‘Saturday Night Live’ writer Alex English says social media has ruined the art of comedy
Alex English was supposed to be on vacation when I called him on Thursday afternoon, but instead he had just finished two stand-up gigs in New York City, and was rushing to pack for a late-night flight to London, where he was performing at the Top Secret Comedy Club that weekend. The work never ends when you’re a, well, working comedian.
Since joining SNL Music Night writers room 2021 (season 47), English showed an uncanny gift for the kind of humor that hits you where it counts (all the more impressive considering he had no previous sketch experience). SNL Music Night). During his short but remarkable tenure, he brought audiences “Hot Girl Hospital“ “Beautiful prison,” and the icon immediately “Lisa from Temecula”, which he told me he was inspired by a vacation to Detroit, his hometown.
English says his humor comes not from social media but from similar experiences. “I talk to people, talk to my family. I read the newspaper. I read a lot of books,” he says. “I like to watch people. I’m an old man.”
English belongs to a new generation of interesting—and strange—comedians that includes John Early, Bowen Yang, Sam Jay, and Joel Kim Booster. What they’re trying to achieve isn’t a viral moment, which English says too many new comedians crave, but a shared understanding of the absurdities of life. In fact, English is adamant that social media isn’t just ruining the art of comedy, it’s ruining our relationship with it. So I asked him to explain how we got here, and how we can get back.
Jason Parham: What scares you about the state of comedy today?
Alex English: I was on a plane recently. Another passenger was watching a clip on their phone and I was like, “Oh, I know that person.” For seven seconds of the video, he just scrolled through it. I’m sure that moment was when the comedian was setting it up or talking to the audience. That scared me. I was like, “I don’t want anyone to do that to me. I don’t want anyone scrolling through me.” You know what, because everyone’s doing it now, it’s become so saturated. There’s no originality in the videos that I’m watching. That’s not to put down the people who are doing it. I just feel like that’s not the way I should be doing it.
That’s fair.
Gone are the days where you could go and play a gig at a club, someone in the industry sees you, and they want to put you on a platform to elevate your work. Instead, the business is, do you have 500,000 followers from burning material that you put on the internet or talking to an audience. When it comes to crowd work, I’m the one who comes to work. The audience doesn’t come to work. They come to laugh. I don’t understand this obsession with that. When I’m on stage, I don’t care about the audience. It’s like, “Are you guys dating?” Who cares? There’s no unique story to it. And they don’t pay for it.
Whose fault is it?
I realized, especially after the pandemic, Instagram And TikTok All of that when it comes to comedy has really ruined a lot of audiences. It’s changed the audience’s perception of what comedy – specifically stand-up comedy – really is. I did a show a few months ago that was going well. This woman came up to me after the show. She was sitting in the front. She said, “Oh my gosh, I thought you were going to talk to us tonight. I thought you were going to make fun of us.” I said, “Is that what you think stand-up is now?” Audiences have expectations now because of what they’re consuming online.
