Dec. 19, 2018 - The Joe Rogan Experience
01:54:47
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
| Two. | ||
| One. | ||
| Fucking kids today. | ||
| Hasn't everybody said that from the beginning of time? | ||
| I bet cave people were saying that shit. | ||
| Uh-huh. | ||
| You know? | ||
| It's just... | ||
| It is what it is, right? | ||
| Every new group comes up. | ||
| They try to reestablish themselves as smarter... | ||
| You know, there's the new group coming up. | ||
| They're going to change the rules. | ||
| I don't know what's so wrong with how we turned out. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| We're a mess. | ||
| I think every generation is better than the next in terms of how... | ||
| This is the best times I've ever been for most people. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I'm saying from how we handled things perspective... | ||
| Things seem, I'm like a fine human being. | ||
| You seem like a fine, like most human beings are fine and we were raised quite, I don't want to say differently, but a little better in my perspective than like what's happening now. | ||
| Like what is being corrected is strange to me. | ||
| To people that don't know the story, let's fill them in on your story and how we got together. | ||
| So you're doing a gig. | ||
| You're at Columbia. | ||
| So a few months ago, I got this group called the Asian American Alliance at Columbia University hit me up saying, hey, you know, we're big fans of your work. | ||
| I was the first Indian to ever write for SNL. And so that was a story in the Asian American Indian community. | ||
| And so they hit me up in, like, May or June. | ||
| Like, hey, come. | ||
| We have this show in November. | ||
| It's called Culture Shock. | ||
| It's a big, like, fashion culture kind of event. | ||
| And I've done, like, tons of these before, you know? | ||
| Because my sister and I, we both went to NYU, but my sister, like, helped put on these kinds of shows. | ||
| So I would attend them, and, like, I've seen them ever since high school. | ||
| Because I went to high school in Parsippany, New Jersey, which is, like... | ||
| A hyper-diverse kind of place. | ||
| At least with Asians and Indian people. | ||
| And I went to a few in high school. | ||
| I got laid after one of them when I was in high school. | ||
| Congratulations! | ||
| I lost my virginity after one of them. | ||
| They held a special place in my heart. | ||
| And so I went... | ||
| Thinking, okay, this is going to be fun. | ||
| And they know who they're getting in that, you know, the email says, we're fans of your work. | ||
| Like, we want you to come do the show. | ||
| It's about, like, representing Asian identities and all that. | ||
| I'm like, dope. | ||
| And that's, I get there at, like, 730, and I walk in, and I'm like, okay, I know all these kids. | ||
| I mean, they're, like, 20 or something, but, like, I know them. | ||
| I grew up with these kids, you know, like, Abigails and Prateeks or whatever. | ||
| Like, I know all these guys. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And immediately my comic hat turns on. | ||
| I'm like, okay, the show itself, the energy is dope. | ||
| But the show, like acoustically I'm looking, okay, there's a high ceiling, the lighting shit. | ||
| It's not set up for like a comedy event, but I still think, okay, this is going to go well. | ||
| 8.30, 8.45, I get on stage. | ||
| And I'm like, I do some Columbia stuff because I went to Columbia for like a summer program. | ||
| I started making fun of the kids a bit. | ||
| And I say, do I have to give like a trigger warning? | ||
| Almost like joking. | ||
| Like, do I have to give a trigger warning? | ||
| Because I know... | ||
| You know, that's a thing. | ||
| And I say, like, be careful. | ||
| Some of this might be sexist. | ||
| Some of this might be racist. | ||
| You know, just buckle up. | ||
| And one girl boos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm like, you're booing? | |
| Already? | ||
| It's like two minutes in. | ||
| And I'm like, well, look, I just listened to the set on the way here. | ||
| And I said, well, buckle up, you know, because this is the real world or whatever. | ||
| And then I go into material. | ||
| And it's going well. | ||
| This is one story I want to dispel. | ||
| I will fully own a bomb. | ||
| If I'm bombing, I know I'm bombing. | ||
| I will tell you I've bombed a billion times. | ||
| I'm doing fine. | ||
| 60-70% of the set. | ||
| 17 minutes in, I tell the joke where I say, effectively, you know, I don't think being gay is a choice, which I don't think it is at all. | ||
| But this is how you know, because there's gay black people, and no one's going to choose to be gay if they're already black, right? | ||
| No one's doubling down on hardship. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a funny joke. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| That's a funny joke. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| No black dude ever wakes up and thinks, you know what, this black shit, too easy. | ||
| I'm going to put on a Madonna halter top and some Jordans and tell an Indian dude how to live his life. | ||
| That's not a choice. | ||
| You were born that way. | ||
| And it bombs. | ||
| Like, there's silence. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Complete silence. | ||
| And then I say, you're exactly who I expected to be as a crowd. | ||
| And then I say, the only person that chooses... | ||
| This is also what was in print is that the offensive part to me, what I think is offensive, is the next part where I say the only person that chooses whether or not to be gay on a daily basis is Mike Pence, right? | ||
| We can all agree that... | ||
| Like, I don't know if he's gay or not, but no man hates homosexuals that much if he himself is not a homosexual. | ||
| He chooses not to be gay every day. | ||
| And that gets some laughs and applause, and I'm like, okay, cool. | ||
| And then I get back into it. | ||
| I'm rolling for about another two or three minutes. | ||
| I start talking to some... | ||
| I do a joke about how my dad landed in Newark when he immigrated to America. | ||
| Some girl's from Newark. | ||
| She interrupts. | ||
| I start talking to her for like two minutes. | ||
| And that goes terribly. | ||
| It's just like I'm trying to – I'm going fishing with her, just trying to see if I can get back into it. | ||
| What is she interrupting? | ||
| Is she heckling or is she? | ||
| I say a joke where I said my dad landed in Newark. | ||
| Back when he landed, it was called Brick City because if you looked at someone wrong, they'd hit you with a brick. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Fine kind of throwaway line. | ||
| This girl goes, that's not true. | ||
| I'm like, obviously... | ||
| I'm just kidding. | ||
| But I know what she's trying to do. | ||
| I'm just trying to talk to her. | ||
| And I'm going, trying to talk about... | ||
| Trying to get back into material. | ||
| And that's like probably minute 20 or something. | ||
| And then... | ||
| Out of my corner of my left eye, I see the three girls that invited me to do the show, initially in May or June, like, gather. | ||
| And I'm like, that's kind of strange. | ||
| I still talk to this girl for, like, another 30 seconds. | ||
| And then as I'm concluding my talking to her, because I realize that's not going to go anywhere. | ||
| They come on stage with microphones in like one trench coat and they're just like... | ||
| They're like, it's time for... | ||
| Literally, they say there's been a change. | ||
| Thank you, Nimesh. | ||
| There's been a changing program. | ||
| You know, we've received some comments from members. | ||
| You know, we think that's enough. | ||
| How long have you been on stage for? | ||
| 20-something minutes at this point. | ||
| And it was that one joke that did it? | ||
| So I go, I'm like, first I'm like, I'm not even mad at this point. | ||
| I'm just like in shock. | ||
| I'm like, this is like an episode of Impractical Jokers. | ||
| I'm like, what are you talking about? | ||
| I still have 45 minutes left. | ||
| I'm slated to do an hour. | ||
| I'm like, really? | ||
| And they say, yeah, there's been comments. | ||
| People are upset or offended. | ||
| And I'm like, I feel like we're having a good time. | ||
| And some of the crowd cheers. | ||
| And then I'm like, why do I got to go? | ||
| And one of the girls goes, the tech has to leave. | ||
| And I look at the tech has to leave. | ||
| This is all on YouTube. | ||
| Like someone put the YouTube video out of this particular part. | ||
| And I go, they better be leaving because I can see the tech people. | ||
| And I look at them like, you got to bounce, dude? | ||
| So the tech people, meaning the people that are coordinating the electronics that broadcast the show. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Whoever's running, I don't need tech. | ||
| I don't have fucking pyro. | ||
| The microphone's on. | ||
| What do you mean the tech has to go? | ||
| The tech people, they're coming up with lies. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I understand why she lied because she's trying to save face and not to embarrass me or whatever, but I'm like, I'm not going to believe that shit that all three of you came out to be like, the tech has to go. | ||
| And then I go, is it because the tech has to leave or because I'm saying some things that made people uncomfortable? | ||
| And one of the other girls goes, we think there's a distinction between being uncomfortable and being disrespectful. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I'm like, don't use your big words on me. | |
| But in my brain, I'm like, what are you talking about? | ||
| I don't think I've been disrespectful at all. | ||
| And there are some people who are like, what the fuck is going on? | ||
| Majority of people are like, what the fuck is going on? | ||
| But there's a pocket of the crowd where the three Asian American Alliance leaders and the rest of the crew was waiting. | ||
| And I think some of them cheer when there's a distinction between disrespectful and being uncomfortable. | ||
| I'm like, I haven't been disrespectful in the slightest. | ||
| What are you talking about? | ||
| And then one girl goes, we think you're not entitled to be making some of the jokes you're making. | ||
| And I'm like, my trigger word is entitled. | ||
| I'm thinking... | ||
| And at this point, I'm like, I'm too... | ||
| Almost in shock, deer in headlights, kind of, to, like, even process anger. | ||
| I'm just like... | ||
| Now I'm just trying to assess what they're specifically saying. | ||
| Like, which joke specifically? | ||
| And they're like, we think that gay and black joke is particularly offensive or whatever. | ||
| And I'm like... | ||
| And then at this point, I'm like, instead of explaining that the joke is quite progressive... | ||
| I'm like, I literally got that joke from an audience member at Stand Up New York in like 2011. Like, I remember the conversation distinctly because it was such like one of these sort of, oh shit, that's a good bit moments. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I tell them that. | ||
| And they were like... | ||
| You got it talking to a guy in the crowd? | ||
| So I was on stage, and I used to live in Hell's Kitchen in New York, and there's like a gay black constituency that would always make fun of me when I was leaving my apartment. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| But like ribbing me, you know what I mean? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so, like, I'm trying to talk about that on stage at Stand Up New York, doing, like, a check spot or whatever, and I'm talking to the crowd, and then there's a gay black guy that, like, heckled me. | ||
| And I start talking to him, and then at some point, I'm like, this is how you know being gay can't be a choice, right? | ||
| And he starts dying, and we have, like, a good rapport. | ||
| I'm like, oh, perfect. | ||
| This is a great bit that I just got. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right, right. | |
| And so I tell them that, and they're like, no, you know, there's been a change, you have to go, and I'm like, effectively, I'm like, you're wrong for doing what you're doing right now. | ||
| I'm a generation older than you guys. | ||
| I know comedy better than anybody in this room. | ||
| That's for goddamn sure. | ||
| And I know disrespect, and I've been through a lot of shit. | ||
| Like, I know that what I'm saying right now hasn't been offensive in the slightest. | ||
| And I say, you can't isolate yourself from the real world. | ||
| Like, what are you going to do when some real bad shit happens in the world? | ||
| Like, if someone actually does something that's offensive. | ||
| Like, you can't handle things this way if you silence someone. | ||
| That's not progress or whatever. | ||
| And then they asked me if I have closing remarks. | ||
| Whoa, you have closing remarks? | ||
| Closing remarks. | ||
| You should have prepared some. | ||
| It's hard to come up with closing remarks out of nowhere. | ||
| On the spot. | ||
| I tried to save it. | ||
| I tried to save it with a bit, you know? | ||
| And it fucking bombs. | ||
| And I'm like, alright. | ||
| And I'm like, I'm still talking. | ||
| And then they cut my mic. | ||
| And I'm like, really? | ||
| I'm like, really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
You cut my mic? | |
| Alright. | ||
| And then I'm like, alright, thank you. | ||
| Put the mic down. | ||
| And I bounce. | ||
| And then they try to... | ||
| Then they won't even let me talk to them backstage. | ||
| Like, one member's like, we gotta escort you out. | ||
| I'm like, you're gonna escort me out? | ||
| I'm a 6'1 Indian dude. | ||
| Like, I don't need escort from you, tiny person. | ||
| Like, I'll be fine. | ||
| I'm not here to fight anybody. | ||
| Even though I was, this is not the move you're gonna... | ||
| So, are they escorting you out because they want to kick you out? | ||
| Or are they worried about your safety? | ||
| No, they want to escort me out because they want to take me out. | ||
| Right, right, right. | ||
| And so, I go to... | ||
| I have a camera crew there. | ||
| Because I'm trying to film every hour that I do. | ||
| And I go to them, and I'm like, what the fuck? | ||
| If you watch a YouTube clip, I'm like, on stage, I look at them, I go to them, and then some of the members from the Alliance try to talk to me. | ||
| Like, we're so sorry that that happened. | ||
| That's not all of us, or we don't know what just happened. | ||
| In my head, I'm thinking, so much for the Alliance part of this whole thing, right? | ||
| I thought we were the same people. | ||
| We come from the same place. | ||
| So there's no other jokes they found offensive? | ||
| That was the only one? | ||
| That's what they said. | ||
| There's two or three things that said articles, which I made the mistake of just reading everything. | ||
| Don't ever do that. | ||
| Don't ever do that. | ||
| I read everything. | ||
| There's two or three articles that say I was badgering two people in the crowd. | ||
| And there's one girl who, maybe two or three minutes in, I talked to her for crowd work. | ||
| I asked where she's from, what she's doing, whatever. | ||
| And she gets up. | ||
| She stands and shows herself off to the crowd. | ||
| I make fun of her for a little bit. | ||
| And then this other girl, the Newark chick, that is like... | ||
| We get personal because she reveals that her father's not in her life. | ||
| The conversation just gets awkward. | ||
| She revealed that her father's not in her life while she was in the crowd? | ||
| I'm talking to her like... | ||
| I was like, what do your parents do or whatever? | ||
| And she's like, I don't know what my dad does. | ||
| I'm like, what do you mean? | ||
| He's like, oh, I don't know him. | ||
| I'm like, oh, but he's not in your life or whatever. | ||
| And she's like, yeah. | ||
| I was like, okay, I can sense that she's uncomfortable now. | ||
| To the point where I asked her, I was like, are you uncomfortable? | ||
| And she said, no. | ||
| I'm like, okay, cool. | ||
| I can make this worse. | ||
| And then I'm like, but I won't. | ||
| You seem like a nice person. | ||
| That's when they came out. | ||
| But the people are apologizing to me, and I'm like, Now I'm mad. | ||
| Now I'm like, once I leave the stage, now I'm livid. | ||
| But I know myself well enough to be like, I'm not going to talk to anybody if I'm angry because I'll just say some wild shit. | ||
| I could have billboard Philadelphia the whole thing. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| This just went off on all these people for like 10 minutes. | ||
| What the fuck is wrong with us? | ||
| But I just went. | ||
| I was like, I gotta go. | ||
| I'm out. | ||
| And I took my crew and we just walked straight out of this fucking giant hall. | ||
| And... | ||
| And then, like, I'm waiting for my car and people from the show are, like, apologizing. | ||
| Not, like, just audience members. | ||
| Like, yo, we're so sorry. | ||
| That was fucked up. | ||
| That shouldn't have happened. | ||
| You were doing great. | ||
| Whatever. | ||
| And then, like, I get in my Uber to my next show. | ||
