Nimesh Patel | Stand-up Comedy & the Role of Tech | Talks at Google
foreign [Music] my name is Karthik lavango I am from America's Central GD team before we get started I want to remind the audience that we will take some questions from the audience at the end of this talk uh with that out of the way I'm really excited to introduce our next guest nimesh Patel uh nimesh Patel is a standard comedian and emmy-nominated writer who is rising as one of the most in-demand stand-up comedians in the country he most recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and made his late night debut with uh late night It's Late Night with Seth Meyers a few years ago uh his self-release special jokes to get you through quarantine has a mass over a million views uh he has opened for comedians like Chris Rock and Aziz Ansari uh his new special thank you China is now available on YouTube uh his first writing job came after Chris Rock saw him perform stand-up and he hired an image to write for the Oscars since then he has written for SNL a little late with Lily Singh White House Correspondents dinner and recently he is also like a producer for a full frontal with Samantha Beach so with that please welcome nimesh Patel Hi how are you good how are you good good you're in a freezing cold Minneapolis uh last set of shows here on tour for a little while so excited to get uh this weekend started but uh kicking it off with you guys awesome really thankful that you took some time and you know uh decided to do this talk I'm sure this is gonna be a great talk so like when we before we get started like we like to know a little more about you like uh um I know that you started off with the pre-med then moved to finance and then ended up in comedy so if you could talk a little bit about that that'd be great yeah uh you know born and raised in Jersey uh I went to NYU because I want I didn't want to go to Rutgers uh and uh uh and I was I realized gung-ho on being a doctor when I started college okay and then my junior year I got C plus and orgo and that was that was enough uh we the kids weren't uh getting those professors fired back then we're getting a bad grade and uh times are a lot tougher back then and you know back in my day if you're you got to orgo C plus you just drop pre-med and decided to become a stand-up comedian and that's really that's basically what it was but now I graduated in NYU from uh with a finance degree all my electives were pre-med classes but I graduated in 08 with a finance degree and that was probably the the first sign that would become a comedian because the funniest you could do in 2008 was graduate with a finance degree and uh from that point on like I was underemployed unemployed um and in 2009 you know I was just through a moment of introspection for lack of a better word I was like what do I like to do what am I good at and I enjoy making people laugh and I'm good at writing and I was like how do I combine those two things and I don't know why but divine intervention maybe like in August of 2009 I just got on stage at Stress Factory New Brunswick New Jersey and uh that was it and I was like oh this I had no idea what I was getting into uh you know yeah lucky for me like ignorance was one of those things that really benefited me because I had no idea what the slog was I had no idea what the path was I had no idea what I was doing I just knew that uh being on stage was fun and that's a kind of benefit in that there was no not a lot of people before me had carved the path because there was no one to tell me oh this is going to be quite possibly the stupidest thing you've ever done for the next like 10 years you know uh but I'm very grateful that I did that yeah obviously uh shout out to NYU uh my orgo cam Professor who I would not be here without today awesome did you have the same Professor who got fired recently no no no okay I mean that that guy that guy was old then okay so who knows if he's still around but he was he was giving out c-pluses like he was mad that he was in a position and that that that's what did it to him uh but also I also I also earned the C plus I'm not trying to act like I didn't yeah yeah no I definitely did not do well in that class but um so as I said like uh in the introduction to Chris Rock saw you doing stand-up and he hired you to uh right for him for Oscar or something so till that point if you could talk about like uh from the time you started doing comedy till that one fine day when Rock actually saw you and like hey okay you're getting your writing gig and you'll be ready for Oscars like how was that whole time period that was a very uh uh ego testing time that I lived through because you know having had a quote-unquote pedigree of being a smart kid that went to NYU and graduated Finance degree and I I was at a chip on my shoulder when it came to approving myself to my peers who became those things like Finance guys working at BCG or whatever it was like oh man like I'm also smart I should be able to do comedy pretty well uh and she'd be able to succeed in it uh but up until yep even up until now like it's always been like a entrepreneurial kind of endeavor but in from 09 to to 2016 or so I was working