10 Good Things: Gulman book recs, Burr’s artistic evolution, etc.
Also: Mulaney on CBS, Schulz on diversity, and Matt Rife’s top 20 most used hashtags on TikTok
💥 Jesse David Fox on Bill Burr’s artistic evolution:
Forget “the best stand-up working right now” — Bill Burr is fighting to be in the conversation of greatest stand-ups of all-time. That demands artistic evolution and, in an autobiographical medium like stand-up, personal growth…Artistic evolution and personal growth are difficult when you’re a successful comedian and know there is a portion of the audience who wants you never to change. It’s easy to lose audience members by being too offensive; it’s much harder to risk losing them by being honest with who you are now as a person. Burr is not self-righteous or self-pitying, and with each new special, his audience gets to see a man at war — a man fighting to grow despite all the societal, cultural, financial, and familial forces working against him. And with each special, he keeps getting better.
💥 The Polish prime minister sounded like Carlin with this line: “Russia will be helpless against united Europe...500 million Europeans are begging 300 million Americans for protection from 140 million Russians who have been unable to overcome 50 million Ukrainians for three years."
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💥 Gary Gulman on books that will make you lol:
💥 "Do we want to live in a world where quality is so easily compromised to get more attention? Should we really be happy with a cultural system that incentivizes artists to spend more time selling their wares than developing their work?" Zinoman strikes again: "For Comics, Honing Jokes Has Taken a Back Seat to Marketing. That’s Not Good."
💥 Daily Comedy News: Remembering Mitch Hedberg
They discuss Hedberg's unique comedy style, his legacy within the industry, and comparisons to other influential comedians such as Steven Wright and Andy Kaufman. The conversation also touches on the potential use of AI in preserving Hedberg's work.
💥 Mulaney on CBS:
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by Peter James:I didn’t make it to the level that I wanted, but I got a lot further and stayed with it far longer than most people would. Because of that, I had great experiences and learned a lot that I can apply to my life now. It’s not about what I didn’t do or achieve, it’s about how I take what I learned and use it going forward.
💥 Matt Rife’s top 20 most used hashtags on TikTok via
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💥 Stop fighting the last war. A threefer from Kyle Chayka from “The future of digital media: 15 key takeaways.” [The Rubesletter]
The best way to succeed online is to surf the upward wave of a new platform by committing 100% and catering all of your output to it. It’s a land grab game. Once you win the game, then you can be less obsequious to the platform.
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No one is media literate. The more you explain who you are and what you do, the better. Preface your newsletter with the explanation of wtf you’re writing, anyway, because your subscribers don’t remember. The “enhanced bios” of NYT, Vox, etc, are long because of SEO but they also make explicit the expertise that was once just assumed from professionalized media.
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The traditional metrics of success don’t matter. Don’t rely on the old regime to recognize the achievements or potential of the emerging one. There’s no Pulitzer for newsletters or TikTok explainers; BuzzFeed News died winning a single one. The most successful small digital media businesses are YouTube channels that no NYT exec will ever recognize.
More:
💥 Andrew Schulz on why his standup didn’t cut through with Comedy Central, etc.
Just no interest. I think the easiest thing, and every white comic will do it, is to chalk it up to, “Oh, there was a push for diversity or whatever.” But it’s just like, okay, well, be funnier. Be so funny that it’s undeniable or get so much success that it’s undeniable. Now, I will say that that did happen to me. I remember I did some show, and the executive producer made my character gay two weeks before we started filming. He’s like, “Listen, there’s too many white guys. We got to switch this up, and so you got to be gay.” They literally made me gay for diversity, which is the worst version of it, because you’re not trying to tell a gay story. You don’t care. This is what happens with people who don’t grow up around anybody but their group, they think that you could just change the color of something and then that group of people will like it. I always say I got the most diverse audience in comedy, [and I think it’s because] I have a lot of curiosity about cultures around the world, and I talk about them and I make fun of them but I think people see that I care enough to do the research and so they don’t feel like it’s some hacky joke. And they show up because they appreciate that representation. Here I am, some fucking white guy, I’m doing arenas in the Middle East, making fun of them and they’re like, “Yeah, he sees us.” People really just want to feel seen.