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Ok, here's a thread no one asked for except a few people here and there when they asked me why I stopped doing stand-up:
I didn’t start doing stand-up because I wanted to be a professional stand-up comedian. I don’t. I’ve had enough borderline suicidal moments surrounded by people that love me, it terrified me to think how those moments would play out alone in hotel rooms night after night. 1/15
I started doing stand-up because it was a fun emotional outlet, I started to meet some really cool people & the rush of performing is a goddamn narcotic. So I became the bane of any professional comedian’s existence: a hobbyist. 2/15
And it worked for me in a smaller community, but after moving to a big city it became clear that the only way to call yourself a person who does comedy is to dedicate every waking moment to it. 3/15
I’m a commitment-phobe, reluctant to claim any one thing as my identity, but “comedian” seemed an especially daunting label. And this is some people’s livelihood, so what gave me the right to take up stage time? I’m not great at meeting new people, 4/15
or asking for things that I want, plus I work nights so it just made sense to not do comedy as much. These are the reasons I told myself it was ok to have stopped doing something that I love. And if those were the only reasons then fine, no self-indulgent thread needed. 5/15
But the biggest reasons were pretty simple: there were people in the community that I knew were abusive and I didn’t want to run into them and I didn’t know who to trust.
I pride myself on being genuine and it was draining to be fake nice to people that I wasn’t sure about, 6/15
I pride myself on being genuine and it was draining to be fake nice to people that I wasn’t sure about, 6/15
just to maybe get on a show or not seem difficult. I couldn’t think of a bigger waste of my time than sitting in a dark room surrounded by men I didn’t know. 7/15
I got tired of having to laugh off someone telling me he didn’t pay attention to anything I said because he was thinking about how much he wanted to fuck me. That part and then the part where people told me I was supposed to be flattered. 8/15
And I saw the outright abuse aimed at people trying to fix things and I cowered in fear. I didn’t want to play the game and I didn’t think I was strong enough to try and change it. 9/15
Do I expect the world to mourn that it’s been deprived of my quips about sandwiches or salsa or men being unable to satisfy me sexually? Absolutely not. I can’t say I’ve ever put any real, tangible effort into developing my voice as a comedian because like I said, 10/15
I just wanted it to be fun. I didn’t want it to be work. I don’t deserve to get anything out of it as I can’t even point to what I put into it. You don’t get to bathe in the glory if you’re only willing to stick your toe in the water. 11/15
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t countless voices lost that are deserving of mourning. There are so many people who break their backs every day working to be part of something that only ever tells them they don’t deserve to be there. 12/15
And for every famous predator there’s a thousand wannabes with the same behavior. And the countless people that they have collectively hurt see them get away with it and think: I clearly don’t matter, why bother? 13/15
So to every hot-taker saying that what someone did “wasn’t that bad,” first of all FUCK YOU but second, it’s never just about the behavior. It’s about what that behavior prevented so many other amazing, talented, hard-working people from achieving. 14/15
Of course, stand-up will probably be dead for a while so none of this matters! ABOLISH THE POLICE! 15/15
