As I’ve mentioned several times, there’s nothing like live comedy. Nothing. A lot of people have only accessed comedy through watching Netflix specials or clips on YouTube. While I also enjoy comedy through those channels, it’s absolutely not the same. That comedy format is recorded, curated and edited.

There’s no spontaneity and there’s no interaction. The communication is one-way and happens entirely without you. You can consume it completely alone – like a sad TV dinner that punctuates a miserable day in a pitiful and meaningless existence, but perhaps I’m oversharing.

The Netflix special might be expensively produced and set in impressive locations, but it’s not going to give you the special experience of live comedy. You can only get the magical “we’re sharing a moment” feeling from being there. There’s a thrilling feeling of joy and one-ness with the universe that comes from being in a roomful of people laughing. Watching a roomful of people laughing is not the same.

Live comedy in a club is unpredictable and exciting in a way that watching a scripted and edited recording from a theater can never be. Live comedy is competition and collaboration between peers. It’s an energy exchange between a stage and audience. It’s a feeling of being connected to a community.

There’s another platform for comedic performances that doesn’t typically get as much love, and that’s online comedy. I’m talking about performances done via Zoom meetings. It’s a thing. Let’s talk about it.

During the “don’t go outside” era of Covid 2020, Zoom became the most used and talked about thing on the online (except of course porn, which will always be the main driver of the internet). Thanks to Zoom broadcasting business continued, musicians gave performances to audiences all over the world, Dungeons and Dragons (and other TTRPGs – I have to say this because I’m a roleplaying geek) got a whole new lease on life, and people recommenced connecting with each other again.

It wasn’t perfect, and we didn’t necessarily want our favourite band’s concerts to feel like bloody Zoom meetings but during a global pandemic. compromises have to be made. I thought it was fantastic. We might have been housebound but I was enjoying online book clubs and yoga classes, slam poetry recitals and acoustic gigs live from artist’s kitchens,

The year of Covid wasn’t just tuning in to Netflix to watch tiger molesters on meth. I was exposed to more diverse entertainment than ever, and most of it was a direct interface with the artist themselves. Live performers were hit hard, like really hard, but they still had a platform to express themselves, and they still had a shot at finding a revenue stream.

And then there’s comedy.

None of us were making anything resembling a living from doing stand-up and we all suffered during Covid. No revenue, no audience and no chance to practice or develop. Here’s a secret about stand-up: You can practice at home…. but not really.

Comics can stand in front of a mirror talking into a hairbrush (I don’t get why the mirror is part of it. The hairbrush is redundant but I understand it more than the mirror), but it doesn’t count as practice in the same way that practicing guitar at home does. We only really get to practice in front of other people, which is maybe the hardest aspect of stand-up. This is why comics like Jerry Seinfeld and Dave Chapelle still perform at Open Mics – the process of “working out” our material and performances on a live stage is critical.

Here’s another secret about stand-up: Most of us have issues. The kind of person drawn to comedy will think a bit differently to the rest of the populace. And often we’re “broken” in certain ways, mostly psychological. I’m not saying we all have mental health issues but I can say that do, and that pretty much every comic I know has a variant which can range from mild to wild in severity.

We mostly do comedy as a therapeutic tool. We’re mostly working through our issues. As you might imagine, taking away that important tool and putting us in solitary confinement instead wasn’t great for most of us.

Covid was a really tough time. And most of us really, really missed the joyful and healing sensation of being in a room filled with people laughing and sharing that magical sense of being there.

It might not surprise you to know that comedians tried to take their acts online in the same way that musicians did. But as I’ve mentioned there’s some subtle differences between musicians and comedians. Musical performance translates to the screen pretty well. Comedy doesn’t. For comedy, you need the audience. Most music albums are not live. Most comedy albums are. If you hear the comedy albums that aren’t, you’ll rapidly discover why.

In 2020 I saw some enterprising comedy collectives start up Zoom shows. I watched a few of these and came to the same conclusion most of my friends – both comedian and civilian – which is that, despite heroic efforts, live comedy on Zoom is mostly awkward and unfunny. It just doesn’t translate as well.

Around this time the STAN network made a stand-up series of comedians doing performances from their homes, a kind of televised online comedy. Most of the big household names in Australian comedy performed awkward and unfunny sets and skits from their homes. It was mostly awful and cringey.

For five episodes I speculated that if Covid was going to be forever, it’s first real victim will be stand up because comedy wouldn’t survive the transition away from the stage. But then, a glimmer of hope: Wil Anderson did the last set at the end of the final episode and he fucking killed it. I’m sure he would have been even better on a stage instead of his garage, but it was great and my hope was renewed.

So I gave it a try. I got an account at opencomedy.com which is designed to be like a social media platform for comedians, where you can be find talent or comedy opportunities. Like most global platforms, the emphasis is on heavily populated comedy meccas like the UK and parts of the USA. I’m not the only Aussie on opencomedy but there’s not many of us.

And I started getting opportunities emailed to me every day. From Alaska, Vancouver, London, Manchester, Scotland, Toronto, Los Angeles and Boston. Being the Covid age, most of them were online. I could do stand up for audiences in New York through my laptop. What a glorious time to be alive!

