It's a rare opinion, but I think the best medium for truly well-done comedy...
Is puns.
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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Rare, medium, and well-done?
it's really boring to me with very few exceptions. i get depressed when i go to someone's house and they're watching it because it means nobody will be talking to each other they'll be parasocializing with the tv together instead
its harder than it looks
Encouraging. I would love to try doing it sometime, but I realise I'm probably really gonna screw up
You will bomb. Probably more often than not for the first few months. Eventually you'll feel like you have a rhythm, and then you'll start bombing again. But every laugh you get will feel like a drug.
I love it. When the comedian gets the room going it is just incredible. I like to do at least three shows a year.
You actually do some?
Oh god no. By Do I mean I attend a comedy club as an audience member.
Hell if you sit close enough too the stage the comic will work you into the act.
We will do that on occasion just be make it more fun.
Can be kind of mean spirited
That's my ideal case
I like the kind that is either non stop puns or long weird/funny stories that have lots of setup for relatively fewer, but larger, payoffs.
The short jokes/puns are getting more and more rare these days. Mitch Hedberg did it best in my opinion. Anthony jeselnik still runs short punchy jokes but hes one of the only large contemporaries I can think of with that style.
Yeah, Mitch Hedberg was great. Steven Wright as well for those short, odd, clever jokes.
For long weird funny stories, I recommend Shayne Smith. He just put up a full show on the Dry Bar Comedy YouTube channel.
Edit: Link to video
Thanks!
I enjoy watching it on YouTube. I’m afraid I’d laugh wrong in public so I’ve never been.
Like at the wrong part of the joke? Too loud? Too long? Ho
Yes, all of that. Also my laugh is weird.
Always the least funny guy showing you a standup comedy clip on YT- maybe it's something that you have to see in person because I've never seen a special that made me forget the time I lost watching the next big sex pest fail to leave a positive impression on anyone in the crowd who won't follow them through their "career" until they capitulate to the right to regain a shred of notoriety
Depends heavily on the comedy for me. I have an entire folder of stand up specials, and I really enjoy a lot of it, but I lean heavily away from political and broad social commentary, and toward personal/anecdotal and more nuanced stuff.
I want my comedy to be silly, not offensive. If you are going to be making racial/minority stereotype jokes, they better be about your own experience as that race or minority. That’s the one and only way they even could be funny (tho most still aren’t). If you are going to punch down or across, not interested. If you hit yourself, or punch up and get a fist full of shit for doing it, it might be worth watching!
There’s a HUGE amount of really shit standup out there, though. Punching down, shock comedy (especially shit like rape jokes, sexism, etc), that sort of thing. It’s a shame really because you have to wade through it to find good stuff. There’s also an absolutely absurd amount of totally vapid brainrot comedy that could also go extinct, imo, but at least it’s not actively harming anyone, I guess.
Eh I like offensive stand up because it's one of the ways I deal with traumatic experiences I've had. In my family dark humor was always used following a tragedy. I recognize why people get bent out of shape by it but for me its helpful. Thats why some of my favorite comics are dark fucked up people like Jim Norton.
Love it. It's one of my favourite forms of entertainment and pretty much the only thing I'll go see live these days. Been a fan since the early eighties.
Im in the same boat but more like the early 2000s. Who did you like back then and who now?
Well there's a big question, but I'll try to be brief. I've got a shelf full of DVDs and a folder on my PC with many gigabytes worth.
Billy Connolly is an all-time favourite from my early years of random. Seen him 3 times. Stewart Lee, Maria Bamford (saw her live last year), Sarah Millican, Doug Stanhope, Bill Bailey*, Dylan Moran, The Umbilical Brothers*, Lano and Woodley* are all great. (* Also seen live)
Some lesser known more recent comics I've discovered from the stand-up comedy subreddit are Chris Higgins, Django Gold, and Mike Baldwin. They're all pretty unique and great.
This list could be ten times longer.
800 Pound Gorilla and Dry Bar Comedy are a couple of good YouTube channels for discovering new comics.
Seconding for 800 Pound Gorilla and Dry Bar Comedy on YouTube. Some of the best channels to find new comics.
