I was having a conversation the other night with a friend who’s far more tech-savvy than I am and, recognizing that I am an under-appreciated and relatively undiscovered world-class talent, advised me that I need to get more serious and effective about my social media presence.

Do I, though?

He rightly pointed out several areas where I could use video and leverage social media presence to get traction online. And he’s correct on this point.

Lots of comics focus a great deal of their time and attention to Twitter, which they say is optimized for sharing/promotion and word economy for one-liner jokes. Comics like Taylor Tomlinson credits a lot of her success to a savvy TikTok presence during the 2 years where Covid killed live comedy. Liz Miele and others have done well through putting their content on YouTube.

And it seems like most comedians have a damn podcast these days. Probably the notable examples are Joe Rogan, who’s made more from his podcast on Spotify than any comic would dream to aspire of making from comedy… but there’s also podcasts from also Tom Segura and Christina Pazsitzky, Tom Papa, Jim Norton, Marc Maron, Adam Carolla, Pete Holmes, Kevin Hart,… oh, most of them.

Podcasts as well as active presence and a constant flow of content through TokTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, SnapChat etc and an active email list are apparently required to support an aspiring comedian these days. If you want to be a successful comic, you’ll be pushing hard on at least two of these platforms. And even if you’re not doing a weekly podcast, you’ll be appearing on someone else’s podcast at least once a week.

Yeah, fuck that.

I’m old. And before you assume that my age means I “don’t get” the technology, I fucking do. I recently endured an evening of the Gen X vs Millennials comedy debate, where the younger team spent the whole night telling me and my team that we don’t know how to use computers or social media. Yeah, we can. We built the fucking things.

Everyone on our team is Tech Savvy:. Indy C, Simon Cheers and I all use social media platforms, and we’re all skilled with video, audio, and image editing among other things. And frankly, kids, letting yourself be passively radicalized by TikTok is not “using technology.”

No, what I mean by “I’m Old” is that I’m not aggressively trying to “make it” in Comedy. Any seasoned comic will tell you it takes well over a decade to get the expreience, skills and exposure to “make it.” and I didn’t start until my early fifties.

I’ve got no interest in “making it” in my late sixties. If I have to invest all my time, effort and credibility into whoring myself out on Insta and Twitter and the best-case scenariao is being some kind of lame Rodney Dangerfield reference, I’m not fucking interested. I’m not here as some kind of ambitious aspirational asshole trying to climb the ladder; I’m doing Comedy for the love of the game.

Frankly, if the entry fee to be a successful comic is that you’ve got to become a huge social media Influencer first, I’ll fucking pass. I have a low opinion of “influencers” (most of whom are just glorified actors in advertisements, with the only difference being that they’re not honest enough to tell you they’re advertising a product) and I don’t know why anyone puts these uncreative narcisssistic no-talent dummies on a pedestal.

I became a comedian to attack these vapid vain human cesspools. It’s pretty ironic that everyone seems to think I’d have to become one to do it.

And is there any value, at my level? I said I’m not trying to build an army of sycophantic supporters to eventually become a Hollywood star or whatever the fuck the career trajectory is supposed to be. The fact is that I’m already punching above my weight, social media-wise, and it’s of little or no use to me.

I live in Townsville, in tropical North Queensland – Australia. We have a vibrant comedy scene here but Townsville isn’t exactly the centre of the universe for it. If I were seriously ambitious I’d consider moving to a bigger city, and ambitious comics there consider moving to other countries. We don’t have thousands of fans attending comedy shows every month.

I just checked and at the moment I’ve got about 2,400 followers on my Facebook account. I know that a lot of people think unless you have 100,000+ fans you don’t even exist on the internet, but it’s pretty damn high for my part of the world…. considering I’m not working at it.

I think promoting Rocketbook as a brilliant comedy writing tool had a lot to do with it. They’ve shared my Blog Post about it on their site, which gets crazy traffic (asnd asked me to make a video which I will probably do when I can). For the record, I still fucking love my Rocketbook. I use mine all the time and think it’s possibly the best purchase I’ve ever made.

Combined with a few shareable memes, I’ve ended up with a following that’s massively disproportioate to what you’d expect from a Townsville comedian. I don’t think anyone else around here has that many, and most of them are more experienced and popular comedians than I am.

And that’s the thing; my limited social media “success” doesn’t reflect my fame or standing as a comedian here. Probably because most of those followers are from the other end of the earth, tt doesn’t change the size of my audiences and doesn’t help me in any other way I can think of.

Last night I performed at an open mic to an average sized audience. I wasn’t the biggest draw there by any measure,. Even with “all those followers” I was probably the least renowned of the local comics and hardly anyone in the audience knew who I was. I’d say local reputation definitely meant more than social media following.

Perhaps if I hit some kind of critical mass (at 100k, I’m guessing) the momentum would get Netflix and Sirius XM knocking on my door with offers I can’t refuse. Until then, it’s highly unlikely that spending a lot of time on Twitter or TikTok (which I personally think is an evil and dangerous platform) is going to do much for me.

I’d like to do social media a little better in the future. I’d like better pictures and video, but I’m not obsessed with dominating social media. I’ll continute to avoid most of the platforms and don’t plan to invest any more time into any of it than I currently do. I’m only in it for the love of the game, and will keep doing my best to avoid being mistaken for an “influencer”