r/AskReddit • u/AuthorConfident9386 • 13h ago

Men, what’s one small, seemingly insignificant thing you’ve noticed that can be a telltale sign of the difference between a genuinely good man and a bad one?

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u/UpperApe 11h ago

A better example today is comedians.

A good comedian makes a bad joke and blames themselves. A bad comedian makes a bad joke and blames the audience. For being too dumb or "sensitive" or whatever. Ego overtakes their intellect.

It's relevant today because good comedians continue to flourish in their craft; touring, writing, etc. Bad comedians all become podcasters. Because you no longer have to read rooms and evolve. You can sit and stagnate and let your audience come to you and build around you.

Bad comedians don't grow. Which is why comedian podcasters tend to be such insufferable dimwits obsessed with a discourse and discussion they aren't equipped to navigate. And why their audiences seem to be the terminally incompetent.

And it's why they've become so especially dangerous.

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u/Impossible_Bid6172 10h ago

Every time a director, whether game or movie, came forward and blame the audience for being too dumb/too shallow/unaware/etc to enjoy the work thus the work flopped, this is the issue. They can't accept that either the work is shit, or they pitch it to the wrong crowd (do you have phone?). It's always the audience is wrong to not enjoy it/not play it how they intended. Well, wallets speak and their flop is well deserved. The few ones that apologize for their work or for their part in the failures, now i have hope for them next time.

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u/UpperApe 10h ago

Yeah, it's the same across all fields.

Those who blame themselves are the ones who change themselves. Those who blame the people around them, change the people around them.

It's just the mark of a bad person who throws away every opportunity for growth and reflection, in order to stagnate and harden.

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u/gogojack 7h ago

I did stand up for a bit. One of the worst things you can do is turn against the audience. You will never win that fight.

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u/Eayauapa 4h ago

You can make fun of the audience as much as you want, as long as you're laughing with, not at them. If you're laughing at them, you'd better be really fucking funny.

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u/MajesticOrange1 6h ago

unless youre near philadelphia and youre bill burr, and that is only ever gonna happen the one time haha

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u/Eayauapa 4h ago

"You people are a goddamn acid"

Such a good set.

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u/matt_minderbinder 11h ago

I don't know if I agree completely on the podcaster thing as it seems to be an almost necessary part of building a built in fan base for tours. Take someone like Stavvy, he podcasts and does that circuit but he's also not problematic in the ways you're thinking. He's more of a dirtbag leftist (that's not a knock) who's pro therapy, equal rights, trans and lgbtq+, women, etc..

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u/Hartastic 3h ago

I assumed they were mostly going at Rogan, arguably one of the most successful podcasters of all time and one of the worst stand-up comedians of all time.

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u/EddieDantes22 10h ago

I'm with you. The key to being successful is people knowing you, and people know you from podcast appearances. I think you could go to a guy like Stavvy's standup show and ask "how many of you have seen his standup before?" and the answer will be like half.

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u/UpperApe 11h ago

I disagree.

Because some of the biggest comedians today are doing it grassroots and simple. The trick to evolving comedy today is crowd-work and evolving sets and social marketing. But that's a lot of work. Which people who love comedy do and people who are trying to get rich off comedy hate.

Podcasting isn't even remotely necessary, social media engagement is. Podcasting is just a shortcut. And it's fine if you're always punching up (reading/learning/educating yourself, interviewing experts and specialists, broadening/challenging yourself). But again, that's a lot of work. Which people who love learning do and people who want to get rich off podcasts hate.

People who love what they do and are good at it do it. People who hate it and want shortcuts are the ones fucking everything up.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Talk787 10h ago

A lot of comedians use podcasts to get their name out there. What comedians do you consider dimwits?

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u/daehoidar 8h ago

A lot of the Austin scene and the Rogan circle has gotten weird in a bad way. They prop themselves up as being "the last defenders of free speech" or modern day philosophers, but all they really want is to be able to use words that the "wokes" have taken away from them. A lot of it is straight up hack.

I've heard that Joe Rogan is genuinely a pretty good guy overall, with helping up and coming comedians in a lot of ways. But that man is simply not funny, his special is so bad. Then I also hate how he has platformed these weirdo billionaires and politicians and never pushes back. He likes to think of himself in the same vein of like George Carlin or Bill Hicks, but those people would have never bowed to power like he does. If they had the opportunity to have a one on one with the president, they would have asked hard questions and pushed back on important shit. Rogan is like trump in that their opinion on something really depends on the last person they talked to about it.

To name some: hinchcliffe, Brendan schaub, Tom segura, etc etc. A lot of them are more focused on being edgelordy than they are on being funny. And I think really good comedy punches up, but these guys are very often punching down. I'm glad we're seeing them start to get called out.

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u/SadFishTacos 6h ago

They prop themselves up as being "the last defenders of free speech" or modern day philosophers, but all they really want is to be able to use words that the "wokes" have taken away from them. A lot of it is straight up hack.

Any comedian making the claim that they're "defending free speech" is lying at best. It is, and always will be, entirely self-serving.

