When I discussed the topic of Clean Comedy in that book of mine it was in the context of the choices a fledgling comic will make in deciding what kind of comedian they plan to be. I discussed the divide between “clean” and “dirty” comedy, with the implication being that working clean is a pragmatic choice that allows appeal to the greatest possible market, but having a NSFW act might be a truer unfiltered approach to the rock’n’roll of contemporary comedy.
I might not have done justice entirely to the craft of clean comedy, but my aim with that article was to highlight the different approaches to stand-up. Today I’d like to explore it a little more.
What I haven’t really acknowledged is that Clean Comedy is more of an aesthetic taste than a pragmatic one. By all accounts Brian Regan’s decision to work “clean” isn’t a pragmatic choice. Rather, it’s consistent with his entire personality. People who’ve known him describe him a good, decent person and the only observation made about him offstage is that he’s possibly a little more serious than his onstage persona. He isn’t harbouring a secret desire to do filthy or edgy material. If anything he probably has no desire to be that kind of comic.
With every year I spend as a comic I’m becoming more sympathetic to this. I’ve stated before that I’ve chosen not to work clean. I use vulgar language offstage and it would feel dishonest to present myself as someone who doesn’t. I believe strongly in the positive power of talking about personal topics that might be too much for polite crowds. If the theme of the night is shocking or taboo-less, I’m equipped to do pretty well at that show. But all of that said, I’m becoming a little disenchanted with aspects of the NSFW comedy scene.
In a very real sense the cultural territory of edgy and transgressive comedy has been claimed by the anti-woke crowd, and the outcome is that it’s now associated with right-leaning comics who take active interest in conservative politics. If it seems ironic and surprising to you that the underground and subversive aspects of the comedy scene are now firmly tied to conservative politics, well… I’m shocked too.
This is not the future that Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce fought for, but it’s the one we now have. “Edgy” and “Offensive” are strong branding from the likes of Andrew Schultz, Tim Dillon, Tony Hinchcliffe and the rest of the Rogansphere. Their take on NSFW comedy is less subversive than obnoxious.
I have no affection for most of the comics in this scene. I think in some cases (like Hinchliffe and Schultz), I think their comedy is awful and only surpassed in shittiness by the disingenuous bullshit they air on their podcasts between reading ads for sports betting. I’m not a fan.
You might want to fight me about it, and you’re entirely entitled to have dumb opinions or awful taste, but you’re not going to convince me that they’re not objectively terrible comedians. Like most comics, I’ll forgive a lot of crassness and stupidity if it’s funny. Maybe the most heinous of all the crimes perpetrated by edgelord grifters and podcast bros is that they’re just not fucking funny.
Yeah, the latest incarnation of NSFW comedy is a lot harder to defend than it used to be.
It might be off topic, but a recent post-show discussion with some peers and a comedian visiting Townsville touched on some points I thought were salient. We were talking about the edgelords, the intentionally shocking and offensive comedians who frequently appear at open mics, and just how bad they generally are.
I’ve mentioned before that “edgy” newbies often make two fatal errors:
- They mistake offensive for funny, and believe shocking words or imagery do the same job as punchlines crafted from misdirection or other comedy techniques.
- They think the edgy stuff is an easy laugh, a cheat code to bypass experience and skill, which is the opposite of the truth. The truth is that it takes skill and experience to use these ingredients effectively, and that when their heroes do it they’re showing off their mastery – mastery that isn’t shared by the obnoxious red-pilled twit stinking up the open mic.
This conversation showed me another reason I’d missed, though. That other reason is that edgelords don’t learn. If I get a less than enthusiastic response to one of my performances, I’ll engage in some self-examination. I’ll ask myself whether I’d fallen short of my usual standard, pitched the wrong material, performed it poorly or made any of a limitless list of potential mistakes.
Sure; I might end up deciding that the failure was due to the audience or the venue or something else. I don’t automatically attribute blame to myself, but at least I ask. At least I attempt to honestly self-assess and learn what I can from the experience. I can confidently say without checking that every committed and reasonable comedian I know engages in this self-assessment.
Edgelords seemingly don’t do this, ever. If one of them brings the most crass version of themselves to an open mic and alienates everyone in the venue (including the other comics as well as management and the audience), one of two things will happen:
- They are oblivious to what they did. They might have stunk up the room, walked half the crowd, pissed everyone off and failed to get even a single chuckle… but they don’t notice. In their minds they did great! They might even communicate this estimation to other comics, failing to notice our frosty reaction to them. They can’t or won’t read a room, and have the rosiest of rose-tinted glasses.
- They notice, but there’s no need for any examination. They are right and everyone else is wrong. Everyone else is easily offended, a weak woke snowflake, or doesn’t understand how comedy works. It’s obvious to them that the audience wasn’t good enough for them and all of their detractors just aren’t as smart as they are. They will argue this perspective so forcefully that you can be 100% confident they will absolutely not be doing any kind of introspective reflection and that they will learn nothing from this failure or any of their others.
By the way, if members of the audience are walking out and the reception is frosty, I can guarantee it’s probably an edgelord on stage. They’re not the only kind of bad comic, but they’re the type that audiences feel the least obligation to endure. A stumbling first timer who’s failing badly but seems like a decent person will get a more generous audience response. People will want them to succeed even if they’re not very good. Mostly, it takes an obnoxious anti-woke prick to engender actual hostility.
Right now, local scenes tend to mirror the anti-woke red-pilled stuff that’s going on in Austin. It’s understandable, being the biggest thing going on right now. The rest of the comedy scene can compete with it in terms of fame or cash revenue, so I’m not surprised that rooms all over the world are borrowing aspects of it. This is partially because room-runners like the cash and clout, but it’s also because a lot of them actually like comics like Rogan and Schultz.
