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Comment by krick | Hacker News Reader

I never understood what's the point of stand-up comedians (and never heard a single actually funny joke from these folks), but isn't that the whole point why people who find this nonsense amusing invite them? For them to insult you, and you laugh and pretend that it was very funny and you are having a great time? That's literally what stand-up comedians are paid to do at these events (again, I never understood why anybody would pay for that, but that's literally what constitutes a stand-up comedian performance). So what's the news here?

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My wife and I saw him the next night where he told many of the same jokes.

We both, and an entire theater full of people had an amazing time, laughed all night.

If you haven't found a single laugh from the collective works of all the amazing stand-up comedians we have had, I don't really know what to say.

What about "who's on first", that's funny right?

Uncharitably, I think this article headline is just ragebait.

It made me feel "an AI event (yuck) hired a comedian (implying they wanted something non-insulting). The comedian roasted them (lol, the comedian did that instead? The AI event deserved it! I hope they feel bad about themselves)". I think that was the intended effect of the headline, which as you mentioned doesn't really make sense, which is why I call it ragebait.

No, that is not what stand-up comedians do. You’re dismissing a whole profession with surface understanding, like a computer illiterate octogenarian from the 90’s saying their programmer grandson “plays with computers”.

A stand-up comedian is someone who tells jokes at a live audience while standing up (hence the name). A small number of these comedians are insult comics, whose whole schtick is making fun of others. I personally don’t like that brand of comedy, but I’m not going to accuse people who do of pretending to have fun.

John Mulaney is not an insult comic. Neither is Ricky Gervais. Which is why them roasting the audience they were hired to entertain is news.

No, that's exactly what they do. That's Ricky Gervais' entire career. And it's not even slightly funny - none of it is.

> That's Ricky Gervais' entire career.

Ricky Gervais has had a very varied career, so I politely suggest that you don't know what you're talking about.

I have unfortunately seen plenty and that is still my assessment. I am not obliged to like your heroes.

I don't understand why you’re so irate. No one is forcing you to laugh. Different people find different things funny but that does not change their definitions. Stand-up comedy and insult comedy are well-defined terms.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_comedy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insult_comedy

The majority of stand-up comics are not insult comics.

>I don't understand why you’re so irate.

I'm just casually speaking my mind. You are here to debooonk people who don't have the same taste as you.

>Stand-up comedy and insult comedy are well-defined terms.

Cool, you've defined yourself to be right. But the vast majority of stand-up comedy is still centered around insults. And I find none of it to be funny.

If you find that to be casual, I invite you to reexamine if anything is bothering you and clouding your judgement. You are hurling negativity and ascribing wrong intentions at strangers on the internet unprovoked. That is not healthy.

Whatever’s bothering you, I hope you are able to resolve it quickly and well. Have a peaceful day.

>invite you to reexamine

>bothering you

>clouding your judgement

>hurling

>ascribing

>not healthy

>bothering you

>resolve it

This is just a thinly veiled list of ad hominems. All because I don't like stand-up comedy and said as much, lol. And I still don't.

When Ricky Gervais isn't roasting people in the audience or cohosting his podcast he's roasting people who aren't present instead. Ricky Gervais not making fun of somebody is very rare.

Well now I'm very curious. What sort of things do you find funny? What sort of entertainment and diversion do you enjoy? Do you engage in any forms of escapism, like videogames or fiction novels?

That’s what he’s paid to do, yeah. This keeps popping up but the truth is most people enjoy this stuff and can easily handle some humour that is non threatening like this.

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