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u/Eayauapa 3h ago edited 3h ago

You can really see it when you see any of them trying to keep up with Burr, CK, Mullen, Norm while he was alive, and it's like watching me taking a bunch of toddlers into the octagon

Edit: I will genuinely put Nick Mullen in there with some of the greatest comedians alive. That man is effortlessly hilarious and weirdly charismatic while saying some of the most off-putting shit you could ever imagine, it's absurd.

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u/Chairboy 9h ago

Locked profile history, expect conservative Sea Lioning from this user.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Talk787 9h ago

What is sea lioning? And how does anything I said make me a conservative?

I watch a lot of stand up and listen to a lot of podcasts and I think this is incorrect. But I’m willing to be proven wrong

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u/SuperFLEB 7h ago edited 7h ago

What is sea lioning?

It's similar to "Just asking questions"/"JAQ-ing off", if you've heard that. (It might even be synonymous, though I'm not deep enough into the theory to know the nuance-- if someone knows different, correct me.) It's the idea of trying to win an argument by asking a barrage of questions that aren't necessarily rhetorical, but are tenuously relevant or have well-settled answers, making the other person spend time and energy fielding them even though the questioner doesn't actually need the answer. (I think there might also be an element of "backing someone into the corner of a less-relevant question they can't answer to try and win the whole argument".)

The term comes from a comic where a sealion insisted on incessantly arguing another character's dislike of sealions.

Free bonus opinion section:

IMHO, "sealioning" claims are often weak and overused. The claim involves knowing the accusee's intentions-- which usually just means assuming the accusee's intentions.

They also fit in the dubious "That's not worth asking" class of objections-- alongside "It's obvious" or "I shouldn't have to explain something so simple"-- ones that could be answered by "If it's so obvious, then answer it." I'll grant that heaping on needless questions can be a distraction or tactical attack, but unless it's an outright pile-on, it's a cheap dodge to answer a question with "That's obvious" or other forms of "You shouldn't be asking that" meta-context dismissal.

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u/Chairboy 9h ago

What is sea lioning? And how does anything I said make me a conservative?

lol

But I’m willing to be proven wrong

, he lied.

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u/Fading_Redeemer 8h ago

I don't know if that was satire or not.

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u/SuperFLEB 7h ago

That just means it's even better satire.

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u/Fading_Redeemer 7h ago

I DID think it could next-level satire, putting Swift to shame.

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u/Chairboy 8h ago

What's wild is that these profile locking conservative trolls trick so many people into assuming good faith. and they depend on it.

You know that guy has an impassioned defense of the genius of Joe Rogan comedy loaded and ready to fire.

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u/SuperFLEB 7h ago

What's wild is that these profile locking conservative trolls trick so many people into assuming good faith. and they depend on it.

They haven't said anything to shake that assumption of good faith yet. Meanwhile you're over here torpedoing any good faith you came in with by calling names, making assumptions, and arguing with puppets in response. You're not really winning hearts and minds here.

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u/Chairboy 7h ago

Hey man, you are welcome to your interpretation. It's one of those modern media literacy indicators, if you don't catch that someone pushing back on a phenomena that is largely alt-right figures who describe themselves as comedians AND who has a locked profile, then life has some lessons for you, and the future.

Sounds like they've tricked you, but go ahead and downvote and patch yourself on the back if it makes you feel good, maybe someday you will adjust your understanding.

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u/SuperFLEB 7h ago

life has some lessons for you, and the future

Sounds like they've tricked you

maybe someday you will adjust your understanding

Got anything that's not vague and self-assured?

This whole warning comes down to, "Don't give them an example of what you're talking about! It's a trap!" That's a really silly hill to die on. Are the people in this thread really so pressed for time and energy that rattling off a name or two in order to illustrate a point is going to matter? If so, why are they wasting that time making Reddit comments in the first place?

I'll grant that I'm with you in regards to being suspicious of history-hiders, but that's an aggravating factor. There's nothing here to aggravate-- just a one-line easy-to-answer question.

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u/Fading_Redeemer 8h ago

I haven't the foggiest idea how Rogan got so big

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u/PyrexPicasso85 9h ago

That one about comedian podcasters is reminding me of the Pete Davidson discussion about OF creators making millions when it was far different to get a job in the old days or navigating the industry like everyone else would instead of finding shortcuts etc.

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u/Lost-Calligrapher375 7h ago

Anthony, is this you?

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u/momjeanseverywhere 2m ago

Stavros Halkias, Bull Burr, and Shane Gillis are all pretty solid comedians who podcast. I think it’s that there are just more bad comedians than good, and they also have podcasts.

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u/Anothernamelesacount 6h ago

A bad comedian makes a bad joke and blames the audience. For being too dumb or "sensitive" or whatever.

Mileage. Being provocative is also part of being a comedian. It mostly depends on your type of humor, but good comedy should challenge your beliefs. Good comedy is the greatest weapon of the iconoclast: audiences, whether we like it or not, can easily become the idiot king who wishes to be eternally praised, and then, the jester should be the one who reminds them.

Some people will just cry about politics and current year and the like, but George Carlin was talking about political correctness and the unwillingness to fix certain issues because people were more worried about how words feel before most of the "politically engaged people" of today were born.

Nobody wants to admit they're part of the sacred cow.