| After this, I have to do another hour. | ||
| At another show. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Where are you going next? | |
| UCB East in Lower East Side. | ||
| From Columbia to Lower East Side. | ||
| It's like a 30-40 minute ride. | ||
| And we hop in the car and I'm like, first I'm going to text my agent. | ||
| I'm like, this just happened. | ||
| And he's like, do not say shit until you get paid. | ||
| I'm like, that's probably the right move. | ||
| Because I'm about to just fucking Instagram. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a real agent. | |
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| Yeah, he's a man. | ||
| Protect the shekels. | ||
| Yeah, he was just, do not say shit until you get paid. | ||
| I'm like, you're right. | ||
| Smart man. | ||
| And I'm just like, in my head, like, mad, listening to, like, Drake, just like, I gotta let enemies... | ||
| I'm just like, fucking everything that... | ||
| I think is wrong that we hear as like a narrative of like kids are soft all this kind of shit is playing like yes that's what it is like and I'm thankful that my crew was there because I'm venting to them because if they weren't there I'd be on some other shit. | ||
| But as I'm checking my Instagram, because I'm like, this is definitely going to be a fucking story on Instagram at the very least. | ||
| People are DMing me from the show. | ||
| Like, yo, we're so sorry that that happened. | ||
| That's so fucked up. | ||
| People are emailing me the same shit. | ||
| Was anybody saying, fuck you, you shouldn't have been there in the first place? | ||
| No, no one said that to me. | ||
| One girl who was the suite mate of one of the organizers DM'd me and just yelled at me basically. | ||
| I wrote to her, thank you for your support. | ||
| What did she say? | ||
| She said, let me find it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Saved it? | |
| Dude, my DMs just blew up. | ||
| Is this Twitter or Instagram? | ||
| Instagram. | ||
| My Instagram's not up. | ||
| I deleted it from my phone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You deleted it from your phone. | |
| I check it in the morning and then I delete it. | ||
| And then I check it at night and then I delete it again. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| I just fucking hate... | ||
| When I was at SNL, I worked on Update. | ||
| And so I was constantly on my phone or on Twitter or on Instagram just checking news, reading shit. | ||
| And like... | ||
| It annoyed the shit out of me. | ||
| I hate the news. | ||
| Lo and behold, I am the news now for a bit, but I hate the news. | ||
| It's all bullshit. | ||
| And being in this cycle has confirmed my belief that it's all fucking nonsense. | ||
| But she effectively says, I hope you learned your lesson of respecting what you were hired to do and respecting strong young women and check your fucking ego. | ||
| And I was just like... | ||
| I was like, it took all of me not to just be like, just eviscerate. | ||
| Because I'm like, I'm good with, I'm not good at a lot of things, but I can eviscerate somebody in an Instagram DM. And so I didn't say shit to her besides thank you for your support. | ||
| But all these people are messaging me like, yo, we're so sorry that fucking happened. | ||
| And I'm like, alright, I'm not totally fucked with all these kids. | ||
| And I go to this show at UCB East and I'm taping an hour. | ||
| So I can't even process what just happened because my instinct is to just talk about this immediately. | ||
| But I can't because I have to tape this hour. | ||
| And so I get off stage, and the hour goes well, and as I'm leaving UCB East, three kids that were at the show at Columbia had come down from Columbia and followed me to UCB East, and they came up to me and apologized in person. | ||
| They're like, we're so sorry that happened. | ||
| We loved your set. | ||
| We don't know what the fuck is going on. | ||
| And that gave me a beat to be like, alright, you know? | ||
| Like, maybe everyone isn't this way. | ||
| Maybe it's just the people that have the fucking bullhorn that get to just say whatever the fuck they want and silence people that are, like, the minority, but they're, like, the vocal minority. | ||
| Whereas, like, all these people that are, like, actually on my squad are not as vocal as they can be. | ||
| They're more, like, quiet and apologizing in person. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| And so the next day, I don't think anything about it, but the Columbia newspaper hits me up. | ||
| I leave Columbia at 9.30. | ||
| The Columbia newspaper hits me up at 10.05 p.m. | ||
| Like, hey, do you have any comment? | ||
| I'm like, comment? | ||
| I'm hungry. | ||
| How's that for a comment? | ||
| I'm not going to talk to you right now. | ||
| Let me fucking process what's going on. | ||
| The next day, I'm still thinking about it, but I'm going down to open for Aziz in Atlantic City. | ||
| And open for him, and I'm telling him this story. | ||
| And he immediately hits on the fact that it's crazy that these kids came up to you and apologized. | ||
| And I'm like, I didn't even think about how insane that is, because I'm still mad. | ||
| But I'm talking to these kids. | ||
| I'm talking to Aziz and I'm just like, that is kind of crazy. | ||
| Because it's so easy to buy into the shit that everyone is a fucking soft motherfucker. | ||
| And then I think about it some more. | ||
| And then I think about all the gigs I've done college-wise before. | ||
| In the past year, I've been lucky to know. | ||
| I did Texas. | ||
| I did a school in Alaska. | ||
| I did a school in Ohio. | ||
| I did a school in Maryland. | ||
| And I've said much more offensive shit, like anti-Trump shit in the fucking redness of states. | ||
| It's all been fine. | ||
| I've never been kicked off stage before. | ||
| To me, this Columbia incident, even the students there seem like the exception rather than the rule of everyone's a soft person. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Does that make sense? | ||
| It does make sense, but what I think is... | ||
| Is young kids in particular that are in a position of power, right? | ||
| They're running something. | ||
| They have this idea of how people should behave that they want in their head. | ||
| And when you don't fit that mold, then they just decide to be outraged. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what happened here. | ||
| You need to look at the context of what you said. | ||
| First of all, you're a comedian, right? | ||
| You're obviously a guy with jokes about shit, right? | ||
| You're not saying anything negative about black people. | ||
| You're not saying anything about gay people. | ||
| You're essentially admitting that it's a hardship. | ||
| I mean, we all agree that black people experience racism and gay people experience homophobia. | ||
| Everybody agrees that. | ||
| So that joke makes perfect sense and it's funny. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I mean, it's stupid. | ||
| What they're doing is stupid. | ||
| But that's normal, man. | ||
| Dude, that's been going on forever. | ||
| I stopped doing colleges a long time ago, like the early 2000s. | ||
| I did a college in Florida. | ||
| And I remember thinking, they don't know enough. | ||
| This is not fun. | ||
| The only reason why I would do this is for money, because colleges pay a lot of money. | ||
| But they don't know enough. | ||
| If they're 18-year-old kids and they can get to a club that has an 18-year-old limit where you can get in at 18, they should do that. | ||
| And then they'll be with other 30-year-olds and people with life experience. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| I don't want to perform at the whim of children. | ||
| And that's what these are. | ||
| These are children who are engaging in recreational outrage. | ||
| They're deciding to be outraged. | ||
| You know, it felt like with them particularly, it felt like... | ||
| I grew up fine. | ||
| I didn't grow up rich, but my parents had some money for a bit before things went... | ||
| We're average middle class people. | ||
| But like... | ||
| To me, it's like, I've been through some life, and so I know when people who haven't been through life get upset about shit. | ||
| It's always like, the thing with Texas and Ohio and Alaska is like, these are like the kids of blue-collar people. | ||
| The people who have been through some shit. | ||
| And maybe not even just blue-collar, but people who have been through some kind of life, a life experience, where they know that... | ||
| Things aren't just like, words can hurt, but for the most part, they're fine. | ||
| It's like when your fucking dad loses his job. | ||
| Well, it's also the intent of what you're trying to do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, what are you trying to do? | ||
| You're trying to get laughs. | ||
| You're telling jokes and trying to get laughs. | ||
| That's what you're fucking hired to do. | ||
| Yeah, they take the context of... | ||
| People forget that comedian is a job. | ||
| That, like, I'm here, like, it's not who I am as a human being necessarily. | ||
| I will go for funny first. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Funny over everything. | ||
| Well, you're a fucking New York City comedian. | ||
| Right. | ||
| You have to. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's the only way it works. | ||
| It's so crazy what people, I think, I don't know if kids have changed or whatever. | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| They haven't changed. | ||
| They just think that this is the thing to do now. | ||
| Look, when I was doing colleges way back in the day, I was in my 20s. | ||
| I did a college in Connecticut. | ||
| And right after I did the college, I was talking to the kids. | ||
| I would do my set, and then I would open up for Q&A. Yeah. | ||
| Oh, the fuck's going on my throat. | ||
| But it was... | ||
| I was probably 24, 25 maybe? | ||
| Maybe 25 at the oldest. | ||
| So I was just a couple years older than them. | ||
| And so it was fun for me to talk to them about what life is like when you actually have to pay your own bills and you're out free. | ||
| And some guy goes, you know, like I was doing the question thing, and some guy goes, I go, you know, I lift his hand up, he goes, tell a joke. | ||
| I go, tell a joke. | ||
| And I go, two Jews walk into a bar. | ||
| They buy it. | ||
| It's an old fucking street joke. | ||
| After the show, you know, the show goes great. | ||
| I say, thank you. | ||
| I really appreciate you guys for coming out. | ||
| It was really a lot of fun. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Good night. | ||
| So afterwards, I would always hang around and say hi to people. | ||
| There was no picture taken back then because you had to have an actual camera. | ||
| Nobody had a fucking camera. | ||
| Oh, it was a long time ago. | ||
| A long time ago. | ||
| I'm 51, so this is 90, 91, 92, somewhere around there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So this one guy comes up to me and goes, The joke he said about Jewish people is very offensive. | |
| And I thought he was joking. | ||
| I go, are you serious? | ||
| And he goes, yes, very offensive. | ||
| And he's like nervous and shit and like has a hard time looking me in the eye. | ||
| And I go, dude, I go, think about what the joke says. | ||
| It's about Jewish people being really good at business. | ||
| They walk into a bar, they decide to buy it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's nothing offensive about it at all. | |
| You know what's crazy? | ||
| It's like people now and maybe forever have always heard shit and they immediately think this means if I'm thinking something bad about this, that means that someone is saying something bad. | ||
| It's not even that they're thinking bad about it. | ||
| They've decided this is a taboo subject. | ||
| Even if you're not even saying anything negative about it. | ||
| Like say if you do a joke about interracial relationships. | ||
| The best kind. | ||
| In a racial race, just say it. | ||
| If you just do a joke about that. | ||
| There are people that are going to put red flags up instantly and look to misinterpret anything that you say on purpose. | ||
| Because they don't want that thought in their head. | ||
| They don't want the thought of, you know, like, this guy's looking for anti-Semitism in that joke. | ||
| Two Jews walk into a bar, they buy it. | ||
| There's none there! | ||
| You could look all day long. | ||
| It's a joke about Jewish folks buying stuff. | ||
| There's nothing negative about it at all. | ||
| You're confirming a positive stereotype. | ||
| Yes! | ||
| It's like a big dick black guy joke. | ||
| It's not negative. | ||
| There's nothing negative about it. | ||
| Nobody gets upset that you think they have a big dick. | ||
| Unless they have a little dick. | ||
| Unless they have a little dick. | ||
| It's a lot of let down. | ||
| But it's... | ||
| It's young people that are also flexing, right? | ||
| They're free from the control of their parents. | ||
| And I find that you're dealing with that more in, like... | ||
| Rich or upper-middle-class families because I think they're more hands-on with their kids and more controlling and those kids get free they want to exert their own freedom and when they get free their parents they want to Establish they're different and that they have their own mind their own and then we're part of the new generation and the new generation is not going to tolerate racism cis hetero Activity and they just decide that they're gonna fucking put their foot down but It's a pattern that repeats itself over and over and over again. | ||
| It's just today they have social media. | ||
| And this is the difference. | ||
| The difference is they feel like they're empowered. | ||
| Because they get online and other morons that are the same age as them confirm with them. | ||
| You can just confirm any belief that you want. | ||
| That's another lesson I've gotten from this. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Confirmation bias is the wildest shit ever. | ||
| You can be like, there's one lady who wrote some shit that I'm anti-gay and anti-black and other people. | ||
| I'm like, in the comments, yes, this is clearly what he was saying. | ||
| I'm like, you took that from my set? | ||
| Me, I'm anti-gay and anti-black. | ||
| I don't think there's a solution here. | ||
| Yeah, I've looked at this hard for a long time. | ||
| No, we need safe spaces for comedians. | ||
| There's no solution because you're dealing with immature people in terms of literally the development of their frontal lobe. | ||
| They're not fully formed yet. | ||
| How much do you think of it as like... | ||
| I put it in the op-ed that I wrote, but I was thinking about how much of it... | ||
| Now is a function of the fact that we immediately get whatever we want in our hands. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| There's instant gratification, so there's an instant kind of thought process where there's no real thinking that occurs. | ||
| It's more just like, this comes into my brain. | ||
| I hear gay black. | ||
| This has to be. | ||
| This is wrong. | ||
| It's coming out. | ||
| Yeah, for sure. | ||
| I mean, if you say gay black on stage today in a really liberal, very progressive environment... | ||
| You get this thing. | ||
| But you have to say something like super pro-gay and super pro-black, and it doesn't even have to be a joke. | ||
| You're better off just going for that applause break move. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Which is gross. | |
| People want their comedians to be their leaders. | ||
| That's what it feels like. | ||
| They just want to laugh. | ||
| No. | ||
| When I say people, I mean like this next group of comedy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, these kids you're talking about? | |
| But they don't, because the comedians that are going to be their leaders aren't even going to be funny. | ||
| They're going to fucking die. | ||
| They're starved to death. | ||
| Once you get out in the real world... | ||
| Fuck, man. | ||
| If you're not funny... | ||
| You're fucked, yes. | ||
| You have nothing. | ||
| But, like, it's like, if I went up there and I said, Asians are the shit, and fuck Whitey, I would have been out on the fucking chairs. | ||
| They would have carried me out. | ||
| Like, this is our motherfucker. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| But, like, that's the thing. | ||
| I think, like, people want... | ||
| Like, I'm not a hero, man. | ||
| I'm just trying to be heard, you know? | ||
| Well, you're a comic. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, you're trying to be funny. | ||
| Yes, that's all it is. | ||
| I really believe that this is just a symptom of growing up. | ||
| And you're just giving these people the power to express themselves where there's no mature, wiser person that's around them that says, hold on, let's look at the context of what he's doing. | ||
| Let's examine what he's doing and then you're going to apologize to him because this is clearly a fucking joke. | ||
| You hired a guy to tell jokes. | ||
| He tells jokes and you say, not that joke. | ||
