways, very inspiring to see the hustle, the determination, the dedication to it. In another way, I go, you aren't allowed to ever slow down or stop or this all might go away. And it's how you pay your rent. I also get the sense there's a lot of artists right now where you're like in your mid-20s, you got a couple roommates living that artist life. You're doing decent on TikTok and you can pay for your life and it's awesome. But none of it counts towards health insurance. None of it counts towards a pension. And it's enough money that I'm like, man, that's sick. If I was 25 and someone told me, just comedy, you can make that much, I'd go, awesome. But if I could never slow down enough to find the option that has more long term viability, well, they got you by the balls in the company store way.

[Jesse David Fox]

What gives you hope?

[Chris Gethard]

I've had a good, lucky life, but most of my art has been forgotten relative to my peers. I think that's just kind of the sad truth. When I met Sarah Sherman, we were backstage at a venue that you. When you were backstage and the show started, you couldn't leave. It was just the two of us. And Sarah turned around and was like, I never knew if I was going to tell you this when we met, but like, I emailed you and asked if I could intern for your public access show when I was in college. And I sit here and I go, sarah Sherman. When they let Sarah do Sarah stuff on snl, to me that's the most interesting SNL has been in a decade, maybe longer. And also Sarah's stuff is the only one where things get messed up and then they have to recover because it's so manic and wild. And I go, you're the person who gives me hope. I still watch SNL all the time. And when I watch you, that's the thing for me going, this is what I always wanted live TV to look like when I was making it. And you're on SNL doing it.

[Jesse David Fox]

Yeah, I.

[Chris Gethard]

Let's not lie. I always had in the back of my head, why is SNL so stiff, man? Yeah, let's do live tv. That looks chaotic. It's live. You can do whatever you want. And I go, and now Sarah's sneaking it in. I'm not saying Sarah's doing that because of me, but the fact that Sarah watched my shit and now I get to watch Sarah, I go, when you meet other artists who have made art you like and you find out that they gave a shit or on any level were inspired by what you made, it is its own fulfillment. The largest standup crowd I've performed for was 12,000 people. I can say very, very honestly that that show gave me a dopamine kick. But it doesn't come close to meeting people who are doing cool shit now, who are like, like, we understand that like, we're on the same family tree, you know what I mean? And even some of my favorite artists now, like, I think Martin Urbano should be one of the biggest comedians in America. It makes absolutely no sense to me that he's not. I've been saying this for years. I think he is a wickedly funny joke writer. I think he's the only joke writer I know that ever approaches like Jeselnik's ability to twist and turn something dark. And then on top of it, it, he has a whole clear cut, very confusing, but clear mission of also targeting that towards bro culture, masculinity, do your own research types. I'm like, how is that not one of the biggest artists in the world, you know? But I will say, if Martin stopped making art because the algorithm doesn't quite get the layers of what he's doing, what a shitty, sad reason to not have those brilliant jokes in the world, you know? And it's the type of thing that I go, there have to be 10,000 people out there that want to give Martin Urbano their money. There have to be. And I feel a little bit honor bound to be like, I want to be someone who shouts to the hotel stuff like, can we please build the infrastructure? So guys like him and Zack Reinert out in Denver, who I love, and the best of the clowns, the whole clowning thing has come Ethan and Gigi and some of these people. I love Chicken Big. These guys. Chicken Big. Do you know Chicken Big? Chicken Big. There is no place for the algorithm for Chicken Big. But they're building sort of like immersive comedy experiences for the audience. There's gotta be a way for an infrastructure of people who don't give a fuck about TikTok to find these people. Has to be.

[Jesse David Fox]

Thank you so much.

[Chris Gethard]

I'll try to be more succinct. Jesse, I apologize.

[Jesse David Fox]

That's it for another episode of Good One. Good One is produced by myself, Zachary Mack, Neal Janowitz and Ann Victoria Clark. Music composed by Brandon McFarland. Write a review and rate the show on Apple Podcasts. Five stars, please. I am Jesse David Fox and you can follow me at Jesse David Fox. Buy my book, comedy book, wherever books are sold. Thanks for listening to Good One from New York magazine. You can subscribe to the [e-mail] pod we're back with a new episode next week. Have a good one.