Heckler Videos Are Apparently All The Rage
At the time of this writing my youtube captured altercation with Pat Breslin’s almost black friend Showtime is just under 44000 views in 7 months on youtube. A video from the same night breaking Pat Breslin’s balls has 160 views. They’re both from 2008 and posted 3 years too late. The popularity of this video bugs me for many reasons. For starters, I am piss drunk. This was the second show that night and I was downing Yuengling like the Volstead act was being signed at midnight. Also, I am dressed like an asshole wearing a Soul Joel shirt over a hoodie. So not only is the joke out of date but my attire is as well and I am indirectly advertising for some dude that doesn’t even talk to me anymore and unlike all the other bridges I torched I have no idea why.
So drunk,check. Poorly dressed, Check. Funny, not as funny as the matured version of the original joke is today. Why not let 40000 people see it? To put it in perspective the spanking video one of my oldest and most search friendly videos has 10K views after 5 years. This video now has more hits than my website after 6 years.
A few months back, I was talking about this video with comedian Andrew Schulz and he had an interesting take that may or may not have been his own, I forget if he attributed or not as it was rather loud in the bar area, but the gist was this:
People are generally unimpressed with material. Comedy has an adversarial relationship with the listener, essentially: Make me laugh, assclown.
If you succeed, they are pleased but not impressed because that is what you are supposed to do, however, if you fail its glorious because you have lost your pedestal and are just like them an unfunny jackass who requires others for entertainment.
It is the same principle behind heckler videos. Material is something you wrote on your own, its yours, so it is the enemy. A heckler however is outside the norm. It is a once in a lifetime situation, and therefore by discovering and sharing footage of this event the viewer not only conspires with the comedian but is able to claim some ownership in the humor itself.
I was just nodding at the time because I could only hear every other word and I would have knifed him for a cigarette but 40K viewers later, I’d have to say he was right. The sentiment above was his, the paraphrasal mine. Should you take exception take it up with him or the guy he may or may not have been paraphrasing.
Half Ninja 