Thread by @owenbroadcast

i used to have a job working around comedians and comedy writers. it wasnt my job, but i was there.

ive done a lot of public speaking - some of it humorous. i dont talk about it, but many very large companies have technically paid me to do this.

heres something interesting:

when you get good at "working" a crowd, its a skill in and of itself. an odd sociological data point is that once you cluster... over ten people together and you take on the role of "the speaker", they almost always react the exact same way

to everything. almost every time.

functionally, 99% of the time, the people will respond the exact same way. you can take a dumb thing that isnt even really that funny, and with the right conditions, a group of people - no matter who they are, will basically always laugh at it, if they're "supposed to".

after a while, this starts to affect your perception of people. its difficult for it not to. behind the scenes, theres two routes:

you either start to view people as monkeys - like you're above them, manipulating them

or youre the monkey, the idiot, dancing for them. two paths

its clear which path people take. in my world, most people took on a more negative view of human nature as a result of this. you have this power, you can basically make people behave a certain way, they like it - its easy to start viewing them as dumb and interchangeable.

the other path is totally different. you're the idiot. you're under the audience. they pay you, you do a little trick, that's really it

so, you choose to go under or over the audience. in that world, i think after talking to people for a while, you can tell which path they took

i think this is interesting in terms of modern comedy, and the direction its taken. everyone has noticed that comedians basically just lecture people now. their whole schtick is usually how smart they are, and how dumb everyone else is. theyre not jesters. theyre "smart".

i obviously took the opposite route. i identify with the jester archetype, even outside of this. i think this goes with the painting thing. you paint a picture of a rabbit, people think its cool. its kind of like a magic trick. thats really it. its just for fun. no big deal.

theres a dark side of the "showman" performer archetype that is distasteful to see up close and personal. it feels bad to see someone working an audience, and then leave the stage and actively have a kind of contempt for them. i think it feels wrong because its an inversion.

in one swedenborg tale the angels get power from a kind of spiritual sun. but for even the highest ones, God has the sun set, just for a moment - so they feel the power go away. otherwise, they would think the power came from them, and not God. even they need a little ego check.

sometimes ive thought of the jesters hat this way. it always has little bells. maybe thats why - he's on stage, everyone's looking at him, in that situation its easy to feel like a star, like the cool smart one. but he can hear the bells when he moves. he can hear: he's the fool

some people found this thread interesting. thanks, very cool.

if youd like to keep scrolling, heres another thread that has no direct relation to this, but i was thinking about these images this morning:

https://twitter.com/owenbroadcast/status/1716941862517534797