| Right, you know, this specific thing is strange because everyone's like, he did not respect what the event was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, hey, I'm like, what? | |
| I mean, I'm not your mascot here. | ||
| This is not a pep rally, dog. | ||
| I'm here to tell jokes. | ||
| You weren't hired to do a speech about this event. | ||
| Right, I'm here. | ||
| You were hired to do your act. | ||
| My fucking act. | ||
| I don't think they understand how long it takes to write an act. | ||
| It's... | ||
| That's another conversation. | ||
| Comedy is fucking hard work. | ||
| It's fucking hard. | ||
| You think I'm going to just go up there and just... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, we were all out last night. | ||
| I ran into you. | ||
| You were at the improv as well, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| Yeah, I mean, dude, we're grinding, right? | ||
| It's fucking... | ||
| Throwing shit up there, trying new bits. | ||
| It's tough. | ||
| Recording things, listening to them. | ||
| We're like, oh, this didn't work. | ||
| Now I've got to restructure it. | ||
| Now I'm going to go back and try to figure out how I can make this gay black joke. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Better. | ||
| The problem is the gay black joke, now everybody knows it. | ||
| Everyone knows it. | ||
| People are now going to go, do the gay black joke! | ||
| Gay black! | ||
| Hey, gay black! | ||
| People are going to start cheering for it. | ||
| Gay black, gay black, gay black. | ||
| My friend started a hashtag challenge, which I hope no one picks up, the Nimesh challenge, where if I'm on stage somewhere, you just come on stage and rip the mic out of my head. | ||
| You just fucked up. | ||
| Don't do that, please. | ||
| You definitely should have said that on this show. | ||
| Good luck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good luck in the next six months. | |
| Oh, Christ. | ||
| I really don't think this is a big deal. | ||
| I just think there's a reason why all these different comedians have been saying... | ||
| I heard John Mulaney said this recently, and I really love John Mulaney, but I completely disagree with him. | ||
| He said the reason why comedians don't do college is that it's nothing to do with political correctness, it has to do with the money. | ||
| That is not true. | ||
| No. | ||
| He says that because his act is really good and really clean. | ||
| You can essentially do his act anywhere. | ||
| It's an excellent act. | ||
| But there's other guys like that, like Brian Regan. | ||
| He's got an excellent act. | ||
| He can do colleges anywhere. | ||
| Gaffigan, yeah. | ||
| Gaffigan, yeah, anywhere. | ||
| The reason why they don't do colleges is because the kids are too fucking sensitive. | ||
| That's 100% the reason. | ||
| Do you think that... | ||
| They don't make money at colleges. | ||
| You don't understand how much colleges pay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They pay a lot of money. | |
| I think to a lot of comics, it's just not worth the hassle. | ||
| It's not worth it. | ||
| If I didn't need the cash and I was like, Jerry, if I was whatever, the two and a half weeks that I've spent reading the news and answering emails and getting back into the shit of just like, they said what? | ||
| If I didn't, I would easily give that up. | ||
| But here's the flip side. | ||
| This is probably one of the best things that's ever happened to you as a stand-up. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| That's what everyone's saying. | ||
| Gigantic national attention. | ||
| The two things every comic has said is, one, do you get paid? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And two is, good press, right? | ||
| I'm like, you fucking pricks. | ||
| But it's true. | ||
| No, it's great. | ||
| And you're going to feel the same way after time has sort of soothed the wounds over. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, yeah. | |
| Right now, it's still raw and fresh, and you're still angry. | ||
| I'm still getting shit from comics. | ||
| That's been my favorite thing about all this, is just comedians talking shit. | ||
| One of my friends posted on Facebook, he said, I mean, who among us hasn't wanted to snatch the mic out of Nimesh's hand? | ||
| Just like pieces of shit. | ||
| Like, let me live, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But you would have done the same thing! | ||
| Of course! | ||
|
unidentified
|
We can't help it! | |
| Of course! | ||
| The bomb hurried around the world! | ||
| My comic friends would come to the fuck you guys. | ||
| Dude, Jeff Ross who set this up. | ||
| Jeff is the one who connected us. | ||
| Shout out Jeff. | ||
| Shout out to Jeff Ross. | ||
| Jeff said something that I agree with so wholeheartedly. | ||
| He said, I'm almost a comedian before I'm an American. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He said that on this, right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And I'm like, yeah. | ||
| Yeah, it's like, it's a rare person. | ||
| There's only, dude, how many of us are there in the whole country? | ||
| Is there even a thousand? | ||
| Like, real legitimate working ones? | ||
| I don't know, man. | ||
| How many headliners? | ||
| Is there 500? | ||
| Is there like legit, how many would you pay to see? | ||
| Is it a hundred? | ||
| Yeah, that's a good question. | ||
| I might pay to see a hundred dudes in the country. | ||
| Maybe in the world. | ||
| Let me be honest. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I might pay to see two dudes outside of the country. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| International acts. | ||
| Fine. | ||
| Lovely people. | ||
| Good luck with that. | ||
| This shit's America. | ||
| I agree with Jeff wholeheartedly. | ||
| It's also like what he said about the instant you see a comic from, even if they're in England or South Africa, you immediately have that kinship. | ||
| You're a comedian. | ||
| You ever watch Comedians in Cars when Chris and Jerry do it? | ||
| I've never watched it. | ||
| Oh, it's great. | ||
| I mean, I like some of the interviews that he does, but Chris and Jerry have a moment where they're talking about going to a party and seeing each other, and Chris comes up to Jerry and just goes, Comedian! | ||
| You know? | ||
| They're the only two people that know each other. | ||
| And it's like, that's the kinship that I think you have as a comic. | ||
| But I forget what we're talking about. | ||
| How did we get on this? | ||
| Well, we're just talking about guys giving you shit. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, that's the best part. | ||
| It's just like motherfuckers being like, you bombing motherfuckers. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| I love it. | ||
| New York is special in that way. | ||
| New York's extra mean because it's cold. | ||
| Oh, it's fucking brutal. | ||
| That's what it is. | ||
| LA out here, people are, first of all, they're trying to get acting gigs. | ||
| They're kissing ass and they're being fake. | ||
| And then on top of that, it's warm all the time. | ||
| Did you start in... | ||
| Where'd you start? | ||
| I started in Boston. | ||
| Boston, right. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Boston, New York, L.A. But I've been to L.A. I've been, I mean, if you wanted to look at it on paper, although I always consider myself a Boston comic, I'm more of an L.A. comic than anything. | ||
| I've been out here since 94. Oh, shit. | ||
| I was thinking about it the other day. | ||
| You're a 30-year guy. | ||
| Yeah, 30 years. | ||
| 30 years in stand-up. | ||
| That's a long time, man. | ||
| It's your life. | ||
| Your whole life as a human. | ||
| You said you were on stage at college in 1990. I was four. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, is it crazy? | |
| I think it was 92. Now that I'm thinking. | ||
| Yeah, somewhere around 92. But either way, it's a long-ass time. | ||
| And the crazy thing is, dude, you still keep learning. | ||
| Like, you still keep learning. | ||
| Like, I'll still have a weird set, and I'll go, ah, why did I do it that way? | ||
| Or I'll have this idea in my head, let me just flip this around, and it'll fuck the whole joke up. | ||
| I'm like, ah, why did I say rescue first? | ||
| I should've said that later. | ||
| God damn it. | ||
| That goes just go back to how much work this shit is, where it's just that you forget how fucking much time you gotta invest. | ||
| I got two new babies right now. | ||
| Not real babies. | ||
| I have real kids, but I have two new comedy babies. | ||
| Even better. | ||
| And I'm watering them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like right now, they're like, ooh, I gotta give them some light. | ||
| I gotta make sure they get the right fertilizer. | ||
| Like right now, I have two bits. | ||
| One bit that's one day old. | ||
| I did it yesterday for the first time. | ||
| I've been working on it for a couple weeks. | ||
| I knew there was some life to it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I sat down, I wrote it out, and I said, okay, I'm gonna freeball this shit last night. | ||
| What's your process? | ||
| I have, over the last three or four years, actually five, since I did my Comedy Central special in 2014, I decided to change my process right before that, because I decided that I needed to do more specials, because I went from, I did one in 2009 that I really liked, then I did one in 2012 that I half-assed. | ||
| And then I said, okay. | ||
| Because I wasn't at the store anymore, and I wasn't doing weekly sets. | ||
| So then I realized, okay, there's a very distinct process in terms of the work that you have to do. | ||
| First of all, you have to go up a lot. | ||
| You have to go up at least three or four days a week, and I would like to go multiple times a night, and I'd like to go to different environments. | ||
| Not just the store. | ||
| I'd like to do the improv. | ||
| I'd like to do the ice house. | ||
| I'd like to do different environments. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| Then, I have to write-write. | ||
| Like, sit in front of a computer and write. | ||
| And I like to do it high, and I like to do it sober. | ||
| I like to do it both ways. | ||
| And George Carlin had an interesting method that I think I'm starting to adopt, because I've been doing it a lot lately, even though it's subconscious, where I write out concepts sober, and then I fire up. | ||
| Then I spark up a joint, and then I go over it again when I'm high. | ||
| Like, the structure's already there. | ||
| And then I'll start putting the funny. | ||
| Then, after the writing part, there's like a lot of going over it and thinking about it. | ||
| I try to give it a little life before I bring it to the stage. | ||
| Then when I bring it to the stage, I write it out on paper. | ||
| I have to write it out on paper because that's how I remember where my bullet points are. | ||
| Then recording, always. | ||
| And then review of the recording. | ||
| Then rewriting after the review of the recording. | ||
| This process is like, this is my process. | ||
| And when I do it that way, I feel better. | ||
| I feel excited. | ||
| Like last night I came home. | ||
| I wrote until 2.30 in the morning. | ||
| I came home at 12.30. | ||
| I wrote for two hours. | ||
| And by the time I'm falling asleep in front of my laptop, I shut the laptop. | ||
| I know I'm done. | ||
| But I feel good. | ||
| I'm getting it in. | ||
| I know it's happening. | ||
| Like this is all live shit. | ||
| Working out. | ||
| Yeah, and I go to bed. | ||
| I feel good. | ||
| I go to bed. | ||
| I'm like, yes. | ||
| I'm like, this is alive. | ||
| This bitch is alive. | ||
| And you wake up and it's the first thing you think about. | ||
| Like, oh yeah, I got this. | ||
| I got this new bit. | ||
| Last night. | ||
| I did it for the first time last night. | ||
| And it did well at the comedy store, but then it crushed at the improv. | ||
| I'm like, woo, this motherfucker's alive. | ||
| What was the bit? | ||
| The bit is about old people getting STDs at nursing homes. | ||
| Fuck yes. | ||
| That is a phenomenon. | ||
| It's a new thing. | ||
| It's a new thing that's happening. | ||
| Why not? | ||
| I mean, just fucking throw your dick around if you're 85 years old. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Because no one needs condoms. | ||
| You ain't getting pregnant. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| But then there's this other bit that I'm working on as well that's a little bit older about the dude from the missionary that got shot up by the arrows by the uncontacted tribe. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| My people did that. | ||
| That's what happens, though. | ||
| They came from Africa. | ||
| They lived in an Indian island. | ||
| But they immigrated from Africa 60,000 years ago. | ||
| Uncontacted tribe. | ||
| But the point being that the process, for me, it's the most important thing, I think. | ||
| Out of all this stuff, what it's really about is about focus and attention. | ||
| Focus and attention, thinking about that. | ||
| But the work, in terms of breaking it down, there's a bunch of things that I think comedians don't do that they really should do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| And the number one thing is writing. | ||
| Actual writing writing. | ||
| Like sitting in front of a computer or a notebook and writing. | ||
| Most comedians like to just have a bit and they work it out on stage and they know how it worked and they improve it the next set. | ||
| And especially if you're doing the New York City trip where you're doing the cellar and then you're doing the stand and then you're doing all these different sets all around town and you're doing little short 10 minute sets here and there. | ||
| It's easy to just kind of keep working on it. | ||
| Just keep working on it. | ||
| But I think that it's critical to actually sit alone with the material and just look at it. | ||
| Look at it and try to go, how can I make this quicker? | ||
| What's a sneakier way to do this? | ||
| Or what else is in this that I'm missing? | ||
| I think that for me, I write now. | ||
| I just started doing... | ||
| Up until probably a year ago... | ||
| Maybe eight months ago, I was of the brain where I was like, I'll write a note, I'll write a bullet point or whatever, and I'll try to work it out. | ||
| And then I'll write something that I think is interesting as a joke. | ||
| But I saw, you know, opening for Aziz, working with Hassan, like working with people that are like crushing it. | ||
| Their process is like, they're maniacs. | ||
| Like you, where it's just like, yes, I have a codified process. | ||
| This is exactly how I'm going to do it. | ||
| This is what's worked for like 10, 15 years, however long I've been doing it. | ||
| And once I saw like that process, I'm like, oh, these motherfuckers, I think I work hard, but these guys work fucking crazy hard. | ||
| And it's like sort of emulate that process of like, I got to set aside at least 20, 30 minutes a day where I'm like literally right. | ||
| Even if it's the same thing over and over, it's just like, Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| like how can I seem relaxed while doing this but still emphasize the right word for that's the punchline or whatever it is yeah and now that process like and it's all repetition now You've got to repeat the process to make it, otherwise this is a thing you did once. | ||
| And so now that's what I'm starting to do now. | ||
| Just physically fucking getting up and be like, okay, I've got to write this bit out. | ||
| Even if it's a bit I've done a billion times. | ||
| There's something in there that I've got to figure out. | ||
| Yeah, another thing to do that really works well to sort of get it in your head is a cork board. | ||
| To have a big old bulletin board and put index cards on that are the titles of your bits. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| And then I would put like index cards underneath it that are like the bullet points of that bit. | ||
| Oh, kind of like a storyboard for like a movie kind of shit. | ||
| Yeah, and you step back and look at them and then try to see if they make sense in order. | ||
| Like maybe I should flip it around. | ||
| Maybe I should do the bit about the guy getting bit by the dog before I do the bit about the monkey. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The difference between being bit by a monkey. | ||
| Maybe it's better to introduce this distrust of animals in this way. | ||
| Who knows? | ||
| It's about attention, though. | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| It's attention and focus. | ||
| And these guys that you're saying that work really hard, it's not a coincidence that those guys are killing it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, there's something to it. | ||
| And there's also the recognition when you do start killing it. | ||
| Like, oh shit, this is rare. | ||
| Like, I'm in a rare spot. | ||
| I'm filling up these gigantic places. | ||
| People are coming out to see me. | ||
| I'm doing Netflix specials. | ||
