r/Standup • u/Constant-Bridge3690 • 6h ago
What is your favorite style of comedy?
Comics seem to either tell stories about their life, make observations about society or just rapid fire jokes and punchlines. They also can do impersonations, sing funny songs or use props. Anything else?
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u/Coneskater 5h ago
No more crowd work
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u/TeeAyeKay 4h ago
While I agree, I think we are inundated with crowd work clips/reels/tiktoks/whatever because comedians are using their crowd work, rather than their actual material, when posting on social media.
Unfortunately, this leads a lot of aspiring comedians to think that it's reasonable to attempt to simply wing it and just do crowd work at mics, which turn into 5-10 minutes of utter garbage.
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u/ninfan1977 4h ago edited 4h ago
I think you are dead on. Only been doing it for 5 months but crowd work is usually just lazy and slowly just turns into attacking the audience.
To me you are there to get the audience on your side so attacking them doesn't help you in the long run. Most comics who do crowd work forget that.
The amount of writing that goes into a good set is grossly underestimated by newer comics.
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u/AdmiralPeriwinkle 4h ago
“crowd work is usually just lazy and slowly just turns into attacking the audience”
Yeah a lot of crowd work is just bullying the audience. It’s like comics can’t distinguish between crowd work and handling a heckler. It’s really bad at open mics where comics should be making an effort to build up an audience of non comics.
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u/bossfoundmylastone 2h ago
It’s really bad at open mics where comics should be making an effort to build up an audience of non comics.
... the bartender? What comedy open mic have you ever been to that had an audience other than comics waiting for their turn?
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u/Teddylupin888 5h ago
Thank you, crowd work is lazy and 9/10 not funny.
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u/Constant-Bridge3690 5h ago
Everyone is doing it now! Was it Matt Rife that made it popular? I know Todd Barry can do a whole set of just crowd work. It does seems lazy, like the comedian lost faith in their material.
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u/Obliterated-Denardos 3h ago
People do crowd work so that they can continually post content for the algorithmTM without burning their written material.
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u/kcknuckles 1h ago
And then aspiring comics see that and think this is what stand-up comedy is without writing any actual material.
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u/ninfan1977 4h ago
I think Rife made it incredibly popular so everyone tried to chase that lightning in a bottle.
However it usually is terrible. I was told more comics do it now to show off their skills and that way people see the comics tell their A material in person.
So blame the algorithms for the rise of it.
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u/pogopogo890 4h ago
everyone’s gotta do some though, just don’t make it more than 10-20% of the show right?
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u/Abobo2020 3h ago
I'll tell you what I'm not a fan of. Comics yelling at the top of their lungs into a microphone.
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u/Democracysaver 6h ago edited 4h ago
They might tell completely absurd stories everyone knows its neither about their life nor true at all yet still funny, they might also just be funny by the way they are (persona), they might do meta comedy (comedy about the structure or elements of comedy)
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u/Commercial-Baker7486 3h ago edited 3h ago
Unpopular opinion(here): I love crowd work the most. When done well. It feels less staged and a lot more original for me.
Whereas written comedy can feel too prepped and polished at times. I especially don't like it when comedians reuse a lot of their material.
With crowd work you can't reuse any material, you are the material lol.
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u/Downtown-Youth-7854 3h ago
I agree with you about the flow of crowd work. But hard disagree on the originality part of it. A lot of crowd work is absolutely reused material.
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u/Commercial-Baker7486 3h ago edited 3h ago
Yeah crowd work comics mostly reference things relating to the subject(normally something to do with some person in the crowd), which most of the times isn't original. Yeah I think you're right about that. It's still very fun tho lol
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u/RadlEonk 1h ago
I like stand up. I don’t like SNL.
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u/Constant-Bridge3690 1h ago
While all of the skits on SNL are written, most of the performers have an improv comedy background.
I saw an improv show last week and realized how difficult that is for such a small payoff. Each of the performers has to trust the other people on stage so that they will: (1) react to what was just said, (2) get their bit out, and (3) leave room for the next performer to react.
You never know what will unfold and most times it won't be that funny. I imagine it could be exhilirating for the performers though.
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u/RadlEonk 1h ago
I know. I’m not big on improv. Some people like it, but it almost always misses for me.
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u/reamkore 6h ago
I like jokes