Also, it feels like a new energy. My scene two years ago was constricted by too much of the same thing, with new rooms and nights opening up frequently and all being identical to each other. Every few days it felt like there was a new open mic with the same format and in a similar kind of venue to all the others, with the expectation that the same comics would be supporting and participating in all of them. It was inevitable that this would eat itself, much like what happened when Starbucks opened so many franchises that outlets in the same street were competing with themselves and going out of business just as rapidly.
The great change since has been a new wave of comedy nights, but they’ve all tended to adopt the same strategy of branding themselves as anti-woke, no rules, no-censorship anything-goes fests. Unsurprisingly this tone is often partnered with bucket pulls, an emphasis on crowdwork and elements of gamification.
I haven’t participated in these too much. When invited to, I usually respond that I’m mostly interested in performing written material and don’t feel like participating in a gimmicky low-budget gameshow with no prizes. But if I’m really honest, my bigger objection is that the tone feels too much like parts of the stand up scene I don’t like. Edgelord is the standard in these rooms. The audiences still seem small and not particularly into it when I pop my head into these nights.
Some of it’s adversarial and just nasty. I’ve seen comics and MCs spend whole nights telling people in the audience to kill themselves (which I think we can all agree, isn’t especially funny to adults with triple-digit IQs), uninvited and nasty roasting of each other, and routinely turning on the audience – attacking them like hecklers even though they were mostly indifferent to what wat happening on the stage. I don’t enjoy these nights, and don’t see how participating in them would enhance my own career, so I don’t bother with them.
The Austin scene seems to be imploding or at least getting less relevant. More and more of it’s key players are looking like grifters and clowns. The political movement it threw itself behind is now inspiring less devotion, even from total idiots. The whole Riyadh Comedy Festival episode revealed that it’s been money and not values driving the thing.
But mostly I think it’s getting tired. Once the novelty wore off the actual mechanisms of crass bullying, podcast grifting and doing anything for cash is more visible and less fascinating.
It’s 2025. We’re not stunned when you drop the c-bomb anymore. Your “brutal” takes don’t stand out in an actual brutal world. We’re adults and not particilarly titillated when you reference your dick. And your autistic-transvestite-cat-abortion joke was probably done better by Doug Stanhope 23 years ago.
When comics open every sentence with the c-bomb they tell me that they’re relating, that they’re talking like a human and a not a performer. I’m not convinced because even gutter-mouths like me don’t actually speak like that in typical sane conversations. Oddly, though, it’s somehow normalized to a point where it doesn’t have any other desired effect on stage either. Mostly it just looks really bogan.
I predict that the bullshit associated with the Austin scene is going to be a lot less relevant 12 months from now, due to those factors I mentioned, and emulating it is probably going to result in a lot of edgelord-friendly open mics finding themselves outside of what people are actually interested in.
I see it happening already. Those open mics I mentioned mostly only seem to have appeal for the comics participating in them. I don’t see a lot of devotion from the audiences, though I admit it could be a skewed perspective from someone who’s not spending lots of time around that scene.
But honestly, and it’s about time I came around to my actual point, I think if I were looking to open a comedy room and really differentiate it from all of the others I’d probably focus on clean comedy. Not just because people could bring their families (when a comic starts telling some cringey sex story, it can be just as awkward around parents and siblings as one’s offspring), but also so people could relax and be entertained without feeling like they might be attacked.
There are some amazing clean comedians. There are a few I ‘ve been a fan of without even consciously realizing that they’re working clean, which I view as an achievement and the best way to do it. I’m going to share three specials below and encourage you to watch them. There are many more that I enjoy, but these three specials are ones I keep coming back to – and all of them do their magic without ever drawing attention to how clean they are.
Firstly, an oldie but a goodie. I Walked on the Moon by Brian Regan is a comedy masterclass. This is not his latest special. It’s from 2004 but there’s finally a high quality version on YouTube.
Regan is goofy and performative, but he’s primarily a writer. Comedians who know him report that he’s developed a coded shorthand where he scripts every pause, facial expression, voice, tone and gesture just like he scripts the words.
But mostly he’s extremely relatable, which he probably wouldn’t be if he were trying to gross us out or shock us.
In the two years since it came out, The Salesman by Greg Warren has become one of my favourite specials. I’ve watched it so many times I’m embarrassed I never noticed that it’s ‘clean’ before someone pointed it out to me.
The Salesman has a lot of the stuff I love in a good special. It’s got a fantastic sense of structure. Greg Warren has a unique voice and way of approaching subjects. He also manages a kind of ranty indignance which is hard to balance, and he pulls it off well. Highly recommended, both as a learning experience and just for enjoyment.
It’s a recent release, but Low Income White by Mike Vecchione is another special I enjoyed a lot and would never have guessed is clean. If you’d told me, I might have disagreed with you, because Vecchione doesn’t feel like he pulls any punches with his comedy.
Somehow he manages to be incisive without resorting to the usual tools of the NSFW crowd. He proves you can keep it clean without neutering your comedy, tackling the topics and social issues that a lot of family-friendly comics avoid and pulling it off masterfully.
The Self Made Stand Up is available as a paperback or e-book from Amazon, Barnes and Noble and lots of other places.
More than a how-to book, The Self-Made Stand-Up is an essential resource for developing yourself as an effective comedian. If you’re a comedian, or looking to become one, The Self-Made Stand-Up is the emotional support animal you need.
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Sean Cooper, Comedian 