Thats a great list and most of those comics are WAY under appreciated in general.
When the content and delivery is good, what's not to like?
As I mature, I find myself thinking very lowly of standup in general despite watching a lot of it when I was an edgy 18/19 year old. When I try to get back into it now I just see the various ethical problems with their jokes and that makes it not funny for me.
White standup comics get free reign to drop racist dog whistles and if you criticize them on it they get all snippy with you. The most popular "genre" of white stand up comedy still seems to be "I went to a [insert culture here] restaurant and here are my disrespectful and stereotype enforcing hijinks" or even "I went to [insert COUNTRY here] and will now proceed to joke about how their culture is different from us." I can only hope the whole thing is made up and they're not that atrocious in real life, though the vast majority of service staff seem to have stories about famous comics treating them like shit so I wouldn't be surprised.
Even a lot of ethnic standup comics portray themselves as the victims of racism in one joke but then have no problems using stereotypes of another ethnicity in the very next joke.
Also standup definitely seems to have an air of being attended by older generations who find insulting the younger generations funny. Things like participation trophies (which was a boomer idea by the way, the kids aren't planning school competitions or buying the prizes) or terms like "snowflake" seems to have gotten into boomer rethoric partly because of standup. Reactionary takes about progressive social movements like veganism or car-free living are also the norm because I assume they know most of the people who watch them are the type to get mad at how other people choose to live their lives. Standup in general seems to have a "let's make fun of anything people are doing that's different from how it was before because we don't want to do it that way and need validation that we're not assholes on the wrong side of history" attitude. Or they'll just make fun of random people living their lives, I remember watching a comic on YouTube doing a whole segment making fun of people who swim laps in hotel pools because it annoys him, like bro mind your own damn business.
Occasionally a comic will try to earn brownie points by saying the most superficial shit about a major societal problem and then act like they singlehandedly solved it. Bonus points if they're talking about another country's problems which the West fucking caused.
I'm not saying all standup is like this or all standup comics are racist or reactionary, but I am saying there are very few long running standup shows/podcasts with none of these problems.
I haven’t paid attention to stand up in a while. The best I can think of are still at the end of the day libs. Fat chance of finding a good historical materialist comedian eking out a living. Anyway, David Cross, Doug Stanhope, and Marc Maron come to mind. But I haven’t seen them in quite a while. For all I know they could have gone kancel kulture krazy, but I doubt it.
Now that I think about it, I’m scared to find out how they’ve navigated the genocide. Definitely stay the fuck away from Sarah Silverman; I know that much.
I have felt the same for a while. I have had to heavily rethink my relationship with standup comedy, because I think it can be such a powerful medium, but as I've gotten older, I recognize that comedy can reflect much of the bigotry and hatreds of their time.
It's obviously more nuanced than that, as comedy can also reflect joys, insights, and the general societal consciousness of the time.
With that said there are still a few stand up comedy that I can say I don't feel bad laughing at these days. So here's a short list that if you're so inclined, I'd take a look at:
- Tig Notaro
- Benny Feldman
- Noam Shuster
- Hannah Gadsby
- Maria Bamford
I'd elaborate on each of them a bit, but I'd rather simply let their comedy speak for themselves.
EDIT: typo, wording
That list definitely tracks for a lemmy user.
- Mitch Hedberg
- Wanda Sykes
Two of my all time favorites.
What is an ethical stand up?
I was more into them when I was younger. I think my high school friend forcing me to watch a new one every single time I visited made me not care for them anymore. Every now and then I'll remember a joke from Brian Regan or one of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour guys I liked, but that's it.
My take?
Uhhhhh funny person get on stage, funny person make joke, me laugh.
Try going outside once in a while.
Me try going outside? I like asking questions and seeing what people think about things. Im a curious person and I like seeing how my interests align with other people. You can look at my post history, I just ask random questions, get alot of engagement and have some interesting conversations.
My take on stand up comedy is to sit down and cry.
Don't know if I can take it sitting down.