I recently read Matt Wright’s post in The Comedy Tribune. It’s a good article.
Disclosure: Matt and I are buds, so I am biased in favour of him, but even if I didn’t like him (impossible), I think I’d like this.
The article is about being a comedian in the age of social media, a discussion of what we have to do to get by in a digital world. To me, it’s a stark reminder of how things have changed for comedy writers since I started a decade ago.
Funny Business
There’s a lot that goes into making a show, but really, it’s only 2 things: Production and marketing.
Production is making the thing. From idea to finished product, it’s about creating something incredible for an audience. (My podcast, The Means of Producing, tackles this subject.)
Marketing is the hard part. It’s a product, too, but it’s not THE product. It’s selling the product. It’s another beast. (A Mr. Beast, some might say – he’s one of the biggest names online right now. I have never seen anything this man has made, but I know his name. How? Marketing.)
Marketing, aka advertising, commercials, communications, social media… propaganda, basically. That’s the true name of the game. Propaganda, stuff you hope will propagate itself and your message along with it. I love studying propaganda, dissecting it, but making it? Not my fav. But how else do you reach an audience, right?
Advertising is a huge industry and social media markets are saturated with messaging. It’s beyond saturated; it’s beyond flooded; it’s an ocean of messages, always, constantly. In an age when AI can generate and post thousands of times a day, I feel like I’m rowing a waterlogged dory. The storm hasn’t even hit yet.
Money Over Mind
In Matt’s post, he writes:
The majority of artists now spend more time figuring out how to best share their work than on the work itself. You can’t just post a clip and walk away – there are several things to consider. How long should this clip be? Is the first line a good hook? What’s the best time to post? Should I add fancy captions or graphics?
You’ll notice that ‘is this funny?’ does not factor in here.
I feel this so heavily. I keep wondering if I’m doing it right, and the answer, based on my metrics, seems to be, “No.”
The next question is, “How do I do it right?” And the answer there is, “I have no idea. I’m throwing things at the wall to see if they stick.”
Here’s one thing I have learned: Funny is not enough. Maybe it was at some point, maybe it still is in some places, but here, in Newfoundland, Canada in 2025, it’s not the priority. Marketable is more important. What is marketable?
Matt says,
the only clips of mine that surpassed a million views were the ones where people get into an argument in the comments. Allow me to say that again: the videos most pushed are the ones that are most inflammatory. It is not a shock the world is divided. Making people argue is a savvy business strategy.
Social media does not care if something is funny. It cares that it keeps people on the website, where they can calculate metrics to sell ads. Occasionally, funny things are shareable, and so social media is fine with funny. But controversy is more shareable, and it prefers that.
I don’t think this is true of people, by the way. I think people vastly prefer good things than bad things. But if the metric is “views,” then yes, something bad will always generate more views than something good. The trains running smoothly doesn’t make it to the news; the trainwreck does.
I’m so sick of being a dancing monkey for other dancing monkeys, when the fighting monkeys are getting more time, attention, and money. But how else do you grow in 2025?
Internet Identity Crisis
Matt mentions he once asked his agent what kind of posts he should be making on social media. The agent responded, “Whatever feels genuine.”
Matt muses:
“It’s good advice, but where does that leave artists whose most authentic behavior would be to not post at all?”
Posting online as yourself is, to me, mindfuckery. It’s so unnatural. Posting anonymously? I get it, big time. I loved posting when I didn’t have to face any consequences for it.
But posting as myself? Yuck. Creating a timestamped version of myself that is going to be out there, for anyone to see, forever? My flaws, my idiocies, my imperfections no longer ethereal moments but permanent content? No thanks!
Nowadays, anyone can take anything you post and edit it, manipulate it, repost it. They can use it to train a language or video model and make it seem like you said or did things you truly did not say or do.
And that’s the deliberate manipulation. To be frank, people are not good at media literary. They mishear, they assume, they misremember. They see one thing you did and make a homunculus version of you in their head, and then that’s what they think of you forever. Parasocial relationships are terrifying, to me. Being popular in the 2020s means you have to accept there will be hundreds, thousands, millions of versions of you that you cannot control.
How do you live with that? That’s something beyond what sci-fi and horror writers could come up with. I have been working for a year trying to get more comfortable on camera and being myself online, and it’s still weird to me. And I am not popular! How do younger people, people with millions of followers, deal with this? Is this why they’re all so sad and stressed all the time?
The identity crisis of the shy performer is that you wish to be seen and not seen; to be perceived and not perceived. I really can’t have it both ways. To be known is to share; to share is to be known.
For some reason, on a stage, I’m ok with it. But when the stage is the entirety of the internet, that freaks me out. Maybe it’s because I can get an instant reaction when I’m live. Online? You might be waiting decades before the hammer drops.
Quantity Over Quality – For Now
I often think about this quote from Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney from 1982-2005. He once wrote,
“We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make a statement. But to make money, it is often important to make history, to make art, or to make some significant statement. We must always make entertaining movies, and, if we make entertaining movies, at times, we will reliably make history, art, a statement or all three.”
Money is the key factor, as it always is in business.
In order to make things quickly, you have to sacrifice quality. Even with AI, that’s true. In 2025, the quality of the product is vastly less important than the quantity.
The algorithm demands content. Its hunger is insatiable. Its pace is inhuman. And the more we try to satisfy it, the less time we have to create things we like, things we care about, things that others will care about, too.
Time is a precious resource. I want to spend my time making what I want, but that’s not always possible. Lately, I spend most of my time marketing. But I have to market to make, and I have to make to market. More, more, more.
I feel a breaking point coming. I get a sense that many of us, old, young, whatever, whoever, are getting tired of it. A change is coming, maybe not this year, but soon. You can only binge so much. The purge is coming.
And, soft and hopeful millennial baby that I am, I think quality will be making a come back. I think there will be a time for people who make great things to thrive. I am preparing to be there when it does, to improve my quality for when that matters again.
In the meantime, I’ll weather this incessant shit storms of news, of content, of short dumb flashy messages. I’ll keep making my own stuff, for me, and sharing it in my own space, here, and do my best to make sure it gets seen by the people who need it.
Final Thoughts
So, Matt’s article made me sad. It’s a reminder that the things I love most about comedy – the writing, the practicing, the performing – are, realistically, a drop in the bucket of the work that goes into being a performer. It’s a kind of grief, but also, it’s a reminder that I need to buck the fuck up.
And while there is a lot that’s scary and daunting and exhausting, there is also something exciting, too. Matt’s right – the internet makes things more accessible. That means the scary stuff, and also the fun stuff.
I used to have fun on the internet, when I was an anonymous child. Is there a way to have fun as a nonymous adult?
Social media thrives on controversy and ragebait – but surely we, the audience and the performers, should get to decide how we spend our time, what we want to see, and where we spend it.
That’s what Highs Below Zero is trying to be. I want it to be a place where you go and find what you want, when you want it. No algorithm, no artificial curation. You and I weed out the fake and bad and leave just the real good.
It’s going to be a while before I figure things out. But if you’re reading, I’m glad I have you along for the journey.
Check It Out
Matt Wright’s Website – follow the boy, he is a good lad
The Comedy Tribune – Canadian comedy news and info
Highs Below Zero 
Leave a comment