# Persuade me that Bill Hicks (standup comic) was a big deal **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 20, 2011, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721 "2011-07-20T15:43:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/61 "2011-07-23T04:04:26Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > But that’s not what the bit is about, at all. It’s about people who are so greedy that everything is about money. It’s exactly what people still think today, and the reason the RIAA and MPAA are both hated so much. That’s entirely untrue. The people whomhate the RIAA and MPAA are the ones who have taken it upon themselves to decide for someone else when and how they should rank monetary value. It’s Group A deciding on behalf of Group B “Hey, you know what? I think you’ve made enough money by practicing your profession, so what I’m going to do is take the ordinary exchange for value (A’s money for enjoyment of B’s output) and just eliminate the part that obliges me to contribute value to the exchange without giving you the option to turn down the deal.” > [@](#): > > It’s why free software is such a big deal. People object to a society where value is established solely by money. 1. No, they’re not doing that. They just want something for nothing. 2. If that were true, people would be making copies of works _only_ when they have permission to. You can fucking bet if Hicks were alive today he’d still want to get paid for doing the work that he had spent a lifetime working on. His “marketing” rant is pretty lazy intellectually because he never really identifies specifically what the problem is. Anyone who produces something – like standup comedy – wants to find the people who are willing to pay for it. It seems to me that Hicks struggled his whole life trying to do exactly that – find the consumers who were willing to pay in exchange for enjoying the fruits of his labor. And that’s exactly the role of advertising and marketing. That’s true whether you’re a doctor or a teacher or a musician or an author or a plumber or a software engineer or a video game developer or a comedian. Anyone who has spent a life perfecting a skill wants 1. Consumers who are interested in consuming the product of that work and 2. The option to set terms for exchange. While some people might choose to make their work product free for some of their activities, there is always something that they’re going to want to demand the right to exchange monetary value for. And the basis of such a decision is yhe right to withhold your wirk product from people who reject your terms. And it shouldn’t be in the hands of only one side of that transaction to decide unilaterally, “Know what? I am an engineer and I only give my work product to those who are willing to negotiate for it, but you? What you produce is “art” and I value it enough that I’m going to take it and enjoy it, but I’m going to deny you the right to withhold your work product from me mid you don’t like it, there’s nothing you can do about it. You should have liked engineering instead if art if you wanted that right.” > [@](#): > > More people likely identify with him now than did then. That’s why, when he said it, it was so shocking. And my point is that it’s completely the opposite. More and more people are doing more and more people _on an individual basis_ to be their own marketers and advertisers and promoters. That’s what it means to be a musician who rejects a major label contract to go out on his own to earn money. That’s what it means to be a writer who starts a blog and a Facebook page and a Twitter feed and puts Google ads on all those websites and self-publishes E-books on Amazon in order to earn money as a writer. That’s what it means to become a “consultant” or a “contractor” in one’s profession and look for ways to market one’s skills and work product as an individual. That’s what it means to “be my own boss.” It means you are a marketer, you are an advertiser, you are a promoter, of your work product, your skills, your time, your expertise. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/62 "2011-07-23T04:05:59Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > But that’s not what the bit is about, at all. It’s about people who are so greedy that everything is about money. It’s exactly what people still think today, and the reason the RIAA and MPAA are both hated so much. That’s entirely untrue. The people whomhate the RIAA and MPAA are the ones who have taken it upon themselves to decide for someone else when and how they should rank monetary value. It’s Group A deciding on behalf of Group B “Hey, you know what? I think you’ve made enough money by practicing your profession, so what I’m going to do is take the ordinary exchange for value (A’s money for enjoyment of B’s output) and just eliminate the part that obliges me to contribute value to the exchange without giving you the option to turn down the deal.” > [@](#): > > It’s why free software is such a big deal. People object to a society where value is established solely by money. 1. No, they’re not doing that. They just want something for nothing. 2. If that were true, people would be making copies of works _only_ when they have permission to. You can fucking bet if Hicks were alive today he’d still want to get paid for doing the work that he had spent a lifetime working on. His “marketing” rant is pretty lazy intellectually because he never really identifies specifically what the problem is. Anyone who produces something – like standup comedy – wants to find the people who are willing to pay for it. It seems to me that Hicks struggled his whole life trying to do exactly that – find the consumers who were willing to pay in exchange for enjoying the fruits of his labor. And that’s exactly the role of advertising and marketing. That’s true whether you’re a doctor or a teacher or a musician or an author or a plumber or a software engineer or a video game developer or a comedian. Anyone who has spent a life perfecting a skill wants 1. Consumers who are interested in consuming the product of that work and 2. The option to set terms for exchange. While some people might choose to make their work product free for some of their activities, there is always something that they’re going to want to demand the right to exchange monetary value for. And the basis of such a decision is yhe right to withhold your wirk product from people who reject your terms. And it shouldn’t be in the hands of only one side of that transaction to decide unilaterally, “Know what? I am an engineer and I only give my work product to those who are willing to negotiate for it, but you? What you produce is “art” and I value it enough that I’m going to take it and enjoy it, but I’m going to deny you the right to withhold your work product from me mid you don’t like it, there’s nothing you can do about it. You should have liked engineering instead if art if you wanted that right.” > [@](#): > > More people likely identify with him now than did then. That’s why, when he said it, it was so shocking. And my point is that it’s completely the opposite. More and more people are doing more and more people _on an individual basis_ to be their own marketers and advertisers and promoters. That’s what it means to be a musician who rejects a major label contract to go out on his own to earn money. That’s what it means to be a writer who starts a blog and a Facebook page and a Twitter feed and puts Google ads on all those websites and self-publishes E-books on Amazon in order to earn money as a writer. That’s what it means to become a “consultant” or a “contractor” in one’s profession and look for ways to market one’s skills and work product as an individual. That’s what it means to “be my own boss.” It means you are a marketer, you are an advertiser, you are a promoter, of your work product, your skills, your time, your expertise. ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2011, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/63 "2011-07-23T04:17:24Z")
You are still stuck on the “go kill yourself” I think BigT is a bit too, but not in the same way. Watch the bit again, focus on what he has the marketer character say. It’s a bit about how everything is being turned into a product to be sold. It comes from the frustration of being a standup comic who just wanted to do stand-up and make people laugh while others were turning themselves into a product. And then fecking marketers come along and try to package that frustration! It isn’t that he doesn’t want to get paid, its that the world is a less good place when everything has been packaged to be marketed and sold. The humor is in the frustration not the words. It’s a subtle smart bit that leads off with the subtly of a brick to the head. But that brick to the head isn’t the point, its just a manifestation of the frustrated state, and an attention grab mechanism to pull the audience in (and maybe get cheap shock laugh to warm them up). Think its funny or don’t, that’s subjective. But appreciate what was being done. It isn’t lazy. ---
**Author:** ![Voluble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/4af34b/32.png) [@Voluble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voluble)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2011, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/64 "2011-07-24T18:36:13Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > You may have seen this already, but usually when people ask what he did that was funny, I point them to the [‘dinosaurs in the Bible’ bit](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qmglGWMsdk). That pretty much settles it. He had an inherently funny premise and I may have laughed at least a little had just about anyone else been telling the jokes but he just couldn’t sell it to save his life. And I predicted some of the jokes before he told them. No good comedian lets you get in front of them like that. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2011, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/65 "2011-07-25T00:35:07Z")
> [@NAF1138](#): > > YWatch the bit again, focus on what he has the marketer character say. It’s a bit about how everything is being turned into a product to be sold. I got it. That part’s the joke, and I get the joke, but it’s still just a joke. I don’t see that it has any more real moral or ethical import than the rest of it. > [@](#): > > It comes from the frustration of being a standup comic who just wanted to do stand-up and make people laugh while others were turning themselves into a product. And then fecking marketers come along and try to package that frustration! And from my point of view, it comes from the standpoint of a standup comic who is having trouble finding his audience and is lashing out at the people whose job it is to find audiences for people. > [@](#): > > It isn’t that he doesn’t want to get paid, its that the world is a less good place when everything has been packaged to be marketed and sold. The humor is in the frustration not the words. It’s a subtle smart bit that leads off with the subtly of a brick to the head. But that brick to the head isn’t the point, its just a manifestation of the frustrated state, and an attention grab mechanism to pull the audience in (and maybe get cheap shock laugh to warm them up). I agree, it’s frustration, but the way he tells the joke, he is trying to obscure the fact that it’s a personal, selfish kind of frustration and is instead trying to frame it as a frustration about some kind of societal fault. This is the kind of thing that comedians like Marc Maron _today_ understand with a much higher degree of sophistication. Yeah, Dane Cook is a bland, generic, intellectually unsubtle comedian. But his appeal is much more broad than comedians who aren’t bland, generic and unsubtle. And there’s nothing morally or ethically wrong with that. I mention Maron here because I’ve been listening to his interviews a lot, with a wide range of comics. He gives due respect to the fact that people like Cook work hard and actually legitimately locate and please their audiences, even though Cook’s work doesn’t necessarily satisfy people like me. > [@](#): > > Think its funny or don’t, that’s subjective. But appreciate what was being done. It isn’t lazy. With your help, I’m coming to the conclusion that it’s worse than lazy; it’s dishonest. It would be funnier and had framed it in a much more honest way as a complaint about a _personal_ frustration about his career. Instead he tried to pull one over on us, and made it a rant against advertisers and marketers in general as a societal illness. ---
**Author:** ![Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffer_Spice_1)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/66 "2011-07-26T15:08:15Z")
i don’t think bill hicks had trouble locating an audience - he was doing just fine. but i don’t think that’s his finest moment at all - it doesn’t do much for me. there are plenty of bits that do though. i love the bit about women proposing to serial killers in jail while he has trouble getting laid. “ted bundy must have some serious sense of humour like all you ladies say you like…” when he takes it to the degree of a pussy whipped satan, it made me laugh 🙂 [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/mA4fZhALVkw/hqdefault.jpg "Bill Hicks Pussy Whiped Satan") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA4fZhALVkw) ---
**Author:** ![Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7ea924/32.png) [@Biffer\_Spice\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biffer_Spice_1)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2011, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721/67 "2011-07-26T15:14:01Z")
> [@Biffer\_Spice](#): > > i don’t think bill hicks had trouble locating an audience - he was doing just fine. but i don’t think that’s his finest moment at all - it doesn’t do much for me. there are plenty of bits that do though. i love the bit about women proposing to serial killers in jail while he has trouble getting laid. “ted bundy must have some serious sense of humour like all you ladies say you like…” when he takes it to the degree of a pussy whipped satan, it made me laugh 🙂 > > [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA4fZhALVkw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA4fZhALVkw) a more full version of the sketch (with dodgy video rather than just audio) [![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/818mdF2_FVo/hqdefault.jpg "Bill Hicks ★ On Ted Bundy and pussy whipped Satan") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818mdF2_FVo) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/persuade-me-that-bill-hicks-standup-comic-was-a-big-deal/589721.md?page=3)