I really like Taylor Tomlinson. This is important because you’ve probably heard more about the comedians I’m not so impressed by. Of course there are comics I love, enjoy, get excited about, and get inspired by. I probably don’t talk about them enough, but if I’ve told you about my favourites you’ll know that Taylor Tomlinson is very high on my list.

I loved her first special, Quarter Life Crisis, which I thought was especially impressive for someone of her age (I didn’t know she’d been practicing stand-up since her early teens) and she’s only gotten better since then.

I also enjoyed her first book – Actually, Nevermind – which came out recently. It’s part memoir, part collection of essays. She, like me, struggles with the drive to over-share so it gives a lot of insight into her thought processes and it reinforced the growing suspicion I have that the comedy I enjoy the most coincidentally seems to come from people who share my own ethics and attitudes about creativity, stand up and the whole process.

This is why I just watched her interview on David Perell’s “How I Write” YouTube channel. He interviews lots of comics, arguing that no matter what genre you write in you can always learn from comedians. Comedians are a lot more focused on writing than people suspect and master aspects of it like economy, timing and onomatopoeia, than most writers are even aware of.

Comedy and writing are two of my passions, so I keenly follow these. They’re not all brilliant interviews, and tend to be as good as the actual comic is (the Tom Segura one goes for an hour and a quarter and the only takeaway of value, I thought, is that strong or extreme positions are funnier than mild or centrist ones are). I knew the Taylor Tomlinson one would be good.

There are probably 20 insights from this discussion I think would be worthy of unpacking, and I highly recommend you give it a watch if you have 54 minutes to spare. I’ll pop it at the bottom of this page.

One of the things she mentioned was self-deprecation. I’ve written before that I’m not a huge fan of it as a comedic topic. I have to acknowledge it’s value and I can see why it works, especially as an opening move. It is pure Superiority Theory, and signals likeability and humility that will allow a lot of the other material to work. There are other reasons too, but self-deprecation works..

That said, I’m deeply uncomfortable with self-deprecating jokes. I’ve used them. Like I said they have a function. But it’s off-brand for me, and not something I’ve ever had a strong desire to do. Was my dream to go on stage and beat myself up for the amusement of drunken stranger? Fuck no.

If that’s your thing I won’t kink-shame you, but it’s not mine and even watching other people do it makes me cringe. Also, becoming convinced that most people enjoy watching other people flagellate themselves and wallow in failure is depressing to me. I’d like to believe, as incorrect as it might be, that most people don’t have that dark sadistic drive in them. And even if they do, I don’t want to be one of the people who panders to it.

Taylor always did a lot of self-deprecating material and that helps amplify the likeability of attractive women who might otherwise be interpreted as narcissistic. But she also talks a lot about mental health. I’d personally nominate her as one of the true champions for mental health and also for the LGBTQ+ community working in comedy right now.

And it was the part of her that’s concerned with mental health that made her reconsider doing so much self-deprecating material. As she says in the interview, taking a jab at herself is also taking a jab at the people who like and are invested in her. She says that picking on herself only makes her fans, of whom many are young women, feel worse about themselves. She also says it’s kind of insulting to people to suggest that what they’ve chosen to spend their time identifying with and relating to is bad in any way.

Bravo. Because I’ve got all kinds of reasons why I’m not comfortable with the whole self-deprecating thing (did I mention that it’s kind of hacky and overdone by now?) but considerations for her audience and their mental health has never been one of them.

Anyway. I’ll embed the video below because, as I mentioned, there are lots of gems in this conversation.