In a big, diverse world, there is an audience for almost anything -- the trick is reaching and retaining them. So it's true that people are beholden to their subscribers, but those subscribers aren't a random sample of the population -- there's a reason they came here in the first place.
Some perspectives and styles are more marketable than others. But I think it's best to start out writing what you like, because you're going to be stuck with it as the audience grows. Any change in direction results in complaints like "ugh this used to be good" -- because every writer's audience is disproportionately composed of people who liked their previous work.
I have a question about the genesis of your comedic style, if you don't mind the bother. I was an avid follower of LWT during its (I suppose, grudgingly) "golden era" - roughly 2017-18. My love affair with the show ended around the same time my love affair with Minecraft ended, and for roughly the same reason: despite the local variations, it seemed like there was nothing original left in either of them. It was getting to the point where some 90% of the jokes were predictably over-the-top similes, in this kind of vein: "Commenting on newsletters? The only time you should address an ex-comedy-writer is when you need him to stop taking up a whole row of seats in the subway. It's 6:30 in the morning and people are beginning to squish in like the phlegm-filled bottles in Michael Phelps' living room -- You need to move!" ... and so on and so forth.
Anyway, I assumed that this style of humor (add scare quotes liberally, as appropriate) was the result of some kind of democratic process in a fairly large committee; I guessed that it would be the lowest common denominator that everyone would be able to agree on. But now, while reading -- and enjoying! -- your newsletter, I've noticed that a lot of the same distinctive comedic quirks and repetitions that I remarked on so often in LWT are present in your independent writing. Was this your style prior to LWT? Did you singlehandedly help set the tone in the newsroom? Or did they form you -- did you become familiar with the winning strategy of the show? Were there just (shudder) a bunch of you, all coming up with roughly the same idea of comedy? Something in NYC's lovely unfiltered water, piped into those 57th street offices? Please help me to understand, and thank you again for the lovely newsletter.
"That's like" jokes! We became very aware of "that's like" jokes, and we tried to get away from them, but we didn't totally succeed. And it seems like you noticed...God damn it, I KNEW people were noticing!
Here's the thing about "that's like" jokes (I should say "similes", but "'that's like' jokes" is the phrase we used): Sometimes you're almost forced into one. If you have a bit of information that's new to the audience -- and you have those all the time on LWT -- you need a joke that reiterates the point the audience needs to internalize. So, a "that's like" joke is extremely likely in those circumstances, because it repeats the thing that the audience needs to get, and hopefully expresses the idea in a funny way. HOPEFULLY.
So, that's what was happening sometimes. And other times, we were just being lazy and doing a bad job. Writing a late night show is a grind; you sit in a room writing joke after joke after joke -- I would often write 50-100 jokes in a day -- and you essentially put them in a pneumatic tube and send them up to the top brass (John) and hope that he likes them. Obviously, in that context, quality control goes out the window pretty quickly; you just throw everything at the wall and it's someone else's job to separate the good from the bad.
And about the voice of the show: One thing that happened is that, with time, the writers came to sound like each other. We came in with different styles and tastes, but then we were locked in a room together for several years until we were almost a hive mind. So, one thing you're noticing in my present-day writing is the influence the other writers had on me.
Really interesting! So the writing floor becomes like the world's most intense comedy bootcamp, all marching to the step of the maestro Oliver. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that you would start to sound similar to everyone else you rubbed elbows with.
In piano playing, there are "schools" of interpretation that descend from specific masters, who pass on their techniques and weird specific ideas to their students and so on down the line. I wonder if one could trace a similar line through comedians who worked together on specific shows? After all, one of the things I do enjoy about your writing is that you use familiar comedic "seeds" to advance Matt Y.'s politics.
Would you be willing to elaborate on specifically what topics LWT/you (1) wanted to write about and (2) thought would alienate your audience and (3) therefore avoided altogether?
There are several, but I'll unpack one: Trans athletes in sports. Around 2019, I thought we should do an explainer, discuss what we know about the science, talk about the decisions sports governing bodies are going to make. There's some interesting history (the International Olympic Committee's method for determining sex used to be "let me see your junk"), and some stuff that I, for one, didn't know (you can be XY and express as a female). And I thought there was a landing point that the world would accept, namely: "The IOC and other sports governing bodies are going to set standards for who can compete. You might think those standards are too strict, you might think they're too lenient, but regardless, we all need to understand: They're just creating a (somewhat arbitrary) standard about who gets to compete. They are NOT creating a definitive standard for who is a man and who is a woman."
We didn't do it. Now: That's not unusual. Most pitches don't make it to air; "I pitched a thing and it didn't run" is a real "dog bites man" story. But it's also true that it instantly became a (friendly) joke around the office, like "oh, yeah, we're really going to do that. Are you trying to get us all fired?" It definitely would have been risky. There's no question that the environment around trans issues greatly reduced that story's chances of running.
