Noam Dworman: evaluation

Transcript context

…How has social media changed comedy? Well, it came to the rescue in a certain way, because just as wokeness put a cloud over everything, social media allowed some of the most successful comics working today to distribute themselves directly to their audience and find their audience. I think this includes even Joe Rogan, to some extent. And there’s no gatekeepers anymore. People like Andrew Schulz, Chris Distefano, and Tim Dillon. It’s given comedy a lifeline in a certain way. It’s changed everything, not just comedy, but our business. Years ago, I had a music club that was hugely successful, the Café Wha?. We had lines around the block to get in. It was a huge local New York thing. If we’d had social media, the sky would have been the limit. We used to have to stamp postcards if we had an event and send out 100. It was expensive. Now you can announce something to a billion people. It’s rippled through everything, including the ability of comedians to present themselves directly to the audience in a very meritocratic way. You can’t argue so much with who rises to the top when people are forwarding things they find funny. But say in the NBA, some people charge that dunks, layups, spectacular 3-point shots have replaced watching actual games. You just pull out bits, and you watch highlights. Is comedy becoming just a thing of highlights? And is that, in the longer run, good for comedy, bad for comedy?…

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