I feel that many comedians complaining about “cancel culture” are actually grieving that their old material isn’t standing up as well in 2026 as they’d like it to.
Often we hear the phrase “too soon” uttered after a joke is told, the implication being that time and distance will be required before the subject matter being referenced can be the acceptable topic of a joke.
Wouldn’t it be funny if all of the whining from stand up comics about Cancel Culture was just a reference to the unrealized phenomenon that jokes don’t last forever? The inconcenvient truth is that jokes are perishable, just as food is.
Like food items, they’re not all equally perishable. Some can sustain us for many harsh winters and are worthy of including in the pantry of our doomsday bunker. Canned goods are like that. Fresh goods are not.
Are your jokes canned or fresh?
If you trade a lot in Topical Humour, if your jokes are often directed at current events and trends, then you’ll concur that nothing makes a positive impression than when you cook with fresh local seasonal ingredients.
Of course, delivering fresh means work. It means daily trips to the marketplace. And it means a less reliable supply, because the marketplace delivers quality ingredients better on some days than others. Some days the produce is so inspiring and fruitful you know you’ll win approval and glory without even having to do much cooking. On others you’re going to have to improvise, substitute, and repurpose. You’ll have to get creative just to make it through your next service.
Canned goods are generally more reliable and less subject to the caprice of seasons and changes in the marketplace. You can use them without regard to the time or place you’re cooking up your magic. Sometimes they actually have more flavour (tomatoes spring to mind). They’re an essential staple.
I’ve stated before that I’m not super into a completely topical act. Topical ingredients get stale fast. I got some great laughs with the material I wrote when those people got caught cheating at the Coldplay concert. You don’t remember that event? Then it’s a good thing I’m not still relying on those jokes.They lasted about a week.
One of the fascinating things about being old is that I’ve seen a lot of changes. The pendulum swings back and forth, and political parties change. Most of the time, anyway. The Trump government of America is doing this weird thing where they’re trying to run two opposite strategies simultaneously.
They’re running the usual conservative playbook of “Fuck sustainability! Let’s pillage this thing like there’s no tomorrow and get all the value out of it before we have to return the keys” but also acting like they intend to stay in power forever, prepared to incite riots and declare a State of Emergency if that’s what it takes to prevent an election and ensure a 1000-year Reich. So who knows? Maybe this is just our reality forever now.
But I digress. My point is that a commitment to serve fresh ingredients means you’re constantly going to market and hoping conditions are good. For political or topical comics this means going through newspapers every day to find a hot take on whatever just happened and hoping your audience consumes the same information you do. It’s a bit of a grind.
The main reason I don’t lean too heavily on the topical stuff is because I’m chasing the dragon of trying to create a classic bit. Epic comedy bits are still relevant and revered decades later, and most comics I know dream of having written at least one. Topical jokes and crowdwork’s shelf life is extremely short and mostly can’t even be used the next day.
But this year I’ve also seen a few comics reaching for the canned goods, and it hasn’t been pretty. I’ve seen colleagues of mine returning after extended absences with the same act that the audience was already tired of three years ago.
One of them complained to me that the audience was resistant and ungenerous with their applause and laughter after feeding them the same leftovers they’ve been serving up every week for literally years.Their evaluation was quickly nullified when other comedians brought new jokes and killed.
Another returned after a few years and presented literally the same set I’ve seen a hundred times before. It did a little better, partically because there’s some reliable pandering in the material and also because the local audience isn’t exactly the same one that was already tiring of it when they left. They might find, though, that if this audience sticks around enough to learn all of the jokes and banter, that the experience might turn stale rapidly.
Mostly, though, I wondered what happened in the last few years. Nothing happened? No new ideas? Not one?
Let me quickly set the record straight, though.This comic is professional and beloved. Their act is tried and tested, and reliably gets a great reaction. When our audiences judge us, and they do, it’s rarely on creativity and development. Not if they’re seeing us for the first time, anyway. If anything, they want their meal prepared with the confidence and skill of a chef who’s been cooking this particular recipe for a decade. There is something to be said for reliable, tested material that’s prepared with practice and experience.
I just don’t think I could stand it. Preparing the same meal every night has got to be even more tedious than consuming the same meal every night. I know that when I discuss constantly writing, it sounds like a grind and a treadmill experience, but I think that applies more to repeating yourself constantly.
The problem is that frozen or canned foods still don’t last forever. The use-by date might be years off, but it’s not infinite. I know some acts whose material is battle-tested to an incredible degree, but the reruns diminish with repetition because the comedian cannot possibly recite it for the thousandth time with the same enthusiasm, excitement and fear that they brought to their first.
That slight tiredness might be small, but it’s enough. Sometimes it’s an extremely fine line, one that’s not visible to the naked eye, that makes the difference between whether a punchline lands effectively or not. Experienced comics all know that the factors which determine whether a joke hits with it’s full force are tiny.
Jerry Seinfeld once said in an interview that the reason the same joke gets different results on different nights is down to the presentation; that we might not know what we did different, but we definitely did something different.
That’s part of it, and that’s my point about repetition. But I think Jerry’s missed something essential here about the material itself. It gets old, just like everything else in the universe. And that’s ok. Nothing is meant to last forever, and it would be outrageous if the only thing in the world that didn’t age was fucking jokes.
I think Jerry’s claim is a bit tone deaf, and ignores how the rest of the world evolves and changes. I’m not sure 2026 audiences would provide an identical response to his 1982 that they did then. His claim about how it’s all in the delivery assumes all people are identical and that nothing else changes over time.
Hey Jerry, our idea of what’s funny is different. Our idea of what’s acceptable to assume is different. Some of us have heard it before. Many times, in some instances. Oh, and we’re not all identical. How dare you assume that you and your performance are the only variable. Maybe this is why you have to invent a censorship conspiracy from a woke mind-virus to explain for why your old observations don’t kill anymore.
Obviously, Jerry Seinfeld has enough acclaim and money to ignore me and my reasoning. Billionaires never listen to criticism because it always comes from people who are less successful. I’m not trying to claim I’m a better comic, just stating a self-evident truth.
Even the canned goods won’t last forever. The use-by dates are generous but they’re still a thing. We still need to get down to the market and procure fresh ingredients from time to time.
Any why wouldn’t we want to? Can you even call yourself a comedian if you claim you had no ideas for three years and nothing that happens in that time makes you want to talk about it? Really?
And maybe we shouldn’t assume that because it worked before, it always will. I’ve got stuff from 2023 that still kills, but not all of it. Much of what I wrote three years ago makes me cringe. And it should. What better evidence for how far I’ve come?
The great bits, the classic chunks of material that are eternally beloved and still well regarded many years later all come from comedians who showed a lot of growth, development and change in their careers. That’s the paradox. Carlin’s bit about The American Dream is timeless and classic, seemingly immune to expiry over time, but it could only have come from a comic who ceaselessly searched for fresh ideas.
We shouldn’t worry about shelf life. We need not be concerned that our material needs to be updated over time. We should all be actively trying to outgrow our own jokes.
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Sean Cooper, Comedian 