And it's easy to say "they should have done it!" But...should we have? It was easy for me to pitch it, because the decision about whether to do it or not ultimately wasn't mine. What if we had done it, and it caused a major shitstorm, and a major chunk of our audience tuned out, and it significantly altered the course of the show? In a worst case scenario, maybe we even get cancelled; am I going to be the one to tell the staff "sorry you all have to get new jobs -- I thought it would be an interesting piece"? There's a discussion to be had about how a TV show (or newspaper, or newsletter, or whatever) should navigate those challenges, and whether you can develop a brand in which your audience WANTS you to tackle tough issues, and so forth. But the settled part of the issue -- the part that I tried to illuminate in this article -- is that these pressures exist, and you definitely feel them.
Yeah, absolutely go for it as long as you have enough followers that there are enough people who hate you who will subscribe to the newsletter purely out of spite.
Just wanted to say how much I appreciate this newsletter. I've been a free subscriber for a little over a month and I always get a little tingling feeling when I see a new post from you. I enjoy your comedy style and appreciate the fact you write on many different topics (sex workers for example). I subscribe to 8 or so substacks and yours is definitely the most unique. I will start paying once my bank account is back in order, but anyway THANK YOU!
Thanks! Very glad you're enjoying it. If you're able to switch to paid at some point, that's great, but if not, no worries and maybe you can mention the newsletter to a friend or two. Referrals are worth a lot.
LWT's success proves there's potentially a large audience for you. Like LWT, you say something new that feels true, with a delicious glaze of absurdist wit. Surely success is just a matter of getting enough of the right people to sample your work. Guest essays in upscale lefty publications would probably do the trick.
Thanks! I hope you're right, and yes: Guest essays are going to be key. It's already the case that most people found me through either Matt Yglesias or Persuasion.
And I should add this: The fact that so many people found me through already-wonky sources is doing a ton to solve the "do you give people what they want, or do you write about what you think you SHOULD write about?" problem discussed in this article. So far, people usually want me to write about wonky stuff, which is a miracle, because that's what I want to do.
In a big, diverse world, there is an audience for almost anything -- the trick is reaching and retaining them. So it's true that people are beholden to their subscribers, but those subscribers aren't a random sample of the population -- there's a reason they came here in the first place.
Some perspectives and styles are more marketable than others. But I think it's best to start out writing what you like, because you're going to be stuck with it as the audience grows. Any change in direction results in complaints like "ugh this used to be good" -- because every writer's audience is disproportionately composed of people who liked their previous work.
Hey Mr. Maurer,
I have a question about the genesis of your comedic style, if you don't mind the bother. I was an avid follower of LWT during its (I suppose, grudgingly) "golden era" - roughly 2017-18. My love affair with the show ended around the same time my love affair with Minecraft ended, and for roughly the same reason: despite the local variations, it seemed like there was nothing original left in either of them. It was getting to the point where some 90% of the jokes were predictably over-the-top similes, in this kind of vein: "Commenting on newsletters? The only time you should address an ex-comedy-writer is when you need him to stop taking up a whole row of seats in the subway. It's 6:30 in the morning and people are beginning to squish in like the phlegm-filled bottles in Michael Phelps' living room -- You need to move!" ... and so on and so forth.
Anyway, I assumed that this style of humor (add scare quotes liberally, as appropriate) was the result of some kind of democratic process in a fairly large committee; I guessed that it would be the lowest common denominator that everyone would be able to agree on. But now, while reading -- and enjoying! -- your newsletter, I've noticed that a lot of the same distinctive comedic quirks and repetitions that I remarked on so often in LWT are present in your independent writing. Was this your style prior to LWT? Did you singlehandedly help set the tone in the newsroom? Or did they form you -- did you become familiar with the winning strategy of the show? Were there just (shudder) a bunch of you, all coming up with roughly the same idea of comedy? Something in NYC's lovely unfiltered water, piped into those 57th street offices? Please help me to understand, and thank you again for the lovely newsletter.
"That's like" jokes! We became very aware of "that's like" jokes, and we tried to get away from them, but we didn't totally succeed. And it seems like you noticed...God damn it, I KNEW people were noticing!
Here's the thing about "that's like" jokes (I should say "similes", but "'that's like' jokes" is the phrase we used): Sometimes you're almost forced into one. If you have a bit of information that's new to the audience -- and you have those all the time on LWT -- you need a joke that reiterates the point the audience needs to internalize. So, a "that's like" joke is extremely likely in those circumstances, because it repeats the thing that the audience needs to get, and hopefully expresses the idea in a funny way. HOPEFULLY.
