Sure, and comedians sometimes try jokes that don’t work. The thing is, Louis was FUNNY. Maybe this joke or that joke didn’t land, but enough jokes did - and landed really, really well - that he was hilarious.
From what we’ve heard of the new stuff, he just isn’t funny. His “jokes” about how kids today are no good are just awful, absolutely hack. You can hear exactly the same lame, obvious lines at any suburban open mic night, and they’ll often be done better.
If a comedian is sufficiently funny, they can do jokes about anything. 9/11, fetuses, Parkland survivors, whatever; the audience will forgive almost anything if it’s funny. Some comedian right now is working on a joke about school shootings or the #Metoo movement that is going to bring the house down this weekend. Louis CK’s new material is shit, the kind of grumpy crap one sadly expects from most old comedians who’ve lost their spark.
Have you listened to the whole routine? Because “From what we’ve heard of the new stuff” doesn’t sound like it and he’s probably still editing anyway. It sure seems to me that people are working hard to come up with justification not to like him outside of the perfectly valid “I can’t forgive him”.
I’ve heard the full thing and yeah that bit didn’t land but it was a pirated club set so some bits are bound to be rough round the edges. If he’d put the bit in a Netflix special that’d be different but gives the circumstances I’ll give him a pass on some jokes not working.
In his defence some other bits in the show were really good. Twitter picked out a couple of bits that sucked but the whole set had a good 30 minutes of top quality material.
Opinions differ, but I have heard and performed a lot of club comedy and honestly, I thought it was pretty bad from front to back. If that was the headline act at a regular show it would be the worst headliner I’d ever seen.
Ooh, I missed this thread when it was going around. So let me add a perspective I found interesting.
Louis CK’s “edgy” work is nothing of the sort. It fails on a basic level to be shock humor, because nothing in it is “shocking” to the audience. The reason shock humor works (once you get past the age where you instinctively laugh at boners and farts) is, fundamentally, because it’s the standup equivalent of removing the safety net on a high-wire act. You’re risking poisoning your audience against you for the sake of the payoff. But CK’s routine isn’t that. It’s bland. It’s standard. It’s shit that was done to death a decade ago on 4chan, and a decade before that by hacks like Dennis Miller. The kind of people who would be interested in seeing a Louis CK show at this point? They probably aren’t going to be shocked or scandalized by a shitty attack helicopter joke. They’re going to feel reassured in their shitty worldview.
This is the same problem this spate of right-wing or right-adjacent comedians talking about “triggering” their audience has. Nobody who would willingly listen to Dennis Miller (or, to put it another way, nobody who would rather listen to Dennis Miller than have their cock fed to a malfunctioning industrial shredder) is going to be “triggered” by any of his material. That kind of shitty, punching-down bigotry is rote and standard for the people listening. It’s not shock humor. It’s preaching to the choir. It’s sitting there telling people, “Those things you already believe but sometimes aren’t willing to say because other people don’t want to associate with bigots? That’s fine by me. You’re fine when you do that.” There’s no risk in that shit. And it sure as hell isn’t shock comedy.
LouisCK ownes nothing to most of us (those women on the other hand, substantial damages hopefully), so I found and still found the OP to be weak.
If I had to guess, LouisCK is now seeing the MRA, white nationalist crowd as his staple. Fair enough. They are welcome to him, and he has to earn a living. The OP feels some ownership of the comedian and is hurt.Why? You (and I) will probably be even less welcome at future LouisCK event, then at a Klan rally…and I have been to one of the later, so I am guessing it won’t be much fun. They could use the laughs to losen up a bit.
“Ownership”. C’mon, man. Never had a celebrity you were a fan of turn out to be a really shitty person? And it’s not just that CK’s material got weak or offensive - it’s that the memetics of the MRA/White nationalist crowd is actively dangerous, and a comedy routine reinforcing that bullshit hurts people.
I, for one, would quite like it if there were fewer KKK rallies. I would appreciate it if there were less public outlets for the thoughts of mens rights activists and white supremacists. I would especially like it if there were less famous, popular, beloved outlets for said thoughts.
And to add to the “she just had a bad date” meme. Yes, she had a bad date, but you can say that about a lot of things that might happen on a date.
In this case she had a bad date because a specific society-wise reason having to with how men are socialized in our society.
What Aziz did wasn’t as bad as what Cosby did, but it was still a reflection of societal misogyny. What I expected him to do after what seemed like a good first statement was “culture taught me that that behavior was okay, but now I see it isn’t, and we should all reject that kind of behavior.”
That and subsequent behavior consistent with that would have been enough for me to put that episode in the past.
The irony here is that both Louis and Aziz were known for including material in their acts that reflected an awareness of societal and individual misogyny.
