Can Good Comedy Still Break Through?
Or were the gatekeepers better than the algorithm?
***Hey! I’m doing a Q&A on the podcast this weekend, so please send your questions, thoughts, and detailed opinions about an elevator’s ability to accommodate a walrus (which came up in the comments section three days ago) to hereswhyyousuck@yahoo.com.
YouTube’s algorithm brilliantly deduced that I would enjoy this clip of Conan O’Brien, Dana Carvey, and David Spade sharing their thoughts about present-day SNL. Good work, algorithm! A bit of a slam dunk, though, given my browsing history. Still, it seems that YouTube’s advanced machine learning will know to notify me if anyone ever posts a video called “The Coen Brothers, Radiohead, and Ken Griffey, Jr. re-enact their favorite Monty Python bits.”
The part of the conversation that’s relevant to this article starts at 4:05.
Conan — being a good dude — says that he won’t shit on stuff that he doesn’t find funny. Which, of course, is the correct position; most comics figure out early in their career that comedy is subjective, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure, there can be no disagreements in matters of taste, yada yada yada. Plus, you meet bitter old-timers who say things like “In my day we did real comedy, like a man dressed like a woman smacking a French waiter with her giant boob,” and you resolve not to be that guy.
But Conan’s commitment to positivity doesn’t leave room for analysis. It’s fair to wonder: Is he actually right that “if something’s getting traction, it’s usually for a reason”? Both comedy creators and consumers have a dog in this fight, because everyone wins when the cream rises to the top. So, let me try to assess whether comedy is better or worse at getting funny stuff to people who want to watch it compared to the Year Zero discussed in the clip, which is about 1990.