uh in finance jobs I was like an assistant in a hedge fund I was assistant at a Investment Bank I was an assistant and then an analyst and an associate at a family office and that was just so I could you know pay bills so that I could be live in New York not ask my parents to pay my rent and uh and go to open mics at the at the end of the day and then that show that Chris saw me at was a show that myself my friend Mike Denny and my friend Michael Che who you guys may know about uh we started together back in 2011 and you know comedy is one of these things where you have to create your own opportunities and one of those the way you go about doing that is you create your own stage time and you know Danny found the spot I was like hey you guys want to help me run this thing and Flash Forward to 2015 we had built it from a show that like six people were at to a show where you know we were turning people away because it was twice against the fire code the capacity that we had people we had and on that night you know I went back at that night thinking like what oh what a weird alignment of stars at the same time like what a moment in time for me because it was right off of getting rejected from the Montreal Comedy Festival which is like this huge Comedy Festival for a comedian coming up it's like a nice bed in your cap like a Rite of Passage to be named a new face or whatever and I remember being rejected from that from like the third time and my ego was so shot that I was like man after this like I comedy's dumb and like these people like this industry is stupid and that like literally like two weeks later you know Chris came into the show to see someone else and it was my show and I was like I'm going up like the guy started comedy with in my head is here I'm performing and doing my best and you know the crowd was hot that night the opening comic was out that night I did a great job obviously uh to the point where Chris afterwards told me I was funny and then three months later uh he got the Oscars right this is 2016 not the slap Oscars yeah the Oscars so white Oscars uh back in in 2016 and he got that job and uh you know you got the hosting gig and then like two days later I got an email saying hey Chris wants you to write and it was like all right and then January 2016 I lose my last Finance job February 2016. I'm at the Oscars like and uh it was crazy and how uh of like an up and down cycle that was because it was like I was literally like on top of the world in my brain of comedy you know Chris Rock is just something else funny to the point where I'm at the Oscars you know yeah in a tuxedo on my 30th birthday uh and then like the next night like after the after you know the last uh award is given out I'm thinking I'm famous I'm thinking all these opportunities are coming my way no that Monday after the officers I'm eating dollars yeah so hoping I can get on to the comments or Open Mic like quiz where's all this Fame and Fortune and writing gigs but you know that was a humbling time for me as well you know like I I got up in hindsight I just frame everything through what my ego was going through at the time and that was one of those like ego checks for sure yeah that's one thing I like about sound of Comedy like I understand the comedian as well so like every time I go to a festival or I get a chance to go perform a club whether in New York or somewhere else I'm like yes something's happening and then it's the same thing like again I'm like okay I need like seven dollars to do an open mic go get it yeah and then like it's like and even New York is such a city where it's just like you know humbles you like like not here every night but you know uh this is the thing of like of at least starting out as a comedian it was like my expectations were so high uh yeah because of my view of who I was as a person at all I'm sure you Google people are like at least to some extent consider themselves fairly intelligent so when you uh push yourself in that world that way like and then you're that expectation of what you think you're going to be able to achieve doesn't match the reality of it it's like did I mess up like what happened like what am I like what am I doing wrong and it's that constant like Battle of Sisyphus you know like you you gotta yeah you gotta be ignorant of the fact that you might just be Sisyphus in this situation that's true so when all this was happening how was your family reacting to this where they're supportive whether like what are you doing in the image like how are they reacting it wasn't uh well when I started it was like what is comedy you know like I barely knew what I was doing so it was very hard for me to explain uh uh to my parents what I was doing and I was also in the mindset of like I was a very uh uh poor Communicator at the time with my parents because you know again ego wise I'm like I just graduated from NYU and now I'm like living at their house a year after graduating like being a bum basically and so when I caught this bug they're like what is this you get paid to do something like matter of fact I pay to do this a lot because open mics are not uh yeah free right yeah and uh uh up until like I don't like until