| You gotta work harder now. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You gotta keep it up. | ||
| You gotta keep it up and you gotta realize that you are... | ||
| Like, Bill Burr said something once that I think was really, really... | ||
| Like, dead on the money. | ||
| He said, I know what it's like to be disappointed by someone that you go to see. | ||
| Like, you go to see a band. | ||
| He goes, I remember going to see a band when I was a kid and they half-ass it. | ||
| And, you know, like, you feel fucked over. | ||
| He goes, I don't ever want to do that to my fans. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was like, aha. | ||
| Yeah, that's it. | ||
| Like, realize that you used to be a fan. | ||
| And I'll think of your fans as, like, how you would experience you. | ||
| They don't want someone phoning it in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That's their night. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That is their night. | ||
| They came out to see someone they love, and it's like, you gotta fucking earn that love almost. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, and tickets are expensive, and they had to work to get those tickets, and a lot of people are doing jobs they fucking hate, and cutting back on other things to have enough money to go out and have a few drinks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, there's a responsibility to it. | ||
| But there's also a lot of people that try to skirt that responsibility because the pressure of that responsibility is kind of overwhelming. | ||
| You think about it, it makes you nervous, and you just start, you fuck off, and you half-ass it. | ||
| Like, I'll be fine, man. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| But that's like college, right? | ||
| It's like cramming for tests. | ||
| It's like there's a lot of people that study all year long, and there's a lot of people that half-ass it up until the last minute, and then they just try to shove it all in all at once. | ||
| It's a weird kind of confidence that you need or delusional. | ||
| Delusional. | ||
| Delusional confidence where you're like, I'll be fine. | ||
| And I admit, I've done that a few times where I've just been like, fuck it, I'll work this out. | ||
| It'll be straight. | ||
| But the times where I've fucking sat and been like, this is the bit I gotta do. | ||
| I gotta make sure I hit it to the point where I'll just bring the notebook on stage and just be like, okay, I gotta make sure this goes the way I want it to go. | ||
| This is an old expression, how you do anything is how you do everything. | ||
| Or how you do everything is how you do anything. | ||
| And there's something to that, too. | ||
| There's something to not allowing yourself to think of yourself as someone who's a fuck-up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because as soon as you think, you say, I'm just a fuck-up. | ||
| You get that in your head, man. | ||
| And that's like the default setting, almost. | ||
| Where it's like, that's easy to do. | ||
| Human beings are like, I think people are hardwired to work. | ||
| But it's also very easy to just not do that and believe that it'll be fine or fuck this up. | ||
| It's a pressure alleviator because you put these expectations on yourself of success and there's a lot of pressure involved in meeting those expectations. | ||
| And one of the best pressure relievers is just fucking up so you lower your own personal expectations. | ||
| People drinking, doing all that kind of shit. | ||
| Well, just sabotaging your life. | ||
| There's a lot of people that will sabotage their life. | ||
| They start getting some success, and then the panic overwhelms them, and they'll just start taking pills or go fucking crazy. | ||
| I'm going to lose this. | ||
| I'm going to fuck it up anyway. | ||
| Yeah, I know that mentality. | ||
| It's really normal. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The psychological mindfuck that goes on when you're attempting to do anything, whether it's stand-up comedy, or I guess it would probably be the same with almost any art form. | ||
| Especially open-ended art form where you don't have a boss who's telling you, hey, you know, Namesh, you gotta get this fucking project in at 3 o'clock. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, like, if... | ||
| That's the crazy thing. | ||
| You forget, or what people don't know, is that comedy is the most entrepreneurial endeavor there is. | ||
| And that's why everyone thinks they can do it, because there's no capital investment. | ||
| It's all just mental investment and hard work. | ||
| Well, everybody thinks they can do it because they do most of it. | ||
| See, most of it is just talking. | ||
| So I can talk. | ||
| I can talk. | ||
| How come I can't talk like that? | ||
| I've made people laugh. | ||
| I can do it. | ||
| I'm funny at the office. | ||
| Dude, I'm funny all the time. | ||
| I'm going to do stand-up. | ||
| Like, how many people have you heard say, I think I'm thinking about doing stand-up, and you're like, oh, God. | ||
| I'm like, good luck, man. | ||
| You know, because... | ||
| Some people, I'm like, I know they have the work ethic to do whatever the fuck. | ||
| If my friends were super successful in most other endeavors, like that they do, like finance or doctors or whatever, apply the same work ethic to comedy, they might be successful if they're funny. | ||
| But a lot of people think they're funny and then just forget that fucking, the work part, where it's just like, yo, fuck, this is slave shit. | ||
| And there's no one whipping you. | ||
| No one but yourself. | ||
| Yeah, it's just, yo, get the fucking work done. | ||
| It's also, you're the writer, the producer, and you're the actor. | ||
| You're the person who does the whole thing. | ||
| The marketing expert, you gotta know. | ||
| All of the above. | ||
| Yeah, it's all fucking you. | ||
| It's a weird gig, and you have to be a self-starter, because if you're not the type of person that knows how to motivate yourself and get out of bed and get things done, you'll just fucking lay around until three in the afternoon, then you'll go eat a sub and have a cup of coffee, and then, ah, my set's in two hours, I think I'm gonna take a nap. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It'll be fun. | |
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| And then you feel like you did something because you wrote some shit in your moleskin right before you went up. | ||
| Yeah, it was fun, man. | ||
| I'm doing a lot of writing lately. | ||
| One moleskin, three years. | ||
| Yeah, with fucking ten words on it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, it's a... | ||
| There's no fucking structure to it either in terms of, like, there's no education that you can get other than self-education. | ||
| You can't go to... | ||
| If you want to learn how to play the cello, you can take lessons. | ||
| Someone will teach you how. | ||
| I mean, there's a real clear process between, you know, being a symphony violinist. | ||
| You know, like, going to school, getting an education in music, becoming a symphony violinist, there's auditions. | ||
| Being Asian. | ||
| Yeah, that helps. | ||
|
unidentified
|
LAUGHTER There's a lot to it. | |
| That is offensive! | ||
| Get off this stage! | ||
|
unidentified
|
You said something about an ethnicity, it must be bad. | |
| I mean, there's no real clear process to becoming a stand-up comedian. | ||
| It's just, everybody's like, what do you do? | ||
| You go to an open mic, figure it out. | ||
| You're on your own. | ||
| Everybody just wants you to get it. | ||
| Tell me how you go from doing comedy to becoming a writer for SNL. Is there a shortcut? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, what's... | |
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| If I call this number and say abracadabra. | ||
| This is Lorne's number. | ||
| You tell him one joke, and if he laughs, you're hired. | ||
| Then you're in. | ||
| There's no way to teach someone how to be a comic, either. | ||
| That's the other thing. | ||
| The way you do jokes is different than the way... | ||
| Jamie would do jokes or different than the way, you know, fucking Judah Freelander would do jokes. | ||
| Everybody's different, man. | ||
| And there's no one who's right. | ||
| Like, if you went over Judah Freelander's act and went, no, man, you're doing this shit all wrong. | ||
| These gotta have actual punchlines. | ||
| You're just saying a bunch of shit that's not true. | ||
| You gotta stop this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You know what I mean? | |
| It's... | ||
| Judas is very fucking good. | ||
| He's hilarious. | ||
| He's the man. | ||
| He's hilarious, but his act is uniquely him. | ||
| You could never teach anybody how to do that. | ||
| No. | ||
| He had to figure that act out on his own. | ||
| He's developed it so well. | ||
| I think with comedy, the crazy shit is... | ||
| Is that everyone thinks they could do it in the sense that, like, oh, I could tell a joke, and I could... | ||
| Sure, a lot of people can tell a joke. | ||
| My mom can tell a joke. | ||
| Everyone can tell a joke, because it's written and shit, but it's so hard to cultivate... | ||
| Who you are, because you're also doing that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You're like trying to figure out, oh, I got a bunch of fucking insane shit in my brain, and this is how I think it, and I got to figure out how I'm going to say it. | ||
| That's not necessarily how everyone else would say it, but this is how I feel about it, and I'm going to say it that way. | ||
| And then you have to take into account the economy of words. | ||
| You want to sneak it up on people. | ||
| You want to get the idea into their head before they've figured it out on their own. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So like, boom, like it pops them, like, ah! | ||
| Like, that's right! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like a little race. | ||
| You have to figure out a way to introduce it in a way that's unique and captivating and entertaining, but also quick enough to get into their brain before they figure out where you're going. | ||
| Because the worst thing is when you see a guy on stage and you're like, oh, I know where this is going. | ||
| And then he gets there. | ||
| And then a few people go, ha, ha, ha, ha, because they're fucking stupid. | ||
| What took so long, man? | ||
| I was there yesterday, dog. | ||
| Yeah, I saw it coming from the moment you... | ||
| Unless they can say it and you see it coming and it still hits you because it's so good. | ||
| It's so stupid. | ||
| That just has to be really good writing and a good delivery and a good idea. | ||
| You know, but it's also... | ||
| On the other hand, I mean, we're talking about how hard it is. | ||
| It's also the most fun shit of all time when it works. | ||
| When it pops off. | ||
| When you have a new bit, and you have that pause right before you deliver, and you're like, and I told him, that's not real. | ||
| And then everyone goes, bah! | ||
| Oh, I gotta hear the beginning of this now. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| It's like you hit these punchlines and the whole audience laughs and roars and they're having a good time and it's one of the greatest feelings in life. | ||
| It's because you know but you don't know until it comes out of your mouth and you're like, oh, look what I did there. | ||
| Well, it's also you're making people feel good. | ||
| There's something about looking out. | ||
| You go to the improv last night, there's 190 people in that room, and you're looking out into the audience, and all these people are having a great time. | ||
| They're laughing and having so much fun. | ||
| I got all your numbers. | ||
| I got all your numbers. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I feel you. | ||
| I know why you're laughing at this. | ||
| I know why you're not laughing at something. | ||
| I know... | ||
| Who you are. | ||
| A little aspect of who you are because you're laughing at this bit and what you've been through. | ||
| And you're giving them a good feeling. | ||
| You're giving them a good thing. | ||
| It's a good exchange. | ||
| They came to see you. | ||
| They sat down. | ||
| They're willing to let you talk in front of a microphone raised above them on a stage. | ||
| This is a very unique arrangement. | ||
| Inhuman beings. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That this person, like, please welcome Jamie Vernon. | ||
| He goes up on the stage, gets up there, hey everybody, and it's an exchange. | ||
| It's a unique contract where you're like, okay, I'm going to give this person who has a microphone 10 minutes of my time, my precious time, and in that 10 minutes, you've got to make me feel better about my life. | ||
| That's nothing, or escape my life, or whatever it is people are seeking. | ||
| Well, you're making them feel good. | ||
| Like, when I go to see a comic and they kill. | ||
| Like, say, Dave Attell goes on stage and he's killing. | ||
| I'm feeling better because of his laughs. | ||
| Because of his jokes. | ||
| When he's cracking jokes about things, I'm like, I feel good. | ||
| It gets in your body. | ||
| Like, they're giving you a little drug. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, we're drug dealers. | ||
| Look, if you could get a drug, if you could go to the 7-Eleven and it was an over-the-counter thing, we could just buy some laughs. | ||
| Why are you saying 7-Eleven, man? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| It's a convenience store. | ||
| That could have been a big faux pas. | ||
| I'm offended. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Store 24. I'll go back to Boston. | ||
| But if you could buy something over-the-counter and it was a laughter drug, we could just take a pill and everything would be hilarious and funny. | ||
| Like, God, everybody would take that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's the greatest feeling ever. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Mm-hmm. | |
| You laugh at something and you think it's really funny? | ||
| And nothing happens to you? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| There's no negative side effects? | ||
| Nothing happens. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nothing wrong. | |
| Your girl might be mad at you if you laugh at something you're not supposed to laugh at. | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| Yeah, that's funny, man. | ||
| You know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
When you see girls getting upset and guys laughing. | |
| Even last night, you could see the couples, and I told a joke, and I could see what girl is looking at what guy versus what guy is just laughing it up. | ||
| I have a fiancé now, but we got engaged three or four weeks ago, and I do this bit about her where I'm just like... | ||
| One night she got mad at me because I closed the door too loud because she was sleeping and I was drunk and I came home and I just accidentally closed the door and I was like that's how you like the bit is I say you know there's two ways to close the door as a man there's a regular way just close it like you've been taught your whole life and then there's another way if you live with your girlfriend you come home late she's sleeping you got to turn the doorknob push it into the frame and then release it so it doesn't make a noise or your relationship might end and you see guys just go and girls going we told you That's how you gotta do | ||
|
unidentified
|
it. | |
| I'm just like, that, to me, is like the best, where it's like, I know everything that these motherfuckers are going through in this fucking moment. | ||
| And they're gonna go home and talk about, see, I told you that the door shit was too loud. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| That's the fucking, that's my favorite part of doing any bit, where it's like, you could see a couple just react to some shit. | ||
| Well, I feel sorry for people that don't have a job where they can be creative. | ||
| I really do. | ||
| I think whatever you're doing, whatever it is, if you're a person who enjoys creating things, it's one of the most rewarding feelings of building something that wasn't there before, and then all of a sudden it's there, and you made it. | ||
| It's very hard. | ||
| Completing an act, if you start a set, have you recorded anything yet? | ||
| Like a special? | ||
| No, no, no. | ||
| I did a spot on Seth Meyers in July of last year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's your first? | |
| My first on camera. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| On TV then. | ||
| How was that? | ||
| Was it weird? | ||
| He seems like a nice guy. | ||
| Seth is the man. | ||
| I love Seth. | ||
| I met him before at Updates, so he came upstairs and would come hang out with us. | ||
| The show itself was great. | ||
| The process with the booker there was very simple because they're big fans of comedy. | ||
| Seth is obviously a fan of comedy, but the lady that books the show is also a big fan of comedy. | ||
| I was a bit nervous. | ||
| It was like my first time going on in front of like millions of people or whatever, whoever people watch that. | ||
