I still have my Netflix account, mostly because I have family members on it (the minute you get serious about kicking everyone else off my account, Netflix, I don’t need you anymore). I watch stuff on Netflix even though I’ve noticed that lately thay’ve been offering up some absolute shit.
I could write ad nausuem about how cringeworthy The Watcher is. How did all these actors never ever say “This character would never do or say that! It doesn’t make any sense at all!” I guarantee that every single viewer thought it every five minutes for the entire 7 hours’ worth of that ludicrous nonsensical anticlimactic horseshit. I sure did.
But I digress…
When I first climbed aboard Netflix it was a treasure trove, and especially for stand up comedy. I devoured special after special. There was so much, and a lot of it was good. In 2022 I don’t get excited about many Comedy Specials on Netflix.
There are exceptions, of course. Taylor Tomlinson’s special this year, Look At You, was even better than her Quarter Life Crisis in 2020. Ali Wong delivered another amazing show with Don Wong, possibly her best yet. It’s also possible I forgot something important. I sure hope not, but for me those are the two Netflix highlights of the year.
Bill Burr, Sam Morril and Patton Oswalt also delivered this year and those were… pretty good. I enjoyed all three. I know that a lot of you get excited when Ricky Gervais does something, and he did something. As with Chappele, I feel like the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes watching everyone offer praises for something I just can’t see. It’s not just the tiresome reactionary transphobic content either; I have a list of comedians that people rave about that I just don’t get (see also; David Cross). I rewatch Ricky G just to see what I missed last time, and I still don’t see it.
Netflix keep raising their prices, and that seems to be because they pay a few comics a lot of money for big specials (they paid Dave Chapelle $24.1 Million for The Closer. I think it generated more views and attention than actual laughs). A lot of the really funny comics and emerging talent seems to be going independent.
Which brings me to my YouTube account. In the interest of not being a financially depleted consumer I’ve cancelled most of my subsciptions. It’s kind of embarrassing how many there were. Spotify, Audible, Amazon Prime and – least used of all – my gym membership. I went the other way with YouTube, though, and started paying for a Premium membership there.
I’m keeping that subscription. It gives me a music service that’s better, more comprehensive and less problematic than Spotify. It gives me range of actual commercial movies that’s not bad (maybe smaller than Amazon Prime’s, but if you remove all the awful unwatchable shit from Prime it’s probably equal) as well as all the other content we know about.
Most nights I’d rather enjoy 90 minutes of reviews, tutorials, music videos and other stuff on Youtube than spend my evening scrolling through Netflix looking for something to watch before giving up, disgusted. If I didn’t have others on my Netflix account, I’d probably dump it immediately, but my YouTube account continutes to delight me.
Especially for Stand Up Comedy. YouTube seems to be the platform for independent and emerging comedians to release their specials on. Even established well-respected comics with lots of fans aren’t realistically waiting around for Netflix to offer them a lucrative contract, so they’re publishing their specials themselves on YouTube.
For an industry disrupter, Netflix sure seem to be making a lot of mistakes lately and one of the big ones is a lesson they could have learned from the music industry decades ago.
After the successes of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, record labels enthusiastically signed up lots of interesting acts, not wanting to miss the next big thing. They did well out of that for a couple of decades, finding lots of acts (Led Zeppelin, The Who, David Bowie, Bob Dylan, The Doors etc etc) who were big sellers and “tentpole” earners for the labels.
But then they got too clever for their own good, and it’s here you might start to see some parallels with Netflix’s own evolution. They tried to get scientific. Making fuckloads of money from their top earners wasn’t enough, and they decided to economically rationalise and block or axe anyone who wasn’t going to be a tentpole for the company.
Next, they decided that stars aren’t born, they’re made. Labels started trying to groom and create their own acts. Instead of finding them out in the world they designed their own bands based off previous winners, creating bands like The Monkees to replicate the success of The Beatles.
All respect to The Monkees, but were they as successful as The Beatles? As original? As significant in rock history? They made money, but their existence heralded an age where the industry stopped looking for talent and started plagiarising itself. We started seeing less inventions and more knock-offs.
By the eighties, when my own band was being discovered and negotiating contracts with record labels, I learned that labels had stopped looking for inspiration and passion. What they now wanted was compliance and blandness; They sought acts who would happily offer themselves up as formless clay for the label to mold into whatever image the label wanted to create and market.
By the turn of the century (and it’s weird to live in a time where I can use that phrase without irony) the platform for signing new artists was reality shows like X-Factor, The Voice and all the others. The format established three things the label needed to know; how popular they are, how willing they are to adapt to whatever style or look was assigned to them, and how submissively they recieve criticism and advice. At this point in history, the music industry have stopped looking for leaders and started seeking followers.
The result? It’s not great. The products of an industry that’s callously plagiarising itself is hard for an audience to get excited about. As the industry gets “smarter” about who and what it invests in, the market rejects their offerings and the industry withers away. The problem is that the industry refused to recognise their own participation in the collapse and it’s only their sheer size that still sees it existing at all.
Netflix has been developing it’s own talent, callously axing shows before they have a chance to develop and concentrating more funds into fewer sources each year. The result is they’re asking us to get more excited about less. They’re asking us to take the risk and invest ourselves in shows that might not exist in a few months.
Last year they bet everything on Chapelle and believe that the attention and views paid off. They haven’t connected their own strategy with the mass exodus they’re seeing. They blame that on account sharing. Hey Netflix, account sharing is the only reason I keep paying you guys. How about you get a second opinion?
Meanwhile legions of comedians have given up on the Netflix dream and started releasing independently. YouTube has so many excellent full length stand up comedy specials that I don’t bother to search for them on any other streaming service. If I ever get to the point where I’m ready to do my own special, I’m not waiting for Netflix to knock on my door. I’ll be using my YouTube account.
One of my favourite comedians is Kyle Kinane and this month every single one of his specials has appeared on YouTube. All full-length specials. All free. Check this out:
Is that cool or what? But that’s not all!
Liz Miele recently released her new special, The Ghost Of Academic Future on Youtube and it’s excellent.
Ari Shaffir just released Jew this week, and I think you’ll agree he’s at the top of his game.
Jeff Dye also released How I See It and that’s as good as anything I’ve seen on Netflix lately.
Monica Nevi also released Big Stepdad Energy, and Esther Povitsky released Hot For My Name, both of which I enjoyed a lot.
There’s new stuff appearing all the time, but it’s also worth mentioning that two of my favourite specials ever are also completely free on Youtube: Lachlan Patterson’s Dark White and the awesome Preferred Customer by Nate Craig. There’s a lot of great stand up specials on YouTube and these two are as good as anything I’ve seen anywhere.
It’s also worth mentioning at this point that if you’re a comic there’s tons of instructional videos too. I’m pretty famous for ignoring advice, so I haven’t smbraced much of what I’ve seen… but if you’re a comedy geek like me, YouTube is the gold mine I once thought Netflix was.
Sean Cooper, Comedian 