So, that's what was happening sometimes. And other times, we were just being lazy and doing a bad job. Writing a late night show is a grind; you sit in a room writing joke after joke after joke -- I would often write 50-100 jokes in a day -- and you essentially put them in a pneumatic tube and send them up to the top brass (John) and hope that he likes them. Obviously, in that context, quality control goes out the window pretty quickly; you just throw everything at the wall and it's someone else's job to separate the good from the bad.
And about the voice of the show: One thing that happened is that, with time, the writers came to sound like each other. We came in with different styles and tastes, but then we were locked in a room together for several years until we were almost a hive mind. So, one thing you're noticing in my present-day writing is the influence the other writers had on me.
Really interesting! So the writing floor becomes like the world's most intense comedy bootcamp, all marching to the step of the maestro Oliver. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that you would start to sound similar to everyone else you rubbed elbows with.
In piano playing, there are "schools" of interpretation that descend from specific masters, who pass on their techniques and weird specific ideas to their students and so on down the line. I wonder if one could trace a similar line through comedians who worked together on specific shows? After all, one of the things I do enjoy about your writing is that you use familiar comedic "seeds" to advance Matt Y.'s politics.
Yeah, it's also kind of like how bands from certain cities would develop a "sound".
And Matt Yglesias has MY politics, not the other way around. ;)
One vote here for a Marxist take on tennis.
Would you be willing to elaborate on specifically what topics LWT/you (1) wanted to write about and (2) thought would alienate your audience and (3) therefore avoided altogether?
There are several, but I'll unpack one: Trans athletes in sports. Around 2019, I thought we should do an explainer, discuss what we know about the science, talk about the decisions sports governing bodies are going to make. There's some interesting history (the International Olympic Committee's method for determining sex used to be "let me see your junk"), and some stuff that I, for one, didn't know (you can be XY and express as a female). And I thought there was a landing point that the world would accept, namely: "The IOC and other sports governing bodies are going to set standards for who can compete. You might think those standards are too strict, you might think they're too lenient, but regardless, we all need to understand: They're just creating a (somewhat arbitrary) standard about who gets to compete. They are NOT creating a definitive standard for who is a man and who is a woman."
We didn't do it. Now: That's not unusual. Most pitches don't make it to air; "I pitched a thing and it didn't run" is a real "dog bites man" story. But it's also true that it instantly became a (friendly) joke around the office, like "oh, yeah, we're really going to do that. Are you trying to get us all fired?" It definitely would have been risky. There's no question that the environment around trans issues greatly reduced that story's chances of running.
And it's easy to say "they should have done it!" But...should we have? It was easy for me to pitch it, because the decision about whether to do it or not ultimately wasn't mine. What if we had done it, and it caused a major shitstorm, and a major chunk of our audience tuned out, and it significantly altered the course of the show? In a worst case scenario, maybe we even get cancelled; am I going to be the one to tell the staff "sorry you all have to get new jobs -- I thought it would be an interesting piece"? There's a discussion to be had about how a TV show (or newspaper, or newsletter, or whatever) should navigate those challenges, and whether you can develop a brand in which your audience WANTS you to tackle tough issues, and so forth. But the settled part of the issue -- the part that I tried to illuminate in this article -- is that these pressures exist, and you definitely feel them.
"Ex-'Daily Show' Writer* Calls 'Daily Stormer' Only Authentic Voice in Media"
*Yeah, I know. Actually, do you want me to say this on Twitter? It would probably help both of us.
Yeah, absolutely go for it as long as you have enough followers that there are enough people who hate you who will subscribe to the newsletter purely out of spite.
Just wanted to say how much I appreciate this newsletter. I've been a free subscriber for a little over a month and I always get a little tingling feeling when I see a new post from you. I enjoy your comedy style and appreciate the fact you write on many different topics (sex workers for example). I subscribe to 8 or so substacks and yours is definitely the most unique. I will start paying once my bank account is back in order, but anyway THANK YOU!
Thanks! Very glad you're enjoying it. If you're able to switch to paid at some point, that's great, but if not, no worries and maybe you can mention the newsletter to a friend or two. Referrals are worth a lot.
LWT's success proves there's potentially a large audience for you. Like LWT, you say something new that feels true, with a delicious glaze of absurdist wit. Surely success is just a matter of getting enough of the right people to sample your work. Guest essays in upscale lefty publications would probably do the trick.
Thanks! I hope you're right, and yes: Guest essays are going to be key. It's already the case that most people found me through either Matt Yglesias or Persuasion.
And I should add this: The fact that so many people found me through already-wonky sources is doing a ton to solve the "do you give people what they want, or do you write about what you think you SHOULD write about?" problem discussed in this article. So far, people usually want me to write about wonky stuff, which is a miracle, because that's what I want to do.