I’m in a great position going into indefinite isolation, because I get to read jokes, like this one from Malic White (@malicwhite), on Twitter all day, every day: “Any queer who makes it through quarantine without giving themself a weird haircut wins 9 lives.” While some people are avoiding social media altogether to keep themselves from having a panic attack, over the past handful of years I have surrounded myself with comedians on every platform. And let me tell you, even in the midst of a pandemic these comics are WORKING. Lauren Harsh has been hosting a weekly virtual open mic called Cabin Fever. Scott Duff has been hosting his own cooking show daily on Facebook. Podcasts are recording remotely, talk show hosts are monologuing to empty audiences, and the hilarious tweets and Facebook statuses have been multiplying like bunnies. But in these unusual times, is it even OK to be joking? How can you determine if something is “too soon” when you’re living in it every day? I reached out to some comics (virtually!) to get their jokes and thoughts.
I think we can—it’s a pretty universal thing we’re all going through even though it’s obviously not going to hit everyone equally. I know people who are either confirmed to have it or probably do. I haven’t been writing about it too much but I am going to be doing a livestream show. The technical issues are the big problem. Like, I’ve been on shows where the mic doesn’t work before and it sucks, but [if] worse comes to worst you can do a cappella. I tried to join an Instagram live mic yesterday, and it wouldn’t show my video and kept kicking me out. I wanted to do this show on Twitter, but I absolutely couldn’t get Twitter livestream to work. Obviously finding an audience when there’s already a glut of content is also going to be an issue. But I’ve done bar shows for three people plenty of times, so, you know, better than literally talking to myself.
Katie Baker @katiebcomedy“As a lifelong hypochondriac, watching everyone freak out over coronavirus makes me feel so seen.”
I think like anything, it’s not a matter of “too soon,” it’s a matter of “what’s the why?” Because a lot of people are out there making jokes about it because they don’t think it’s serious, and they think the people taking it seriously are idiots. Using humor to put down folks—especially ones at risk, ones who are scared or who were already disenfranchised and are seeing that magnified times a thousand—what’s the point of that? Comedy doesn’t need to be a noble cause, but it’s gonna be a damaging one right now when it aims to isolate (“This is why I’m right and all of you are stupid,” “I would never do this and that,” “It’s funny that you’re upset”) rather than connect our experiences (“Have you noticed?” “Wow, this is just like,” “Taking a shit during a quarantine—we’re all doing it!”) I think a lot about comedy around Trump back during the 2016 election, and a lot of it wasn’t about our collective witnessing of a nightmare, but it was isolating him as something so absurd, so improbable, it couldn’t be taken seriously—then it had to be. It just isn’t safe to deny our reality right now, but we can connect on what’s totally, hilariously, unworldly about it.
Tori Kilkenny @torikilkenny“A friend of mine asked what I thought of The Irishman. Let me tell you—too long, hard to finish, and required way too much focus than I anticipated. From now on I’m stickin to Scots and Englishmen.”
It’s weird, I’m getting more opportunity to write, which I wanted but I asked myself today, “If I don’t want to write about coronavirus, what else do I wanna write about? Is anything goofy funny right now?” As of now I’m going to continue to write and trust myself. Laughter always prevails! v
