‘Are We Participating in a Thing That Is Not Even Working?’
In October 2025, comedian Chris Gethard guest-hosted Going Down, a leftist political-satire public-access show. He used this opportunity in front of the show’s audience of young creatives to discuss the death of the middle-class comedian and how giant companies have bastardized the concept of DIY to exploit artists. “Artists should not have DIY ethics used against them, where they have to choose between betting on their own art and maybe owning a house someday,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to choose between your dreams and the so-called American Dream.” He added that this reality has seeped into stand-up and will soon spread to all creative and media professionals.
Gethard’s argument contrasted the current moment to where comedy was 15 to even five years ago, a period generally considered the Second Comedy Boom in which the internet offered many comedians opportunities to get noticed, build active fan bases, get jobs, and make money. And while the current era of short-form video social media has been a boon for a number of comedians, it’s starting to prove increasingly unsustainable, especially when mixed with Hollywood’s post-streaming-boom, post-strikes era. On this week’s episode of Good One, Gethard — whose latest special, A Father and the Sun, debuted this past September — expounds on these ideas by outlining what pursuing a creative career used to look like, where things went wrong, and where artists must go from here. Listen to the full conversation here.
For coal miners about a century ago, the company store was this idea that the entire town is owned by the coal mine: You can come work in the mine, and when you come to this town, you rent your house from the coal mine, you buy your food from a store supplied by the coal mine, and you are paid in what is called scrip, which only has value in the context of the coal mine. I do not want to co-opt the struggles of coal miners, but I think making stuff for the algorithm is the closest thing I’ve seen in entertainment. From the big corporate players to the other options at our disposal, I don’t think that any of them feel like a pathway for an artist in the way that existed 20, ten, or even five years ago.
There used to be a very clear-cut middle-class job that I saw bubble up in the petri dish. They were at internet-supported platforms putting out videos where you could get hired to write or act, like CollegeHumor, Above Average, Onion News Network, and Funny or Die. I got hired at Onion News Network. It was one of my very first jobs. They didn’t pay great but, between that and cobbling together freelance things when they came along, I started finding ways to live.
I was there as things changed. Something happened that I think should have received more public outcry and consequence: Facebook started pumping up the numbers. What happened in the process was that all of those middle-class platforms were told Facebook was the place where things would spread. Then it became that you needed to pay for Facebook advertising to get the people who followed you to unlock it; you had to pay to play based on intentionally manipulated numbers. I think that that was the beginning of social-media-platform manipulation of comedy as an art form. That was the earliest headwaters of what we’re seeing now, which is: You do all the work to feed the algorithm, and if you miss a day on the algorithm, it might mess up your algorithm, so don’t ever miss a day. Then you can make a little bit of money along the way.
The game is feeling progressively more rigged right now. Comedy is being backed into a corner that’s not good for artists. We are being tricked into feeding a system that is going to do to us what Spotify did to musicians. Your biggest thing ever? Disposable. TikTok doesn’t matter. If you’ve got 5 million views, next week they won’t remember it. “What’s next? What’s coming downstream?” You can be on some of the biggest platforms in the world and not make money. You can get a special on Netflix, but all the production costs come out of your end. A comic may have worked on that special for five to ten years and very often, they’re not even making two months of rent and expenses from it.
So you can either go through the Netflix route or YouTube — which, let’s be clear, is Google. We have to stop giving them a pass as the DIY pathway. And every comedian right now is being told by their peers, who are being convinced by agents and managers and by the industry as a whole, “You’re close. Make sure you shoot it with cameras that are up to the standards of Netflix. Get the sound, the lights, pay for the right postproduction, because maybe they’ll license it. But hey, it’ll increase ticket sales!” Who is increasingly in charge of ticket sales? Live Nation/Ticketmaster. The DIY option is that you can work for Google and Live Nation?! That’s cosplay as DIY.
There’s starting to become a dialogue in comedy of, “Are we participating in a thing that is not even working?” I’ve had a couple clips bust out, and you don’t see the ticket sales from those. I’ve started to hear this from other artists, too. People who want to consume comedy in 45 to 90 seconds at a time on their phone don’t want to go out and sit through a thing for an hour. I don’t want to sound like a Puritan or a Luddite. I am, in so many ways, envious of the options at the hands of young creators. You don’t have to wait for gatekeepers. You don’t have to audition for a house team at UCB, or wait for a call from JFL or the Aspen Comedy Festival, like when I first started. But I look at Ariel Elias — good joke writer, charming persona. Why does most of the world know Ariel? Because some maniac threw a fucking full beer at her head. That’s why we know an artist?
How many young comics do you think went out there thinking, I’ve got to say something to get the crowd angry enough to throw something at me? How many artists do we think have posted thirst traps on social media because it’s good for their career? I have met comics who have driven from New Jersey to Texas to put their name in the Kill Tony bucket to stand in an outdoor pen so that maybe they get a chance to do one minute. Do I get why they go for it? Yeah. Do I think it’s very concerning that’s the option working-class comics see in my neck of the woods? I would have to imagine that, while I’ve never met him, Tony Hinchcliffe would probably say, “I don’t want this to be a thing that people think is the only option.” It’s literally going west to Texas to try to strike oil.
