Tyler Cowen: preference

Transcript context

…Well, boss, but a civilian in the sense that I’m not supposed to be the talent. A lot of people are extremely funny in person, as funny as stand-up comics. What they don’t have is whatever it is that’s driving stand-up. Well, they might not have a few things. They’re not comfortable on stage, they may not be charismatic, and they’re not compelled to be in front of an audience, getting laughs. This is something the comedians love. My father used to talk about it. They want to be on stage. They want to be the center of attention. It’s not just about being funny. There’s a need that they have for this that the average funny person doesn’t have. I can be funny, but I don’t have the urge to be on stage being funny. Matter of fact, I’m scared of that. I don’t follow any comedians. I sit there, I read Twitter, and I giggle. There’s maybe a person who’s funny once every four years, but the funniest thing they say becomes viral on Twitter. How do comedians compete against hundreds of millions of people who are mostly unfunny, but they have one funny moment every now and then, and then it gets elevated to the top? You’re asking me questions about things that I’ve actually thought about, even recently. I don’t know the answer to that exactly. I’ve been wondering how is it that some of these Comedy Cellar comedians are on top, even though they’re not actually funnier, especially since you’re only getting the cream of the crop of these tweets. I guess somehow they are. That’s all I can tell you. Somehow people who are at the top of this field — Now, there’s a lot of overachievers in this profession. It’s not like the NBA. If you want to be in the NBA, you’ve got to be in the top one-tenth of basketball players in the country, or it’s immediately obvious. You can scratch out and work hard and put together a good 15 minutes, so there are a lot of overachievers working in comedy. The real super talent, the real gems, like the Chappelles, like the Louis C.K.s — they really are on another level, and the world sees that. I don’t know if that’s a good answer or not.…

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