I got the job until I got a job where I was paying rent I'd moved to the city like and then my parents knew that this was something I was pursuing with some heart and passion uh once I once that happened they kind of got off me to like yeah I think but that but every now and then I guess when my mom was going through whatever my dad was going through whatever they're like so you're gonna get an MBA or what are you gonna be doing I'm just like nah that's not in the plans uh it's just I I don't know what I'm doing who knows I just I got I got hope and uh enough for this Open Mic these times and you know I remember in 2011 was probably the first time I ever used YouTube like uh to upload a video what's that to upload a video I uploaded a video of my like one of my first sets at a Gotham Gotham Comedy Club Bringers show bring the show you got to bring people to come see you and you know again like I watch that video sometimes like once and I was like man that was bad what was I doing but yeah at the time at the time I was like man I'm this is hot I crushed you know this so well and like this material is good and I put it up and I got I don't know I'm gonna use a guy but a few thousand at the time and I was like no I gotta pull this I gotta I gotta pull this down like I don't know what everyone's saying no then they won't use that for if you get Comedy Central you won't be allowed to use that and you know when you're starting out as a comedian you're so precious with your own material and in reality it's you're going to be prolific that's kind of the goal or one of at least my goals is to create as much as I can good stuff as I can and so uh throwing stuff away like putting stuff out there uh it didn't even hit me as something I should be doing um and now you know fast forward to 11 years later it's it's literally how I made my stand-up career that's awesome so who are your comedic Inspirations like Chris Rock is one uh from like the Famous People level it's like probably Rock because he's the first person I ever saw uh Patrice because I think he's a master the most underrated Master but he's not underrated he's like everyone who knows comedy knows Patricia to go uh Dave I think Dave's probably the most creative person there is um in like a lot of facets and then from uh uh not a famous perspective it's like you know my cousins are super fun like everyone at at their back and like everyone I grew up around is hilarious in their own kind of way and I know that's just my sense of humor or like my families but everyone was just funny not everyone's like joke writing funny or they're not oh yeah yeah it's like everyone's got it you know and uh uh that I always again like once you get out of your own ego you're like oh that's pretty fun like you can understand why people are funny and how they impacted you but yeah that's that's an easy answer that's awesome so like I'll tell you like how I uh came to know about you so like I was at work one day and that was like this was back in 2016 2015 I guess and one of my co-workers comes to me and he knew that I was doing comedy in the evenings and he's like did you see this Indian guy on Seth Meyers and I was like Indian guy on Seth Meyers and he's like his voice though man and he just walked away he was like I'm running and then I was like I didn't know what it meant right so then I was like you on YouTube and like Indian guy and Seth Meyers and it was like I was like why did he mention his voice right like and I'm like I started reading the comments like even before watching the video right and everyone was like commenting about the voice and this and that and then I watch the video and I'm like you know what the thing he says about his mom and like Google searches and everything it makes so much sense at least as a person was born and raised in India like when my dad when I told my dad I was doing stand-up comedy he like he was like I didn't know you were funny that's what that's what he said like I was like so standard dad response yep yep so from but then after I've seen the video a few times then I realized that maybe the voice he meant was not like the fit like twice wise but you're comedic wise like I'm guessing like that's what he meant so like how did yeah I mean like that's what I'm like because like again like I never had a chance to like talk to him like we never spoke about it but like how did that come about because I see you perform it is different it's different and it's super funny thank you so um I had an answer that was cohesive um and uh insightful really like I have no idea uh I think like I've uh I'm a mishmash of the voices of my my dad who's pretty stoic my mom was pretty snarky my sister who is the same like my cousins who are a variety of different uh uh comedic voices and you know one thing I give my self credit for is that and for better for worse is that like I'm not a student of Comedy okay you know like I have influences you know Chris Patrice uh Dave to a lesser extent but beyond that that I never like you'll meet Comics who are like oh I've been I knew I want to be Comics because I was five years old like I studied every I know every bit George Collins ever done like I could do