One of the first things that ever happened to me in my career was that we all saw Derrick Comedy putting out videos, and a few other groups from UCB started putting out videos. Zach Woods and I were incredibly tight at the time, and we started releasing a series of videos that I wrote and he starred in, and they spread all over the internet. There was no money to be made off of that, but what happened was Comedy Central reached out to us and was like, “You’re making interesting things. Come in for a meeting. Do you have any ideas?” We pitched an idea, got our first little script deal, and we each made five grand as writers. They attached us with a senior writer, and he made some money too. The idea didn’t go anywhere, but we got to learn from his experience and effectively apprentice. Today, it would be: We make those videos, nobody ever reaches out to us, and if we have an idea for a TV show, the expectation would be, Go produce the entire thing yourself. That’s an insane level of financial stress and burden on artists, and it removes anything resembling learning from the people who have come before us.
It’s been so strange for me to have started as a boy wonder of the New York improv scene, and now I am an old DIY uncle to the young artists. I’m starting to get asked for advice. There’s a few things I keep in mind. If you talk to people who really know social media, they will almost always tell you: “Have it all point back toward your mailing list.” Get those email addresses, because Elon Musk can’t buy your email list. Prioritize that over your Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Bluesky, whatever. I have survived because of a passionate and dwindling number of people who have followed me for 15 years who found me on public access TV in 2012. When I see them, I know their names, and I know they’ve had my back, and I feel so lucky. If you can contact the people who support you directly, you are in control of the info that gets to them. You won’t ever have to bail on that if a gross oligarch purchases a platform. You won’t spend years building your email list only to have a threatened shutdown of it because it’s a Chinese spying device. The flow of information is one of the most powerful things you can own.
I want to see who establishes a new, viable, actually DIY pathway that divests itself completely of the algorithms. Whoever starts thinking, Man, we need to rebuild this, will be the next group of artists that define what the next phase is. It’s like the Warren Buffett philosophy of, “When the market bursts, that’s when you get in.” I think we’re at the end of what was the podcast, Patreon, social-media thing. I don’t envy anybody trying to launch a podcast now versus ten years ago. Are you telling me that a video podcast hosted by an A-list celebrity where the video has exclusive distribution on Netflix is in the spirit of podcasting? What is that except a nonunion television show? So what’s the next thing? Please, young artists, find and build the new and more societally healthy infrastructure. And guess what? They’re going to find a way to take that, too. But they’re moving the pieces on the chessboard right now, and I think we, as artists, are chasing the terms they’re dictating to us.
I’m really not trying to sit here and say, “Do this, kids.” I wish I had more answers. But the sands have really been shifting under our feet the past few years between a massive industry contraction, corporate mergers limiting the amount of people who can give us jobs, and the rise of the algorithm making it more uncertain and difficult for all of us. I hosted a TV show on cable for three seasons. I acted in roles on The Office, Parks and Recreation, Broad City, Space Force, and a whole bunch more. I was a guest writer on SNL as far back as 2007. I have a podcast that blew up. And, when my son was 1 year old, I lost my health insurance. I’m not trying to pat myself on the back for the career I’ve had but, objectively, if I can have the amount of work I’ve had over the years and lose my insurance and be this scared for my ability to provide for my family, what’s it like for people who haven’t had all those things? I talk to young artists right now, and their reality is like, I’m an artist. I’ll never get to own a house. I’ll probably never get to have a kid. I want those things, but I chose this. I have a day job now, and I don’t feel like it messes with my ego to say that. It was a choice born of necessity. I need to be a good father, and the arts feel more tenuous than I’ve seen them in 25 years. So I helped a nonprofit start an arts program, and they give my family health insurance.
Dropout is giving me hope. It’s worker owned. You share in the profits of the company, and I hear they pay you to audition even if you just have a minor bit part. Other places I see doing stuff the right way: In a time when UCB, Second City, and iO have all been bought by new corporate owners, Logan Square Improv in Chicago is an artist-owned space. They teach only two levels of classes, and they’re pretty cheap to provide access. Their theater opened up in a primarily Spanish-speaking neighborhood, and they understood that they would be part of its gentrification, so they started teaching Spanish-language classes and offering Spanish-language shows to try to mesh with the community rather than replace it. I hear that The Comedy Fort in Fort Collins, Colorado, is an artist-owned space that is building an insanely good audience that’s doing a lot of forward-thinking stuff. There’s a punk fest in Gainesville every Halloween weekend called The Fest. They have a comedy stage, and that stage gives me hope. It’s the one place where, every year, I know the other people who care about this stuff are all going to be on one stage at one time. Also, Dave Ross, who’s one of the guys who helps Comedians You Should Know in New York, has really helped turn that into what it is. But there’s only a handful that I can point to right now, which is scary.
I did a tour about a year and a half ago, and I brought a friend of mine on the road. He’s in his 20s and he does really well on TikTok, mostly doing sketch. I wound up very concerned. We’d be driving from one city to the other, and he’s sitting in the backseat editing, and he’d be like, “What time is soundcheck tonight?” I’d tell him, and he’d be like, “Oh, shit. Can you drop me at the hotel first? I need reliable Wi-Fi, because if I don’t post before that, the algorithm might be fucked up.” And then, after the show, more editing. And then the next morning, shooting something really quick. In some ways, it was very inspiring to see the hustle, the determination, and the dedication to it. He’s doing well on TikTok, and can pay for his life, and it’s really cool, but none of it accounts toward health insurance. If I was 25 and someone told me that you can make that much just with comedy, I’d go, “Awesome.” But if I could never slow down enough to find the option that has more long-term viability, well, they got me by the balls in the company store.
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