| And I was just like, I gotta make sure that my writing and my jokes come off as fucking strong as possible. | ||
| And it went great. | ||
| You know, there's obviously some people trolls like talking shit on YouTube, but for the most part, everyone's like... | ||
| Ah, you keep reading those. | ||
| Dark, man. | ||
| It's so tough not to. | ||
| It's so tough. | ||
| Well, you're smart with the thing that you're doing with the Instagram where you delete it every day and then re-download it. | ||
| I gotta check if anyone's hit me up for a gig or some shit. | ||
| But otherwise, I'm just like, I fucking hate all of it. | ||
| Just don't look at it, man. | ||
| That's what I do. | ||
| I just don't... | ||
| I mean, you just develop habits. | ||
| But the problem is it's an itchy thing. | ||
| You get itchy. | ||
| Let me check real quick. | ||
| Take those times and just go over your notes. | ||
| When you get itchy and you want to look at your phone... | ||
| Who said this? | ||
| Someone said it really recently. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| I don't want to fuck it up. | ||
| Somebody said this in a tweet. | ||
| I want to say it was... | ||
| Ted Alexandro. | ||
| No. | ||
| Mark Normand. | ||
| It was Mark Normand. | ||
| He went up after... | ||
| I did talking about Columbia one night at the cellar, and he went up after me and immediately goes, I don't know why they're writing Nemesh up now. | ||
| He's been bombing for years. | ||
| Piece of shit. | ||
| It crushed. | ||
| Of course you did. | ||
| Norman's funny, man. | ||
| Oh, he's a man. | ||
| But he did a joke about how checking Twitter is like opening up an empty refrigerator and hoping that there's something new in there, and there never is. | ||
| You just go, fuck, let me check again. | ||
| There's nothing in there. | ||
| It's like that same feeling. | ||
| I botched his joke. | ||
| I ruined it. | ||
| But I got it. | ||
| But that is really what it is. | ||
| It's this weird compulsion. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| This instantaneous gratification thing that you're getting off of some weird dopamine hit by touching that device and getting information to pop up, but it's not satisfying. | ||
| There's nothing there. | ||
| You ever been on safari? | ||
| A safari? | ||
| No. | ||
| In Africa, you mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | |
| No. | ||
| You gotta go. | ||
| I went in April. | ||
| I spent... | ||
| All my SNL money is gone on engagement ring and fucking... | ||
|
unidentified
|
And a safari? | |
| Safari is expensive, and I don't mean to sound fucking... | ||
| Were you in one of those open-air Jeeps? | ||
| Yo, it's like... | ||
| That's when... | ||
| Up until like April... | ||
| I went in April, I was just like... | ||
| Not addicted to my phone, but using it too much, more or less. | ||
| But in Botswana, where we went, obviously there's no service or anything, and I'm just like, fuck this shit. | ||
| And the week, even just the week of not being on this thing, I was just like... | ||
| I feel so much better. | ||
| You can think. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And, like, the whole time you're in an open-air car and just, like, out and just, like... | ||
| When's the last time you drove for, like, an hour and there was nothing but, like, noise or, like, animals and shit? | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| There's nothing but just, like, you with the air and just, like, hanging out and just thinking shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I hunt. | ||
| And every year I do three or four trips where, like, for a week I'm basically lost in the woods, disconnected. | ||
| It's the best. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's the fucking best. | ||
| But what's interesting, even in the hunting world, a lot of people are, like, Instagramming while they're hunting, and they're doing Insta stories while they're out there in the forest. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| It's good when there's no connection. | ||
| When there's no service and no connection, it's good. | ||
| You could just leave this shit away. | ||
| I broke my phone. | ||
| When I was in Hawaii, and I was on Lanai, which is kind of a remote island. | ||
| It's hard to get things there. | ||
| And so I just kept dropping my iPhone. | ||
| I dropped that shit like 10 times. | ||
| And I dropped it, and it just started making phone calls. | ||
| I would hold it up. | ||
| I would open up my contacts and go, watch this. | ||
| And I was showing my wife. | ||
| It just starts calling people. | ||
| And you hang up, and it starts calling another person. | ||
| Great bug. | ||
| It starts calling another person. | ||
| Hang up. | ||
| I just broke it. | ||
| It was just jacked. | ||
| And so I had to order a new one. | ||
| And then it got to a point where it wouldn't let me input my code and it wouldn't recognize my face. | ||
| It was like it was dead. | ||
| It was just fried. | ||
| It took three days to get one. | ||
| So for three days I had no phone. | ||
| And it was great. | ||
| It was great. | ||
| I felt better. | ||
| I felt better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was walking around. | |
| But then I was like, I can't wait to get my phone. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But why? | |
| I feel good without it. | ||
| Around people you love. | ||
| The people you need to reach. | ||
| You're not missing anything. | ||
| You're not missing anything, but you feel like you are. | ||
| I gotta check Twitter. | ||
| I gotta go on Instagram. | ||
| We're addicted to it to a point where it feels like cigarettes in the 50s. | ||
| Where it's like, no one Here it is, Mark Norman. | ||
| Social media is like looking in the fridge over and over. | ||
| You know there's nothing good, but you check it so many times that eventually you start consuming things you don't even like. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, even better. | ||
| There we go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Great tweet. | |
| 2,630 likes, son. | ||
| Mark is going to go up a lot now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, probably. | |
| But yeah, it's... | ||
| And my real fear is that this is one stage of a complete connection to electronics and to each other that's unhealthy and unproductive and unavoidable. | ||
| Because I don't think that we're going to end with... | ||
| Social media like Twitter and Instagram where it's like you just press a button get it it's gonna be Completely connected to your brain. | ||
| Yeah, we're gonna have that fairly soon I feel like within the next 10 years that's gonna be a normal thing that you could just pull up information Instantaneously it's almost like the the phone the other the watch thing feels almost like wearing a digital watch No, this is a regular watch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is my dad's rotto from like 1980 something Since they make such cool digital watches now, a lot of them look like that. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| They look cool now. | ||
| Yeah, but that's, I think, the next step. | ||
| It's like, oh, I can just do this. | ||
| I don't even gotta... | ||
| What's the problem? | ||
| It's like you can't reach in your pocket to check your shit. | ||
| I got an iPhone watch, whatever the fuck they call that thing. | ||
| I watch, and I wore it twice. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I was like, what am I doing with this thing? | ||
| I don't even like it. | ||
| It buzzes. | ||
| Oh, okay, cool. | ||
| This person texted me. | ||
| You still gotta fucking go on this thing to say... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's enough. | ||
| A phone is enough. | ||
| I mean, the only thing that's good for is your heart rate. | ||
| It monitors your heart rate when you run. | ||
| It's good for that. | ||
| Oh, the wrist thing? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, very cool. | ||
| And it also logs the amount of time and miles that you put in and your heart rate variability and all that stuff. | ||
| There's some good aspects to it in terms of a fitness tracker. | ||
| But other than that, it's like... | ||
| To what end? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Where's it going? | ||
| I don't run, so lucky for me. | ||
| When Elon was on the podcast, he was talking to me about his neural link thing that he's going to be coming out with. | ||
| He said back then, and this was, what was that, three months ago? | ||
| Just September, I think. | ||
| Yeah, somewhere around three months ago. | ||
| He said that they were going to be coming out with it within four to six months. | ||
| So that's any day now. | ||
| So I don't know what the fuck this is, but he said essentially it's going to open up the bandwidth between you and information. | ||
| It's going to radically change the way human beings access information. | ||
| It's like an internet thing? | ||
| He wouldn't tell me. | ||
| Oh my goodness. | ||
| That's all he would tell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Neuralink? | |
| Neuralink, yeah. | ||
| Because we were on air when he was saying it. | ||
| I oddly trust him to be a phenomenal, a net positive for the universe. | ||
| Oh, 100%. | ||
| You know, it's like Zuckerberg and other times, that's a net negative for us. | ||
| They are a lot of the reason why society has gone the way it has. | ||
| Because you can confirm whatever the fuck. | ||
| But Elon, I'm like, yeah, man, why not fucking build a car that you don't need any gasoline for? | ||
| Why not fucking send shit to this base? | ||
| I think he's a net positive force. | ||
| No, I'm 100% convinced he's a net positive. | ||
| I think he's a legitimate genius, and I don't think there's a whole lot of them. | ||
| I think Mark Zuckerberg is a smart guy who's very ambitious. | ||
| I think there's a big difference. | ||
| Zuckerberg's quote that I read recently, that what's good for the world is not necessarily good for Facebook. | ||
| I'm like, that's it! | ||
| Shut it down! | ||
| He said that? | ||
| Yep. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's over. | |
| Burn it to the ground. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pull out. | |
| What the fuck did you just say? | ||
| Bitch, how much money do you have? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus Christ. | |
| First of all, don't you have like 18 billion dollars? | ||
| How much more do you need, bitch? | ||
| You're sitting over here talking about what's good for Facebook? | ||
| It's not necessarily good for the world. | ||
| You got all the good. | ||
| You got all the good for 18 fucking hundred lifetimes. | ||
| Yeah, Jesus Christ. | ||
| He said that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's crazy. | |
| Exactly. | ||
| My favorite Zuckerberg joke. | ||
| We were at Update, and this is when Zuckerberg is being grilled by Congress. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, when he's sipping water like this. | |
| Yeah, and Chris Rock comes by, and he goes, you know what I didn't like about that trial? | ||
| There's nothing worse than watching someone being grilled by Congress when there's no stakes. | ||
| Nothing happens to Mark Zuckerberg even if this shit goes worse for him. | ||
| Nothing happens to that guy. | ||
| That's my fate. | ||
| You never think about it that way. | ||
| Nothing happens to him even if Facebook blows up. | ||
| Well, here's what could happen. | ||
| If Facebook... | ||
| If there was some sort of proof that they received some financial compensation to lean one way or the other. | ||
| Is that what's percolating right now? | ||
| No, but it could be. | ||
| This is what they were searching for. | ||
| What they were searching for is what they were trying to find out how is it that these Russian bots are able to disseminate propaganda so readily and so easily and so efficiently. | ||
| What are you doing to stop that? | ||
| How is all this stuff propagated? | ||
| Where is this coming from? | ||
| And the people that were asking were techno-ignorant. | ||
| And that was part of the problem. | ||
| Yeah, the Congress was like, Google makes the iPhone, right? | ||
| You see that shit recently? | ||
| They were asking to Google, they said, how come my niece has got bad words on her iPhone? | ||
| And someone has to tell them Google doesn't make the iPhone. | ||
| And the whole place roars like, bah! | ||
| When you can get Congress to laugh, like everybody's laughing at what a fucking idiot you are. | ||
| These are the people that are asking the questions. | ||
| That's terrifying. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| You need people from like Aris Technica. | ||
| You need people from like, you know, CNET. You need people from, you need fucking techno guys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| People, men and women who really understand technology should be throwing those questions around. | ||
| Asians. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And people with autism. | ||
| You need people that really, truly understand what the complications are, what the ramifications are, and what they could have done to prevent these things. | ||
| I think that what happened with Facebook and what's happening with Twitter and a lot of these other things is no one anticipated the impact culturally they were going to have. | ||
| I was talking about this the other day with Sam Jay, maybe a few months ago, about how it's the democratization of information and how easy it is to pretend you know what you're talking about. | ||
| That's the majority of the problem. | ||
| Facebook, Twitter, all this shit. | ||
| Because it used to be you needed infrastructure to spread news. | ||
| You needed a fucking truck. | ||
| You needed a factory. | ||
| Now you don't even need pants. | ||
| You could just fucking... | ||
| You just gotta put like a weird fucking eagle on your website and it's like, this is the fucking news now. | ||
| You don't even have to have a website. | ||
| All you have to have is a popular Twitter account. | ||
| There's a lot of people out there that have popular Twitter accounts and when you go to their Twitter account and there's quite a few people that I follow that I don't follow. | ||
| What that means is I bookmark their page so they don't even know that I follow them because they're fucking insane. | ||
| I don't want them sending me DMs and I'll go and read their stuff and they are on there all day. | ||
| Yeah, man. | ||
| All day they're doing battle against the good and the bad, the dark forces and the light. | ||
| They're just fucking going after it. | ||
| And they develop these sort of news portal pages. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you don't even know who the fuck these people are. | ||
| You don't know anything about them. | ||
| But their page, it's all battling. | ||
| And I follow people that are like hardcore right-wing people that are just battling the left. | ||
| They're hilarious. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's so strange, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They're so silly. | |
| And then I follow people that are hardcore lefties that are battling the right. | ||
| Everyone's a Nazi and everyone's alt-right. | ||
| You're alt-right for it. | ||
| It doesn't matter if you support every fucking single liberal principle there is. | ||
| The craziest shit about this whole Columbia shit is that I was featured on Breitbart. | ||
| They're finally like a brown dude. | ||
| I'm like, I cannot be... | ||
| I got emails from people at Fox News like, hey, do you want to come on this show? | ||
| They're like that Dinesh D'Souza guy, right? | ||
| Yeah, that fucking... | ||
| I hate that guy. | ||
| I was about to say something bad. | ||
| I just can't stand that motherfucker. | ||
| Well, he's the only brown guy that made it through. | ||
| Him and fucking Bobby Jindal. | ||
| They're trying to turn me into this motherfucker. | ||
| I'm like, I'm not coming on your fucking TV show so you can use me as your... | ||
| Everything's gone amok and PC... I wish free speech was under attack because some people need to shut the fuck up. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| There's too much shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everyone has a podcast. | |
| You don't deserve to speak a lot of times. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| I used to tell everybody to get a podcast, but now I stopped. | ||
| Because, first of all, I don't think you can anymore. | ||
| I think over the last few years, it's gotten so saturated that it's almost impossible to break through. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| On top of that, it's like some people... | ||
| You don't need everyone's opinion about it. | ||
| You should have to fucking work to develop, to have the right to have an opinion about some things. | ||
| Well, you definitely should... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Have a good opinion. | |
| Yes. | ||
| It should be something well thought out. | ||
| Nuance. | ||
| There's no nuance anymore either. | ||
| Because everything's got to be black and white. | ||
| Especially with a lot of this younger generation where it's like, if something's not black and white, it goes fucking awry for them. | ||
