How much of a meritocracy would you say stand up comedy is?
I’d say it’s fifty-fifty. There are some people that get the recognition they deserve and there’s some people that have hoodwinked the audience with a character or gimmick and they get to the top without much to back it up. That being said, humor is so subjective that I don’t feel like it’s up to me to say, “That guy is without merit.” Being inside it I can say, “Maybe he doesn’t work as hard on the things that I work hard on,” but he’s got a whole lot of people enjoying it and there’s something to be said for that. If most of the people like it, you can’t really take it away from somebody. Just because I don’t find it funny and prefer to do things a different way doesn’t mean that the audience watching it is not entitled to enjoy it. What are some gimmicks someone could use? There’s all sorts of things. You could hide behind a character, be a one liner person, be very dirty, or whatever. What sort of differences do you notice in the audiences of a comedy club compared to an alternativ