Richard prior backwards I'm like like I only got into knowing about these people like afterwards and even then it was like uh uh very tangential because I know how my brain works and my brain is a sponge in the sense that I'm like if I if I I remember I spent three four days in New Orleans and by that by that fourth day I was saying bro and you know like like talking I was from New Orleans yeah and so uh my comedic voice I didn't want it to be impacted by anybody outside of just my own thought processes and for better for worse that's that's probably what's created this and I'm sure you'll see hints of early on I'll remember people not call you sound like Mitch and I was like oh yeah I've been watching a lot of Mitch uh or you sound like hannibals like yeah I was watching a lot of handbook because Hannibal was around and I'll go to his show all the time and and as I as that came to impact my brain I was like okay I know what's going on like I'm just listening to these people too much I gotta stop doing that entirely if I were to spend like a month studying Chris like yeah I would have his Cadence you know and so it's just a second for me to like dissolve myself of that and uh uh just create it on my own and you know hopefully that's kind of shining through and I think it'll take a little while uh uh longer for me to continue to cultivate it but it is a process I enjoy and um I think I'm I'm coming along at regardless that's awesome I think that's about this physical voice that's all yeah that's all DMX and Newports man something uh uh yeah so I feel like in my opinion like that must that could be like one of the reasons why like you get the kind of love you get online on Tick Tock you know when you do um how did that happen like was there like a point when you decided you know what I should start posting stuff on Tick Tock like how did that happen uh yes uh that was that's a that's a very clear answer to me you know uh for me it was uh 2019 2020 2021 were kind of very pivotal years in my attempts at Distributing my own material so you know 2016 to 2019 to 2020 and to this day I'm I'm passed at the comedy seller you know the best club in New York and the seller would always give the comedian uh tape of their Set uh yeah high quality tape of their set yeah and I would always take that tape thinking oh I'll listen to it or watch it or something and you know they'd say if you're a comic you should be doing that and you should be doing that if you're a comedian or if you're in a creative field you should be looking at your work as soon as you can afterwards I never did that but I just had this kind of archive Treasure Trove of all my stuff 2019 uh July 2019 I tape jokes for quarantine uh and that wasn't thinking oh we're gonna go on quarantine I just taped it as a comedy special I was like okay let's uh uh I wanted to shop it to some networks ultimately networks passed uh obviously and come March 2020 or so but before that I started putting out little clips from that and they were doing good trending okay on YouTube yeah thank you YouTube come March 2020 I'm like all right well everyone's locked up uh yeah no one's going anywhere there's no way I'm gonna be able to put this out and sell it anywhere I got to do something with it and I had seen the success that Schultz had Andrew Schultz had I was like you know what like that is something to emulate in terms of and that's what when it hit me I was like I'm too precious with all this stuff like I'll this is all stuff I don't care about anymore I should just get rid of it there's no way anyone else is seeing it because I can't go anywhere and so I put it out in March of 2020 and I forget when I should be a bigger student of my own analytics uh but I forget when it took off but the special itself started accelerating in terms of how many people were coming to watch it how many people were viewing it and then that summer I had another clip from the same hour that made a lot of revenue for me on YouTube and I think it was like it was a political joke and it just generated a lot because I guess like people were spending money on political ads and anything that's political to saw a lot of money and I was like oh man you know what I'm gonna keep feeding this machine and I had tons of seller clips and I started putting those out in YouTube about like a regular pattern and at the same time my wife uh who works in social media told me hey Tic Tac is going to be a thing you should probably put stuff out on Tick Tock and uh I didn't listen and then and then uh a few months later another friend told me and I was like oh okay you're right and then like um obviously my wife deserves a lot of credit but uh like I forget what it was exactly but it was probably around mid 2020 late 2020 where I started really putting stuff up on Tick Tock and to the point where from like November 2020 to like April 2021 I went from like like zero follows on Tick Tock to like 80 000 or something wow and to me I was like that's CR that's a huge acceleration in growth and I think a lot of it was a lot of people were in India and like this was before Tic Tac got banned in India but whatever it was I just got lucky in that that early growth