5 Things I Learned About People From Doing Stand-Up Comedy

(People had complained about me just posting a preview of the linked post, so here's the whole thing!) I’ve been doing stand-up comedy for two months now, which is a total gear shift from my previous job in AI policy. I’ve learned some fascinating things about how humor works, but also about how people perceive each other, and how crowds can be surprisingly hive-minded. For those interested in improving their models of people and the world, here are five of those things! 1. People need to put you in a box The first thing a stand-up audience craves, consciously or unconsciously, is for you to tell them what kind of person you are. Are you an artsy lesbian, a hard-working immigrant, a married average Joe? For some reason, people can’t laugh until they have a box to put you in. If they can’t place a comedian, half the audience’s minds will be occupied trying to figure out who is talking to them. Must be some sort of innate human drive to quickly categorize new people you meet. This is why so many stand-ups start by addressing their appearance, accent, etc. (“I know what you’re thinking… [generic punchline about their appearance].”) I experienced this need to categorize myself when watching this set by Robby Hoffman recently. I couldn’t quite figure out who was speaking to me and just felt like I couldn’t quite settle until I got more of a grasp on who she is as a person. (This is less applicable to comedians who don’t tell stories or talk conversationally, and instead purely do one-liners. This style of comedy can feel less personal, so I suppose that’s why the urge to know more about the comedian may be lower.) In comedy, something glaring in the audience’s mind that goes unaddressed is called a “loop”. Common loops are a strange/loud laugh in the crowd, something going wrong on stage, or mentioning something that makes the audience concerned, such as the death of a relative. Generally, comedians want to “close” such loops as quickly as possible because people just can’t laugh while thinking “She just knocked over the microphone and hasn’t addressed it!” or “Is he okay?” Some comedians go as far as to address their appearance/voice/etc. every time. Helen Bauer says she has to address being fat every time she goes on stage because there are some people in the audience to whom apparently this poses a loop. Some people’s loops are dumb. I think people’s need to categorize comedians as soon as they get on stage is basically a kind of loop. And I think the fact that people do this to comedians is indicative of people doing this in everyday life too. 2. Laughter is very un-individual I had NO idea how un-independent people’s impulse to laugh is of the people surrounding them until I got into comedy. You will get flat responses, awkward silences, crickets one day and then roaring laughter the next with the exact same set. And it’s not a case of a few people laughing the first day while most stay silent, and the reverse the next day. People’s laughter is pretty even on a given day; people adjust to the energy in the room. (What determines the level of energy in a room, other than the quality of the stand-up set? Probably some combination of the energy level right before the set and the presence of a couple of nutters who unconsciously do not gauge whether and how loud other people are laughing before laughing themselves. Yay, thank you, nutters.) The thing is, most of us do not listen to a joke, evaluate it on its own terms, and decide to laugh. Instead, we are extremely sensitive to how much other people around us are laughing. If the energy is flat, we too are flat. The crazy thing is we don’t choose to laugh more or less. We simply find it more or less funny. The same person could have a completely different experience at a show, depending on the night they choose to go. And they would never know! 3. Different countries’ audiences differ I suppose many people would expect different countries to have different affinities for stand-up—polite laughter in Britain, raucous crowds in Latin America, frigid Germans. I’m generally quite skeptical of such country stereotyping. But for stand-up audiences, it’s true. I can speak best to the difference between British and German audiences since I’m German—it’s huge. You could watch the funniest German stand-up clip you have ever seen on Youtube, and the audience will be giving nothing. (Little treat if you speak German.) Stand-up isn’t big in Germany at all; people aren’t that into it. British audiences are super nice in comparison! The strange thing is, I totally get why Germans are like that. I would be like that if I hadn’t moved to the UK years ago. It’s a cultural difference in how you interact with strangers. Germans don’t talk to random people in queues or at bars, etc., in the same way that British people do. Germans don’t cheer easily or join in some sort of audience/crowdwork interaction. To a German, being that outgoing can seem fake and tacky, not to mention exh