| They want it to be black and white so they'll create a false narrative where it is black and white. | ||
| That's one thing you see a lot today where people pretend that someone is something and they do this reductionist thing where they boil it down to one thing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, he went on stage and said anti-gay, anti-black jokes at Columbia. | ||
| This guy's a piece of shit alt-right fucking doorway. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's a portal. | |
| He's an Indian portal to the alt-right. | ||
| That's who you think I am? | ||
| You're a magic carpet to the alt-right. | ||
| Hey, man. | ||
| I wish I could just be offended all the time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You can feel very hard to hurt my feelings. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you're a comic. | |
| Yeah, but it's just so crazy. | ||
| Find me a comic, it's easy to hurt their feelings, and they fucking suck. | ||
| They suck, yeah. | ||
| They have to. | ||
| It's fucking... | ||
| But what I was saying is, with this alt-right shit, everyone wants to put somebody in their own agenda. | ||
| This reductionist shit of just like, this is how I feel about it, and look at the points that make me seem smart and correct about this. | ||
| Yeah, and they're trying to do that online in front of everybody instead of like this internal examination of their actual feelings and how they really think about things and whether or not they make sense or whether or not it's objective. | ||
| Instead of that, they're broadcasting this in this sort of weird way that's at least... | ||
| Partially intentionally deceptive. | ||
| The acknowledgement that there is nuance. | ||
| Life is fucking complicated. | ||
| And ideas are complicated. | ||
| Especially ideas in terms of when you're talking about this cultural sort of battle that's going on right now. | ||
| They're attacking people who are clearly very left-wing. | ||
| But for not being left-wing enough. | ||
| They're running out of targets. | ||
| What bothered me was someone hit me up saying, you haven't spoke out against the white supremacists and people that are harassing this group and this blogger that's going off. | ||
| I'm like, first, of course I do not support any white supremacists or anybody fucking going after these kids for whatever reason. | ||
| What kids are they talking about? | ||
| The Asian American Alliance. | ||
| The Asian American Alliance posted some shit on Facebook and all these fucking crazy people have apparently been talking shit to them. | ||
| And I'm like, I don't condemn that action. | ||
| But second of all, does my mere existence not testify to the fact that I'm not pro- You're not pro-white supremacist? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, what the fuck? | |
| Is my name Nicholas Patterson? | ||
| I'm fucking Nemesh Patel. | ||
| It's the most Indian motherfucking name I could think of. | ||
| Like, I'm going to call up someone at the KKK, like, hey, guys. | ||
| I'm on your side. | ||
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| That is hilarious that you have not denounced white supremacists. | ||
| So they've decided that you haven't acted enough. | ||
| Sometimes there'll be a story online, and I'll get a tweet where someone say, your silence about this story is deafening. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| I was like, what fucking... | ||
| Bro, I don't even pay attention to half the shit. | ||
| I can't. | ||
| I can't keep up. | ||
| I cannot. | ||
| Someone had to tell me that that was happening before I was like, oh, okay, that's fucking whack. | ||
| I'll respond some way. | ||
| Also, I want to think about things before I respond. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know, when the Louis C.K. thing went down, I got a lot of angry tweets. | ||
| One of them from a fucking journalist that I've done stories with. | ||
| I've done interviews with this guy before. | ||
| And he was talking shit about comedians that have not denounced Louis C.K. Yeah. | ||
| And I'm like, hey man, I, just like you, don't know what really happened. | ||
| I don't know the whole story. | ||
| I know what he said, and I know what she said. | ||
| And the whole thing seems to me like a big old clusterfuck. | ||
| Even... | ||
| Okay, let's put it this way. | ||
| Like, you can denounce his actions. | ||
| He said he did all this shit that he's been... | ||
| That's gross. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And I think what he did was incorrect and wrong. | ||
| But the fact that, like, you should denounce that he should not be working again. | ||
| I'm like, you forget I'm also a comic. | ||
| And B, murderers make parole, dog. | ||
| Like, the fucking... | ||
| You got... | ||
| Where does it end almost? | ||
| There's some things that you should be way more upset about. | ||
| How about Hastert, the guy who's the Speaker of the House, who went to jail for fucking kids, and he molested a bunch of kids, and he only got 15 months. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I didn't even know that. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| But meanwhile, everybody's ranting and railing about Louis C.K. Not that this diminishes what Louis C.K. did, but I'm saying there's some real horrors in the world. | ||
| And to choose to concentrate on a comedian who asked women, can I jerk off in front of you? | ||
| They said yes, and he did it. | ||
| He didn't hold anybody in a room against their will or force them to watch him. | ||
| What he did was just gross. | ||
| And he stopped doing it more than 10 years ago. | ||
| Right. | ||
| It's not good, but the fact that someone would think that I need to make a statement about it. | ||
| Like, bitch, I don't need to make a statement about anything. | ||
| I don't need to talk about anything I don't want to talk about. | ||
| Like, who are you? | ||
| It's so quick, we automatically, when I say we, I mean people at large, sort of assume the worst about a person immediately. | ||
| I think it's also this social media thing. | ||
| I don't think they really assume. | ||
| I think they just have this opportunity to express themselves in a way that they're going to get a reaction out of you. | ||
| This is the way to do it. | ||
| You know what's crazy is that we've been harping on this younger generation, but I've said some shit at Cellar and VU. Very anti-Trump shit. | ||
| And people have been like, like one night at VU, the sellers, one of their other clubs, I said, I forget what I said about Trump. | ||
| I basically fat shame him because I think he's a fat piece of shit. | ||
| But like, I said that in more articulate, in a joke form. | ||
| And some guy got up and was like, fuck this. | ||
| And it just bounced. | ||
| And I'm like, word dog, that's what you're mad about? | ||
| You're not mad about the fact that he is that? | ||
| That your president is a billionaire that doesn't use his money to just hire a personal trainer once in a while? | ||
| Like, an Adderall McDonald's diet is not the way you want your fucking president to be living his life, more or less. | ||
| And this person just got up and bounced and was just heated. | ||
| And I talked to him after, I was like, what? | ||
| What are you mad about? | ||
| So I think it's just- What did he say? | ||
| He was like, I don't like the words that you were using. | ||
| It's very crude. | ||
| Where's he from? | ||
| Nebraska? | ||
| Florida. | ||
| I was just like, look, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I didn't like the words you were using at the comedy cellar. | |
| It was like vulgar. | ||
| I'm like, come on, man. | ||
| That's what I'm saying. | ||
| I feel like it's fixed. | ||
| Just have a safe space for comics. | ||
| There's a sign at the cellar now that says, swim at your own wrist. | ||
| You're coming down. | ||
| You're here to see us. | ||
| I'm not here to fucking sing and dance for you guys. | ||
| You guys are here. | ||
| This is an agreement that all you have to do is not laugh or laugh. | ||
| Well, it's also the people that are going down to see that stuff that like it expect you to do that kind of comedy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| They expect you to go hard. | ||
| Right. | ||
| That's what it's about. | ||
| If I go there and everybody's pulling back, all of a sudden I'm at the Tonight Show. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And all of a sudden I'm at a Jimmy Fallon monologue. | ||
| Like, whoa, whoa, whoa. | ||
| That's someone I came here for. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| I came here to have a couple of drinks and hear some crazy shit from Greer Barnes. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| I want to hear some real stand-up. | ||
| I don't want to hear this stupid shit. | ||
| People that can't handle some offensive stuff, you shouldn't be at a comedy club. | ||
| This is where people go to say offensive stuff. | ||
| It's like you don't want dirt in your hands and you're in a garden. | ||
| This is stupid. | ||
| Manage some expectations. | ||
| You know, just walk, like, hey. | ||
| But people politically, man, when you get into their, you know, their team, and you're shitting on their team, he's probably Republican. | ||
| Of course. | ||
| Probably has brain damage. | ||
| He's living in Florida. | ||
| There's probably something wrong with him. | ||
| Water's tough. | ||
| Everything's... | ||
| To me, it's like, it's like... | ||
| Politically, people are so like, that's part of their personality almost. | ||
| I've done a lot of political comedy. | ||
| And to me, it's like when you do that, you're almost talking to them as if their politics are their person. | ||
| And that's the kind of crazy thing. | ||
| My politics are not necessarily who I am as a human being. | ||
| Like I can – I'm pretty liberal when it comes to social issues but might fairly conservative when it comes to financial issues and fiscal issues. | ||
| I'm just like don't take who I voted for to be who I am as a human being. | ||
| Like there's – no one has that nuance anymore about anything. | ||
| Yeah, it's an identity issue. | ||
| People find whatever team it is, whether it's progressive or conservative, and they just decide this is my identity, and they cloak themselves in it, and then they defend it. | ||
| And someone like yourself is saying jokes that... | ||
| Or contrary to that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They just can't handle it. | ||
| I am talking shit about their quarterback. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Their quarterback. | |
| Yeah, that quarterback is about to get fucking popped. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Jesus Christ, man. | ||
| He's about to get pulled off the field. | ||
| Jesus Christ, man. | ||
| Every day, it's like, he's still there, huh? | ||
| He's still there. | ||
| Dude, yeah. | ||
| I've never... | ||
| The fucking last two weeks, I never wanted more Trump to say something wild just so people would stop fucking... | ||
| Just so I'd stop seeing emails and fucking Google or it's about Nimesh Patel or whatever. | ||
| Just like... | ||
| Look, this guy's crazy, man. | ||
| Well, you shouldn't be Googling your name, first of all. | ||
| You definitely shouldn't be reading that stuff. | ||
| I deleted the Google alerts. | ||
| I deleted all that shit. | ||
| But yo, you know what's crazy? | ||
| My mom, once my mom, I didn't even tell my parents that that shit happened. | ||
| Oh, but they heard. | ||
| My dad works at a liquor store, and someone came in with a copy of the post, and on the second page is me. | ||
| He's like, that's your son, right? | ||
| And I was like, oh, fuck. | ||
| What did the post say? | ||
| Are they talking shit about you? | ||
| No, they were like, can you believe these fucking PC kids? | ||
| Good. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Dude, you're winning here. | |
| And then... | ||
| And then I was like, it was still dead, because up until that point, everyone is sort of like, it's more just like pushing the narrative that everyone's kind of soft. | ||
| Thursday morning, like five days after it happened, I got a text from Lenny Marcus at like 8 o'clock in the morning saying, Hey man, you're trending on Yahoo! | ||
| I'm trending on Yahoo. | ||
| You're trending on Yahoo. | ||
| I'm number one on Yahoo News Thursday morning. | ||
| And then that day, my mom texts me saying, hey, what happened at Columbia? | ||
| I said, I didn't get in. | ||
| That was the only thing I said. | ||
| And then she calls me and she's telling me, what did you do? | ||
| Is your career okay? | ||
| I'm like, I'm fine. | ||
| These kids, they didn't like the joke I said. | ||
| And the real thing I didn't tell them is that even for them to get stand-up has been such an uphill battle. | ||
| For your parents? | ||
| Yeah, just to be like, what are you doing? | ||
| For the two years that I was unemployed and living at home and going to the city every night, because I'm from Jersey, so I would go to the city every night to do stand-up. | ||
| They were like, what the fuck is, what are you doing with your life? | ||
| And so even up until, they didn't come see me until seven years in. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| You can get your legs under you. | ||
| Yeah, that brought him to the cellar. | ||
| It was dope, you know? | ||
| My parents came to see me, like, a year in. | ||
| They still think I suck. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, shit. | |
| Oh, shit, dude. | ||
| Bro, you can't do that, dawg. | ||
| They came to see me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They came to see us still doing open mics, man. | |
| Joe, we're gonna fix your room up again. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Cleaning the basement out. | ||
| This is not gonna work. | ||
| Yeah, but so when my mom saw it, she called me and she's like, what happened? | ||
| I'm like, my career is going to be fine. | ||
| Don't worry about any of that kind of shit. | ||
| Better than ever. | ||
| This is a boost, mom. | ||
| Yeah, this would be a positive thing that happens. | ||
| I'm going through some shit now just from like fucking my own hoisted by my own petard situation, like reading the news and all this kind of shit. | ||
| This would be a positive thing. | ||
| And I didn't expect them to sign a codec. | ||
| They got it. | ||
| And I was like, that's the end. | ||
| That was just the facts of what happened. | ||
| Well, you've got some things on your side. | ||
| You've got tangible success to the point where it seems like you've got some momentum there. | ||
| It's going to be hard to stop that train with anything other than a real catastrophe. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, they also know that I haven't—it's also very apparent in every article that was, like, printed or whatever that most people are on my side, so to speak. | ||
| And I'm 100% confident I did nothing wrong as a human being or a comic, you know? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Would have been a thing I did, but I was like, I know these people. | ||
| These are my fucking brethren. | ||
| Like, I fucking took calculus with you people. | ||
| Like, I know the kind of shit that me and my Asian friends and my Indian friends would talk when we were in fucking school. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like, this is fucking light work. | |
| And so, maybe that. | ||
| But even that, I'm like, no, fuck that. | ||
| I'm not going to fucking think about that going awry, you know what I mean? | ||
| But yeah, it was crazy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's an educational experience and a net positive overall, without a doubt. | ||
| And it also gives us an opportunity to make fun of these kids, which I think they need. | ||
| They need to realize that the world thinks they're fools. | ||
| And I really believe that all... | ||
| I've read several articles on your case. | ||
| Your situation, rather. | ||
| Your case. | ||
| You caught a case. | ||
| I got comedy me too'd, you know? | ||
| All the articles that I've read were all essentially positive. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And they were all, you know, mocking these fucking little children. | ||
| I want to say for the record that... | ||
| This is on the record. | ||
| I still think that it was... | ||
| I still think that it's like the minority of that group. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Especially at Columbia, for sure. | ||
| I'm sure. | ||
| You know, like, it's just that they happen to... | ||
| Like, because the majority of those kids were, like, amped and, like, had a good time. | ||
| And even if... | ||
| That can happen though where a majority can like you and a minority can stand up and then the majority doesn't do anything about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They just go, what? | |
| That shit hurt my feelings. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Did it? | |
| No, no, no. | ||
| Those kids saying like, let them stay, let them stay. | ||
| But it wasn't like a chorus, which is what I would have hoped. | ||
| But... | ||