:dubious:
I am looking to consume a celebs output, not marry them. I rarely care about their personal life.
Winston Churchill was a genocidal, racist fuckwit. I still find his works and speeches to be nearly unrivalled.
I would rather such views were not held at all. However, I am not stupid enough to think that they i) don’t exits and that ii) surpressing them will somehow make them go away. They will lose out on their own merit.
I mean, good on you for being aloof and cynical enough to never care about anything. Weird flex, but okay.
This is literally the exact opposite of how these things work.
Alex Jones is basically completely fucking insane. At least, the ideas he spreads are. He’s constantly wrong, but his fans don’t care. And he was constantly growing, taking in more and more fans through social media and connections to, of all people, the goddamn president of the united states.
And then he pissed off the wrong people at major tech companies, and got banned from youtube, facebook and twitter.
And since then, it should come as no surprise that he’s been on a pretty firm downward trend. His outreach is simply far, far smaller. It’s not that he somehow “got too crazy” - he’s been crazy the whole time. It’s that he has fewer ways to reach out to people and grow his audience. So less people gain access to his ideas. Sure, he’ll keep a hardcore base of followers, but that base will gradually shrink, and will be far harder to repopulate.
The currency in the marketplace of ideas is not accuracy. It’s attention. The idea that “they will lose out on their own merit” is refuted simply by looking at the career path of people like Jones. Or the existence of Milo Yiannopolous. Or Donald Trump.
From watching Louis CK throughout the years, I can’t help but think he’s actually writing a long sketch detailing his long and ingratiating fall from grace. He’s done similar things before. Before he got his FX show, he put out a sketch where he was considering taking up porn (link NSFW) because his career was in the toilet and he needed some kind of resurgence. I could see him assembling footage of his recent material in a documentary detailing his soul-diminishing downfall in painfully excruciating detail.
Similar situation with Asiz. His awkward and disastrous love life is a big part of his schtick. His scandal is practically script for the next season of Master of None.
How exactly do you think that “such views” “lose out on their own merit”? How exactly do you think societal change happens? It doesn’t just happen because individuals spontaneously change their minds because they’ve suddenly considered the merit of their views.
I don’t really get what you think the value of this kind of personal attack is. Do you think it will make me ashamed or embarrassed or rethink what I’ve said? What is an “internet woke individual” to you anyway? Is it someone insincere about their beliefs? How would you tell the difference between an insincere “internet woke individual” and someone sincerely talking about the things I’m talking about?
And you can do better than this, AK. You’re an educated person, a lawyer. You live in society. You’re not some adolescent in his parents’ basement masturbating to cut scenes in God of War outraged about ceding your race and gender privileges to growing equality.
Do you not actually know real men and women who behave badly or who are affected by the bad behavior of others? Do you really think this is all a charade? Do you think that celebrities aren’t real people and their behavior has no connection to the behavior of other people in society?
Do you think the women that Louis importuned actually didn’t suffer any harm? Do you think that Aziz’s date experienced no negative consequences whatsoever?
Is everyone this cynical and opportunistic about their work? If you thought you could get away with being a human trafficker or hired assassin or extortionist, would you do it just because it sold well?
Not just guys either. Cishet female here who has never been accused of abusive behavior, but the whole #MeToo thing has had me thinking over the past and wondering “All right I thought I was such a Cool Girl for taking the initiative sometimes, but was I always making sufficiently sure that the guy was okay with it? If a guy had done that to me, would that have seemed coercive?” If any of you were any of those guys and you weren’t okay with it, just want to say: sorry dude, I shouldn’t have done that.
The MeToo movement is ensnaring the wrong people then. It is meant to ensnare serial sex predators who remorselessly use their power and wealth to coerce people against their will.
Ideally it shouldn’t be about good people doing something awkward once or twice. Everyone has done that. I’ve done awkward things and had both men and women do awkward things to me.
Not only that, but I’ve done stuff with women where one women enjoyed it, and another woman got uncomfortable from the same thing. Obviously after you realize their uncomfortable you back off, but nobody is a mind reader.
Actually, no, it’s not just about a limited number of powerful men who misuse their power. It’s also about all of us being vigilant about consent in our own lives. No one is going to get it right every time. What is important that we don’t absolve ourselves of the responsibility to care about consent.
Yes, you’re not expected to be a mind reader. The solution to that is that you determine whether the other person wants something before you try it. That’s actually the point.
Have you ever actually seen a Louis CK stand-up special? Or even a talk show appearance? Because your complaint bears no resemblance to his material whatsoever.
I’m talking about things like talking to women at the grocery store for example. Some like it, some do not. So you just learn to take hints and back off if someone feels uncomfortable.
I had one girl get upset that I talked to her while she was at work. meanwhile I’ve had other women enjoy me doing that when they were at work.
:dubious: