An Open Letter To The Tattletales Of Comedy Clubs

I say this not as the showrunner of a sitcom Dane Cook is starring in for NBC, but as a fan of stand-up comedy: you folks who go to stand-up shows and immediately blog or Tweet about some dumb shit a comic said — whether it’s Dane Cook joking about the Colorado shooting (a joke I have no comment on nor had any real reaction to) or Daniel Tosh declaring rape jokes to be funny or Patton Oswalt yelling at people for recording his show — you are fucking up stand-up comedy. You are singlehandedly creating a world where comics will start to censor themselves; they will think twice before trying out a potentially shocking bit, and in art, things need to fail. Things need to fall flat and the artist needs to have that done in a relatively safe environment — yes, even the environment of a comedy club where the silence of a joke gone bad can be deafening. But when you introduce the increasing likelihood that someone in your audience is going to post your failed or shitty or misguided joke on the Internet while having a smoke outside the comedy club or text it to their friend at Splitsider, you add an extra prophylactic barrier to the experience that can only lead to the bland-ening of comedic expression. You are ten times worse than hecklers. At least hecklers have the balls to try to ruin a show out loud.