| They're little fucking babies, and they need to hear it. | ||
| They need to hear their little babies, because that's how you grow up. | ||
| You do something ridiculous, and then people criticize you, and then you realize, oh, I'm kind of ridiculous. | ||
| Let me just check myself. | ||
| Then it hurts your feelings, and you fight it off for a little bit. | ||
| You try to pretend. | ||
| You battle it. | ||
| But overall, over the course of time, you're going to absorb that information, and hopefully those kids are going to grow and mature. | ||
| I mean, I have friends that were like, Completely progressive, weirdo, crazy, off the charts. | ||
| Like activists ten years ago, and now they're like way, way mellow, and they're just like, what was wrong with me? | ||
| I was virtue signaling, I was trying too hard, and they realized like a lot of what they were doing was just wasting energy, and it was just a lot of angst, and a lot of just trying to affect change in order to make themselves feel better. | ||
| You know, I mean, trying to push buttons in order to validate their existence. | ||
| That's what a lot of that specific incident felt like. | ||
| It was either like, no, we have an opportunity to assert our sort of rightness, however wrong it is, here. | ||
| We're going to take a stand. | ||
| I'm like, just chill, yo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just relax. | |
| Chill the fuck out. | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| Yeah, there's a lot of foolishness. | ||
| But this is the world we live in, and I think there's a big part of that accentuated by the fact that we have a maniac for a president. | ||
| Yo, yeah, that's what it is. | ||
| Because they feel like that evil needs to be combated at every turn because we didn't before, and we let this guy get into office, and now here he is, and the Mueller probe, and all this fucking craziness. | ||
| When Obama was president, shit felt a lot cooler. | ||
| You know what I mean? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're going to be fine. | |
| And now it's like Trump is president. | ||
| Everyone's like, oh, shit, man. | ||
| Bunker down. | ||
| Now we realize all you have to do is be popular and you can be president. | ||
| Like, that's insane. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It used to be you had to be qualified. | ||
| We used to think that you understood national policy, foreign policy. | ||
| You understood defense. | ||
| You understood exactly what's going on with the economy. | ||
| The basic English. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That guy doesn't know shit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| He's just trying to make money. | ||
| Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall? | ||
| Because what we're getting all the crazy is him when he knows cameras are on him. | ||
| I would love to see what he's like alone. | ||
| I would love to see him watch Fox News. | ||
| Power eating cheeseburgers. | ||
| He's a crazy person. | ||
| It's really weird, man. | ||
| It's unnerving. | ||
| I think a lot of what we're seeing, especially with this particular thing, is the thing where it's like you don't have control in any other facet of your life necessarily, so you're going to try to exert it in a way that you think is positive when, in fact, you're doing the opposite of what your liberal sensibilities are. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I think it's also a trend, and I think that political correctness comes in waves, and it existed. | ||
| It was pretty strong in the 80s. | ||
| Political correctness was washing over people in the 80s. | ||
| Yeah, they're trying to destroy rap and shit. | ||
| Yeah, and it's coming back, and it'll go away again. | ||
| People get sick of it, and it'll be ridiculous, and people will rebel against political correctness. | ||
| But I think overall, the culture's trying to adjust. | ||
| It's trying to self-adjust. | ||
| We're trying to... | ||
| The actual culture, as a whole, is trying to eliminate racism and eliminate sexism and eliminate bias. | ||
| Which are good, noble goals. | ||
| They're good, noble goals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| But along the ways, you have these polar extremes of people that are doing it wrong. | ||
| Poor execution. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Terrible execution. | ||
| Terrible understanding. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's also strange to me, it's like, what utopia are you trying to create by silencing stuff? | ||
| Because just because you do that, just because you say, oh, you can't say racist shit, doesn't mean it goes away. | ||
| Or you can't say sex shit, doesn't mean... | ||
| That's more like you're treating the symptom and not the disease. | ||
| Right, but in their defense, you're talking about a very specific platform, right? | ||
| This is a stage. | ||
| If you had actually said something actually racist, then it would make sense that, hey, we don't want anybody telling racist jokes. | ||
| 100%, right. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But they wanted it to be racist. | ||
| Yeah, that's the thing. | ||
| It's like, yo, just fucking take a minute, take a second to relax. | ||
| And what I was trying to get at is that what utopia have you read about that's ever been real? | ||
| Every book we read in high school, college, Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, or Animal Farm, The Giver, which we read in fucking middle school. | ||
| That's all a utopia, but there's fucking killing babies. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It all goes south. | |
| All of it. | ||
| It's all a fucking false utopia kind of situation. | ||
| There is hate speech in the world, and you don't want it on your platform. | ||
| But you've got to decide what is hate speech, when is it really hate speech, and when is it just ignorance. | ||
| And sometimes the best way to combat bad speech is to let that speech play out and let good speech overwhelm it with logic and reason and a better argument. | ||
| That's really what freedom of speech is supposed to be all about, that we work all this out. | ||
| As soon as you start censoring voices and telling people that you're not going to allow them to talk, Boy, you create this atmosphere where you can start to choose what you're going to allow through and what you're not going to allow through. | ||
| And then you're going to start censoring things that are far more subtle. | ||
| You're going to start censoring things that don't seem reasonable. | ||
| But you've decided that it's already okay to censor. | ||
| So you've censored this person. | ||
| Now you're going to censor the next worst thing. | ||
| And then you're going to go down the line until it's just people that disagree with you. | ||
| And then you're like, oh, well, my world is perfect now. | ||
| In fact, it's actually just a bunch of people that are talking shit about you. | ||
| You just don't happen to know about it. | ||
| Are you familiar with what's going on with Patreon? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, with that. | |
| And that's like the podcast pay form thing, or you can pay for shit with Patreon? | ||
| Well, yeah, you can pay for things, but it's not necessarily just for podcasts, but people do use it for podcasts, but they use it for many things. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| But there's this guy, his name is Carl Benjamin, and he goes by the name of Sargon of Arkad. | ||
| And he considers himself a, what do you call, a classic British liberal. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Which is more, leans more conservative than our idea of what a liberal is. | ||
| But essentially, it's more of like a libertarian. | ||
| How would you describe a classic British liberal? | ||
| Like, what would be the definition? | ||
| Like, Google that. | ||
| The first name would be Carl Benjamin. | ||
| I mean, that's a strong name. | ||
| Well, Sargon of Akkad is his screen name. | ||
| And he has a YouTube channel. | ||
| And he said something on a podcast, not even his own. | ||
| He was a guest on another channel. | ||
| And he said something about white supremacists. | ||
| He was talking about these white supremacists that are acting up and doing all these horrible things. | ||
| And he said, and this is, it's a poorly formed thought, but what he essentially said was, you guys are being niggers. | ||
| He says you act like white niggers. | ||
| This is his word. | ||
| See, this is what he's saying. | ||
| You're acting like a bunch of niggers just so you know you act like white niggers. | ||
| I'm sorry if you heard that word and it's offending you right now, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| I'm just reading. | ||
| Exactly how you describe black people acting is the impression I get dealing with the alt-right. | ||
| I'm really... | ||
| I'm just not in the mood to deal with this kind of disrespect. | ||
| So that's a very... | ||
| It's a very poorly thought out way of expressing himself. | ||
| That's what I'm thinking. | ||
| I'm reading this and I think also... | ||
| Sometimes people like using that word to shock, and they think they can get away with it, and when you're using it... | ||
| What's the context of this? | ||
| But you also said here, look, you carry on, but you don't expect me to have a debate with one of your faggots. | ||
| Like, why would I bother? | ||
| Okay, now that is more egregious, because that is... | ||
| I mean, and if you're just dealing with censoring words, he's not using that saying, you're acting like the way you call gay people. | ||
| He's not saying that. | ||
| He's like calling someone a gay slur. | ||
| And he's saying it again and again. | ||
| So this was just what they had decided to use. | ||
| Now, I don't agree with any of these things he said. | ||
| When I'm reading this, I'm like, this is... | ||
| These are poorly thought out arguments. | ||
| This is a poorly thought out sentence. | ||
| Just stop scrolling there for a second. | ||
| Put that back up. | ||
| It's not well thought out. | ||
| Not at all. | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| But this has nothing to do with his Patreon page. | ||
| This doesn't even have to do with his... | ||
| His channel. | ||
| This is something. | ||
| He made this comment as a part of a longer, wide-ranging interview with a YouTuber named Michelle Catlin. | ||
| Catlin? | ||
| And you can watch the full interview on this. | ||
| It says, chatting with Sargon of Akkad about the liberalist community. | ||
| So, you know, it was free-flowing, and he said a bunch of really stupid things. | ||
| But what he was trying to say is that these people are behaving exactly the way when they try to say racist things about black people. | ||
| Essentially, they're behaving exactly the way they're describing, in a racist way, black people. | ||
| It's just not well thought out. | ||
| I mean, this guy needs a class in how to fucking be articulate. | ||
| I mean, Jesus Christ. | ||
| But that's what I'm getting from this. | ||
| So Patreon decided to remove him because of that. | ||
| And there's many people that feel like that's not exactly why they did it, that they were looking for an excuse, and it's really because of his anti-liberal bias. | ||
| So... | ||
| A lot of people are disgusted by the idea that Patreon is now censoring voices and deciding who should or should not be able to receive donations from their fans based on their own personal political biases. | ||
| So this is the argument now. | ||
| And it's an interesting thing that's popped up because people like Sam Harris, who is very left, I mean, he gets accused of being all right, which is kind of hilarious, but he's very progressive and, you know, he's a public intellectual and he's decided that this is a moment where he is going to pull his Patreon account down because he doesn't like the way they are choosing to censor people. | ||
| And de-platform people based entirely on something that has nothing to do with anything he's done on their platform and has something to do with something that was out there on another channel. | ||
| So it's one of those weird little battleground situations. | ||
| But do you think that Patreon's a private enterprise, right? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So they can do whatever the fuck they want, no? | ||
| Essentially. | ||
| They can and did. | ||
| So then people can decide that they don't want to deal with Patreon because Patreon doesn't support free speech. | ||
| Because free speech... | ||
| The argument would go that free speech is not just supporting speech that you agree with. | ||
| True free speech is letting people express themselves. | ||
| Now, the way he expressed himself there, not very good. | ||
| Clumsy. | ||
| That's an understatement. | ||
| Your thoughts on it? | ||
| You've never seen this before. | ||
| What are your thoughts on it? | ||
| I'm like, dude, that choice of words is such a way to just... | ||
| If I'm a person reading that, my eye goes, you said what? | ||
| It's such an offensive word where you can't even go there. | ||
| It immediately distracts from the point that you're trying to make. | ||
| That's a good way of putting it. | ||
| I don't think that guy, I don't know if he's racist or not. | ||
| I don't think he is. | ||
| But your immediate reaction is like, this guy, you can't do that. | ||
| You have... | ||
| You have fundamentally destroyed whatever point you were trying to make because of your choice. | ||
| It's like you could be trying to save – I can't think of the analogy now. | ||
| But it's such a distracting choice of words. | ||
| Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He could have said – and by the way, like all conversations, including this one, right? | ||
| Like I'm trying to formulate these opinions on the fly. | ||
| So are you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| That was what he was doing on the fly. | ||
| I don't think this is anything he prepared. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So I think – Damn, dog. | |
| You mean that wasn't vetted? | ||
| Oh, dude, he's gone over that with a fucking highlighter. | ||
| These are the key points he wants to hit on. | ||
| There's been a few websites. | ||
| I was trying to look up the ones exactly, but I know, for instance, on Twitch in the last year, they've changed things on the terms of service that kind of what you do broadly affects what you do on anyone's account. | ||
| The problem with that, what you're just saying right now, is the guy who's the CEO of Patreon actually went on Dave Rubin's show, The Rubin Report, and said that they're only concerned with things that happen on Patreon. | ||
| And that's what they focus on. | ||
| Then they changed that after this. | ||
| Because... | ||
| Here's the problem. | ||
| Like, I see their point with this particular thing that this guy said. | ||
| I see how they find that offensive, and if that becomes a thing that he does more than once, and becomes a thing that he uses that all the time, and uses that kind of language in that context a lot, It's like, hmm, this is not – it's clunky. | ||
| It's not a wise choice of words. | ||
| It's sloppy and it's kind of lazy, right? | ||
| And also, it's kind of racist. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| But it's – why is it racist? | ||
| Well, it's racist because what he's doing is attacking people who are racists by saying – and he could have done it this way, right? | ||
| He could have said, you people rally on about black people and call them this and you say they're doing that. | ||
| This is what you do. | ||
| You are exactly what you're... | ||
| The only thing that's missing is that you don't have the right pigment to receive your own hate, your own self-hate. | ||
| You're doing the very things that you accuse, that you, in a racist way, accuse black people of doing. | ||
| It's stupid. | ||
| But the way to combat that, I don't... | ||
| When you start censoring people and taking away their ability to make a living by expressing themselves, I just don't think that's the way to go. | ||
| Because you're just going to receive backlash. | ||
| That's the thing. | ||
| That's one of those instances where it's like... | ||
| You've said a trigger word that is clearly a trigger word. | ||
| And what you just said is the way he should have said what he wanted to say. | ||
| In hindsight, if you gave them an opportunity, like you say, hey, Carl, here's a time machine. | ||
| Go back right before you said that and say it again. | ||
| What? | ||
| I was going to say, on Patreon, I'm reading their stance on it. | ||
| As a website, they don't host anything. | ||
| So to say that it's something that's happening on Patreon. | ||
| No, but they do host blogs. | ||
| Jordan Peterson wrote a blog on Patreon. | ||
| But that's what most of their content is, is links from other websites. | ||
| They have to take into account what you're creating as a creator. | ||
| Anywhere, almost. | ||
| Right. | ||
| This isn't even him as a creator, though. | ||
| This was him, a guest on someone else's show. | ||
| So this is not something that's his own content that he put out. | ||
| There's stances that he collaborates with other creators and this would be considered a collaboration. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| As a YouTube creator, I guess. | ||