All I had to do was set my alarm for stupid-o-clock and brace myself for an incredibly awkward experience. Because it is awkward. The tricky aspect of Zoom/online comedy is how the interaction works.

The audience members are in well lit locations, all looking at each other’s faces. This doesn’t happen in clubs, and it inhibits laughter. People mute their microphones in Zoom meetings. We’re not getting the energy from being in a shared space and it all feels awkward. Jokes don’t feel like they’re landing.

Doing well still feels and looks like bombing. It’s not for the faint of heart!

That’s one of the many reasons comics don’t like doing online stand up. Just last night I heard a comedian joking about how much he hates it, saying that usually when he bombs he never goes back there. But using Zoom meant bombing in a place he pays to live at and looking at the scene of his failure every day while he makes breakfast.

When I told fellow comics that I was doing all of these online gigs, I expected some of them to jump onboard, but all of them told me they absolutely wouldn’t. They explained that these gigs didn’t pay, they did nothing for their local profile, did nothing to advance their careers, were at crazy times and weren’t even a pleasant experience.

Fair enough, but I was happy to do them. I needed the practice, the “stage time” and the sense that I’m still connected to being a comedian. I was actually surprised that some of my friends, ones who claim to be committed to take every single opportunity to perform so they can develop, would be turning up their noses at these gigs.

I get that they don’t have a lot to offer a pragmatic and ambitious comic, but some of us need to do comedy for our mental health. I was worried that the down time would see me and the scene drifting apart and Comedian becoming something I used to do, did for a while. I wanted to keep writing, and to test what I’d written.

I saw it as an opportunity to exercise my comedy muscles in a different way, a harder way. I see it like doing exercise while wearing weights – it works you harder, it’s maybe less fun but it develops different muscles and it does it effectively.

I definitely saw this when lock-downs were over and business-as-usual resumed. Many of my friends complained that their muscles had atrophied., while I’d developed new ones. I’d had months of feeling like I was bombing the whole time, but this one one of those periods where I’d actually leveled up!

Something else happened too. I’ve been networking. I fucking hate that word, and there was nothing pragmatic about my conversations with comics, club owners and fans in America, Canada and England. I was making friends and showing them what I could do. I got to talk shop with comics in other countries, which I love to do, and to learn from them.

And strangely, I my online fan base increased. Right now I have waaaay more followers on my Facebook page than I could possibly get from Townsville audiences. This is partially due to the massive exposure I got from the Bic website after they featured my post where I talk about how much I love my Rocketbook as a comedy writing tool (was that really 18 months ago?), but also from my time doing comedy to audiences all over the globe.

Sure, there’s not a lot of immediate pragmatic value in thousands of followers at the other side of the planet. I’m not selling more tickets or getting better slots at my Townsville gigs, but lots of these people are increasing the count by sharing my memes, and it’s really nice knowing when I write my tedious long reflections on this site that I actually have an audience and not just screaming into the void.

So yeah, I believe in online comedy. Wil Anderson proved to me that even though it’s exponentially harder, it’s still possible to be good at it (he writes a bit about what an unrewarding and awkward practice it was in his latest book). I think online comedy is worth working to become good at, and that’s one of the things I’m aiming for.

Which brings us to Remotely Funny. First, I’ll quote their explanation of what they do:

Rural Australia has a rich vein of comedy genius, but most of the world never gets to appreciate it. Without local comedy clubs or open mics to hone your craft, it’s hard to make a name for yourself in comedy – or even get started.

That’s where Remotely Funny comes in. We’re providing LOLs for the LOL-less and opportunities for regional and remote Aussie comics through livestreamed gigs direct from our loungerooms to yours.

Remotely Funny is funded by the Australian Government’s Regional Arts Fund, represented in Queensland by Flying Arts Alliance Inc.

Is that a noble cause, or what?

Here in Townsville we’ve built a healthy scene – I’m performing 6 times this month, and February is a short month, But nobody in Queensland gets to enjoy the kind of audiences that New York comics do, where they get up on stage 5-6 times a week.

Even more importantly, not everyone gets to watch live comedy on a regular basis. I grew up in a town called Murwillumbah, and we weren’t exactly watching George Carlin and Chris Rock at the local RSL. Rural and remote areas don’t get the entertainment choices their urban friends take for granted.

When it comes, they do appreciate it. Last year I traveled 10 hours to do 5 minutes in Atherton, which isn’t that remote but the local population loved us for performing there. I’ve never had such an appreciative audience, and even when I was a teenage rock star I didn’t get the rock star treatment we were rewarded with that night.

Remotely Funny put on monthly open mics via Zoom, giving regional performance a chance to do their thing and providing regional audiences the opportunity to see live comedy. Like I said, we live in wonderful times with things like this that couldn’t have existed fifty years ago.

I did a set this week on Remotely Funny’s most recent open mic and I had a great time. I spoke with funny creative and nice people and got to work out a new bit. I’ll be doing these again for as long as they’re happy to host me.

Did I also mention it’s completely free? Check out Remotely Funny. This sentence is the link to their Facebook Group where they post their events. I like what they’re doing, and it’s way for you to see comedians, live. Especially me!