| I see that point. | ||
| I do not think that it's a wise thing to censor him, though. | ||
| Do you? | ||
| Get that motherfucker a PR coach, dog. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Jesus Christ. | |
| At the very least, maybe that this is the first dance, which I think they're saying it is, definitely a warning or maybe a... | ||
| But here's the thing, man. | ||
| Here's the thing. | ||
| But here's the thing. | ||
| What he does is he's... | ||
| He's a commentator. | ||
| He sees life and he talks about it. | ||
| And I've listened to a lot of his stuff and it's very good. | ||
| He's a smart man. | ||
| A lot of it's very good. | ||
| This is not very good. | ||
| So the right way when it comes to these things is let the people who contribute To his Patreon, decide that they don't like what he's doing, so they're no longer going to subscribe. | ||
| That's the correct use of the platform. | ||
| The platform exists because people who are fans are able to contribute. | ||
| I say, Nimesh, I really like what you do. | ||
| I'm going to send you $100 every month. | ||
| And if someone wants to do that, they can do that. | ||
| And there's a lot of people that do do that. | ||
| When you say something that makes them offended, that makes them realize you're sloppy with your words, that makes them feel like you're a fool... | ||
| They go, you know what, I'm not sending that fucking guy money anymore. | ||
| Yeah, let the marketplace talk in that sense. | ||
| And then they pull back. | ||
| If he lost 30% of his market because of that, and then a bunch of blogs are written about how stupid what he said was, that's the correct response. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| I think. | ||
| But the problem with pulling out is, then guys like Sam Harris are pulling out, and they've lost somewhere around 20% of all their Patreon accounts because of this. | ||
| Because there's been a backlash. | ||
| And by the way, a backlash that's primarily coming from people who don't agree with what that guy said, but do agree that it's a very slippery slope to start censoring people. | ||
| That's a good moral stance to take. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's kind of like, I forget which political figure said it. | ||
| It's like, I do not agree with what you're saying, but I will defend to the death your ability to say it. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I think that's important because the only way that ideas get worked out is through discussion. | ||
| And as soon as you silence voices, then you no longer have that discussion. | ||
| Now, to YouTube's credit, he's still up on YouTube. | ||
| Mm-hmm. | ||
| Because this was a talk that he had that's available on YouTube. | ||
| You can listen to it on YouTube. | ||
| He still has his YouTube account. | ||
| And he's still able to, you know. | ||
| One of the things that we're seeing with deplatforming is it's sort of a cascading effect. | ||
| So dominoes. | ||
| Twitter takes you down, and then Facebook takes you down. | ||
| Who was the guy? | ||
| Not Limbaugh, but some other right winger that said some shit. | ||
| Gavin McGinnis? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Proud Boys guy? | ||
| They took him off of everything. | ||
| Yeah, he's off of everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, and that's that. | ||
| And with him, it's even... | ||
| He's like a hate speech guy, isn't he? | ||
| He's like fucking inciting violence and whatever. | ||
| He definitely did incite violence in that he wanted these Proud Boys to fight against Antifa. | ||
| And he felt like the Antifa people were thugs, and that they showed up at conservative events, and they threatened violence, and then he wanted the Proud Boys to fight them. | ||
| I actually had him on my podcast long before any of this shit went down, when I didn't even know what the fuck the Proud Boys was, and I was asking him. | ||
| I knew him as the co-founder of Vice, and I knew him as... | ||
| What I would basically say is he was essentially... | ||
| He was a shit talker. | ||
| He was a provocateur. | ||
| He was a clever provocateur. | ||
| He was kind of a funny guy. | ||
| The last time he came on the show, he was dressed like Michael Douglas from Falling Down. | ||
| He had the fucking briefcase and everything and the crazy tie. | ||
| But he did it on purpose. | ||
| He said he's dressing like Michael Douglas from Falling Down. | ||
| He's a guy who would trick people into coming in and talking with him on his YouTube channel, and they thought that he was liberal or progressive, and then he would, you know, he would basically talk them into a corner. | ||
| You know, like someone... | ||
| Yeah, he was doing a lot of that, and some of it was very clever that he was doing on his YouTube channel. | ||
| Then he got into this whole Proud Boys thing, and there's a video, you can watch the bizarre origins of the Proud Boys from a podcast that I did with Anthony Cumia from Opie and Anthony, and he explains how the Proud Boys initially were just a joke. | ||
| It was literally a joke, and they did it to make fun of a guy that was one of their interns. | ||
| I think so, yeah. | ||
| It's kind of a crazy story, man. | ||
| And then that shit took a real life of its own, and now they're fucking Junior KKK kind of shit. | ||
| Yeah, exactly. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| They all of a sudden, it got away from them, and they became an organization where you could just join. | ||
| So all these people joined, and then they act as a proud boy, and they were beating people up, and all this other crazy shit, and he's on the outside. | ||
| He got out. | ||
| He quit. | ||
| He denounced his position. | ||
| He realized his life is falling apart. | ||
| He was being labeled as... | ||
| They falsely claimed the FBI labeled them as a hate crime, but they didn't. | ||
| But the Southern Poverty Law Center did label them as a hate crime, and several other organizations did as well. | ||
| But the Southern Poverty Law Center, they have some pretty crazy shit that they've said as well. | ||
| They're a serious, liberal, progressive organization that occasionally oversteps the boundaries of logic and reason. | ||
| They... | ||
| But what he did was start an organization. | ||
| And I had a joke about vegans. | ||
| My joke about vegans was the problem with vegans is the problem with any other group. | ||
| If you get a group of a hundred people, what are the odds that one of them is going to be a fucking idiot? | ||
| Well, that's a hundred percent, right? | ||
| If we're being like really charitable, one out of a hundred is a fucking moron. | ||
| So if you get a group like vegans, where just anyone can join, and you have... | ||
| There's 300 million people in this country. | ||
| That means there's 3 million fucking idiots. | ||
| That's generous. | ||
| And a lot of them are vegan. | ||
| And the joke was that the problem is not the actual people with good ethics and morals that don't want animals to suffer. | ||
| The problem is you let a bunch of people with no identity join your gang. | ||
| And then they become a part of this plant-based gang. | ||
| This is the same thing with the Proud Boys. | ||
| I think some of them probably went into it thinking it was a goof. | ||
| And they were going to go there, and they thought these Antifa assholes, these 90-pound dorks swinging bike locks at people and calling everybody a Nazi and a fascist and trying to shut down every single conservative speech that was at any sort of university. | ||
| These people were preposterous. | ||
| They were calling Ben Shapiro a Nazi. | ||
| He's a fucking Jewish man who wears a yarmulke. | ||
| I mean, it's crazy to call him a Nazi. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Completely insane. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But he's conservative. | |
| The alt-right and the alt-left, almost, right? | ||
| Yes, exactly. | ||
| And so their idea was to have something that would be there to balance out the alt-left. | ||
| And it got out of control. | ||
| And so he denounced it, and he stepped away from it, pulled away. | ||
| But it's too late. | ||
| Because he's now what you said. | ||
| See, you don't know him, but you said he's the hate speech guy. | ||
| You said he's that guy. | ||
| That's how everybody's going to see him. | ||
| Right. | ||
| So if you found out your sister was dating him, you'd be like, what? | ||
| You're dating the hate speech guy? | ||
| Like, that's who he is. | ||
| And you'd be like, no, no, no, no, it's not that. | ||
| It's like, it got away from him. | ||
| It just, it became this, it wasn't him anymore. | ||
| With all these people that joined that were actual racist. | ||
| Too late. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Doesn't matter. | ||
| Too late. | ||
| There's no room for that in this world. | ||
| I'm out the game. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So... | ||
| All these other groups, once he started getting deplatformed, these other groups got pressure to deplatform him. | ||
| Because they said, hey, you keep the hate speech guy? | ||
| You're telling me the hate speech guy's on YouTube? | ||
| And they're like, fuck. | ||
| Okay, we got to take him off. | ||
| And so that this domino effect does seem to take place. | ||
| So with this Sargon of Akkad thing, though, it doesn't seem to be taking place with him because people are examining what he said. | ||
| They're saying, well, this is a sloppy use of these words. | ||
| It's not wise what he did, but I do not think he's a racist, and I don't think he was promoting racism. | ||
| What he was doing was he was using words poorly. | ||
| Awfully. | ||
| But yeah, I mean... | ||
| But that's what he's guilty of. | ||
| Yeah, but that's the... | ||
| I mean, that's a good sign he's not being deplatformed, then. | ||
| If people are taking a beat to realize, like, oh, I don't hate gays and blacks. | ||
| That's the point. | ||
| This whole thing has been a lesson in patience, and that's good to hear that this guy is being afforded some patience about what... | ||
| In their defense, he's already been kicked off of Twitter. | ||
| He'd been kicked off of Twitter before. | ||
| I don't know what for, though. | ||
| Do you know what he got kicked off of Twitter for? | ||
| He got kicked off of Twitter previously. | ||
| So he already had that scarlet mark, you know? | ||
| People were already looking at him. | ||
| You mean he's been inarticulate on Twitter before? | ||
| No way! | ||
| Go get on! | ||
| I don't know what he had done if they had determined that he had harassed somebody. | ||
| What's that? | ||
| I guess this could be a new account. | ||
| I guess he's on it right now. | ||
| Is it a new account? | ||
| Might be. | ||
| How many followers does he have? | ||
| 13,000. | ||
| Yeah, it's probably new. | ||
| He had a lot more than that. | ||
| He must have... | ||
| I wonder if he started a new account. | ||
| I say here, permanently banned account. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Yeah, he's permanently banned. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is in April of 2017. Oh, so it's pretty old. | |
| Isn't that funny? | ||
| April of 2017 is millions of years ago now. | ||
| The news cycle is so fast. | ||
| It's too fast. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's weird, right? | |
| Dude, I'm telling you, when I was at the show, it was like, a story would be hot Monday morning, and then Tuesday morning, it's like, what happened? | ||
| No one gives a shit. | ||
| No one gives a shit. | ||
| That's one of the more interesting things about this whole Trump story, especially the Mueller probe, is that there's been so many of those quick stories that have just piled up. | ||
| You remember that family where the son died in Iraq? | ||
| Yeah, and he didn't... | ||
| Sorry, let me cut you off. | ||
| He was... | ||
| He'd said something. | ||
| He had mocked... | ||
| Somehow or another mocked the family. | ||
| And people were like, this guy. | ||
| And a lot of people thought that was going to be the end of him. | ||
| And it's just like these things sort of pile up. | ||
| Oh, the Pakistani-American? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| There's been so many of those stories. | ||
| But accumulative, they are starting to pile up too much. | ||
| It's little drops that are coming. | ||
| He's been able to sort of roll with those punches and just sort of slide them off kind of. | ||
| But this Mueller thing, what I really like about the Mueller thing is that... | ||
| It's been a real slow build, and you get little hints of what's going on, but it's been like... | ||
| We were talking about this at the show while I was there. | ||
| FBI don't fucking... | ||
| They build a case. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| They take their fucking time and they got all the time and money in the world to build. | ||
| And when they come, they don't come light. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not like they come heavy. | ||
| They're knocking on doors. | ||
| They're coming 100 deep. | ||
| And that's what's... | ||
| It's going to be 0 to 100 like that. | ||
| And that's going to be interesting to see what happens. | ||
| Especially Mueller. | ||
| You look at that guy. | ||
| There's a calculated... | ||
| Assassin. | ||
| He is taking his fucking time. | ||
| That's gotta be killing Trump. | ||
| He doesn't take shit. | ||
| And the beauty with Mueller is that you know he's an independent guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He don't take shit from nobody. | ||
| The crazy thing was that Trump was literally considering firing him. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But everyone's like, someone was like, hey man, you cannot do that. | ||
| That's the one that was, you cannot do that. | ||
| But when he fired Comey, that's when I realized, like, whoa! | ||
| Like, this guy could just do that? | ||
| He could just fire the head of the FBI? He's just testing. | ||
| He's just, can I do this? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Can I get rid of the attorney general that I think was supposed to be on my side? | ||
| Sessions? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, but he finds out, oh, no. | ||
| Jeff is also, as racist as he is, is a man of high ethical standards when it comes to, like, I'm not going to fucking do, I may hate minorities, but I respect the law. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| You know, like, that's Jeff Sessions. | ||
| Did you find out what happened? | ||
| There wasn't a really good explanation of it. | ||
| It was just one of those things, like, he had a, I think he had a debate with Baked Alaska, and then the next day he was gone with no real explanation of why. | ||
| Probably said some anti-SAM and shit. | ||
|
unidentified
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I don't know. | |
| What's Baked Alaska? | ||
| I don't know what Baked Alaska is. | ||
| He's a guy. | ||
| He's a meme guy. | ||
| He was just a meme guy, but now he's essentially become this really right-wing sort of... | ||
| He's kind of in the Infowars camp as well, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But Baked Alaska has come up with some fucking hilarious memes. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh, okay. | |
| Some of his memes are hilarious. | ||
| He had one with Alex Jones. | ||
| He's always had a bunch of them like that. | ||
| I've been out the game for that. | ||
| The meme game? | ||
| It's just all of it. | ||
| I feel old. | ||
| Wikipedia has an interesting label for it. | ||
| What does it say? | ||
|
unidentified
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Far-right. | |
| American far-right neo-nazi. | ||
| What? | ||
| Yikes. | ||
| He's a neo-nazi? | ||
|
unidentified
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What kind of name is Antime? | |
| What kind of name is Dimesh? | ||
| Proud. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Proud Patel, though. | |
| Alright, man. | ||
| Let's wrap this bitch up. | ||
| I gotta get the fuck out of here. | ||
| For sure, dude. | ||
| Overall, man, I think you handled this really well. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I think this is definitely a positive for your career. | ||
| Yeah, thank you. | ||
| You're a funny dude. | ||
| You just continue. | ||
| Keep on moving on. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| I appreciate you, brother. | ||
| My pleasure. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, man. | |
| Appreciate you, too. | ||
| Thank you, man. | ||
| Oh, tell people how to get to your Instagram, your Twitter, all that jazz. | ||
| Yeah, sure. | ||
| I'm at FindingNemesh on Instagram. | ||
| Twitter, I have like 10 follows because I hate Twitter. | ||
| And then I'll be at the Punchline in Philly December 27th through December 29th. | ||
|
unidentified
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Beautiful. | |
| Go there and snatch the mic from him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, don't do that. | |
| Just please. |
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