kind of stamped me to tick tock and made me go out there and I realized I could use Tick Tock uh to push sales I know like I had I had a lot of dates lined up uh I had a few dates lined up in April in Houston I was like let's see if I can't use tick tock to just overlay some text on the video and see what that does yes and what I ended up noticing anecdotally um I don't know if this is true maybe in your algorithm machines you could tell me if it's true or not but what ended up happening was the the algorithm ended up reading where I was what I was typing on the text and it seemed like everyone in the comments was from the place that I had mentioned in the text so in my head it seemed like okay this algorithm is delivering this to this place that means if I have shows in that place I can sell tickets in that place because Tick Tock is delivering it location specific and I went from April almost no shows to you know selling out everywhere I I came to it was just like and again like like I said I had years of material you just put up and chop up and for the longest time I was doing all myself and then it became too tedious and too uh uh time consuming it was so time consuming because it was so tedious that I hired a team to help me you know take the next step and and chop everything up and put everything out uh uh now but for the first like six seven months it was just me like I had an editor who knew my ear and knew my voice and just would chopped Clips up but then I would download text copy yeah distribute to Instagram distribute to um Tick Tock and it was just like Tick Tock just accelerated my growth and you know that's why I named the special thank you China because yeah like I If if not for tick tock I don't know where I would be um and YouTube saw some returns on like the special and stuff but it wasn't tangible there's no way to immediately hit somebody like hey I'm coming to your city and it consistently beat that drum Tick Tock allowed me to do that and uh uh continue to allow me to do that you know and but now you know there's your competitors there's reels and there's YouTube shorts uh which again like are great syndication platforms that do the same thing on all on those two platforms as well um but I always make it a point to ask at every show like yo where are you guys from how'd you guys about the show majority is still Tick Tock wow um and it's trending towards like Facebook and Instagram and YouTube shorts because I know my YouTube shorts are trending well as well but it's like the the game is still so far ahead on Tick Tock you know it's like I got 1.2 million on Tick Tock I got 200 something thousand on YouTube and like 170 000 on on Instagram so it's just a matter of like reaching parody and all those but the the ability for that techno technological platform to like literally turn I could Translate how many tickets I'm gonna sell almost it's if I'm sure if I got granule I could probably get pretty close but it's like you know what I can use linktree to see how many clicks came from Tick Tock and and then if the show sells out or how many tickets I sold in that day or whatever like uh I don't get that granule but I could uh but yeah that was really it it was that those two years two years or so where it was like I saw the impact technology would have on my career and has had a a huge impact again like I had nothing literally nothing 20 20. yeah it was 2021 no dates no no ticket sales no problems I would continue to hope to pray collect unemployment or something and then uh you know I just sold out you know Warner Theater in November I got five out of six sold out shows this weekend in Minneapolis you know like who's in Minneapolis apparently a lot of people yeah that's awesome so like going forward like how do you see the role of technology in bringing different diverse comedic voices to different parts of the world like because I feel like comedy is like that one thing where sometimes even if you don't really understand the nuances of the language it's still you know like you see people laughing there is something inside you that also like makes you laugh like you know you're like you feel like you're part of that what do you think like technology or like tech companies can do in terms of building better products or you know Services wise that might bring people more closer like you know uh you know make conversations more civil it's not like you're the same this kind of thing the comedy I think like what would be ideal and I know this is an impossible ask but what would be ideal would be something that I feel like advertisers get uh easily which is access to delivering something to a specific group right like like say I say I have jokes about Durban in South Africa right like I wish there a way to guarantee that the people in Durban South Africa knew that I was making jokes about them so that I could send that you know what I mean yeah yeah I feel like I uh the algorithm at least on Tick Tock I kind of think it and have uh anecdotal evidence to believe that that is what's happening uh but a product that let me I mean I'm sure this product definitely exists right otherwise advertisers wouldn't demand like what the data is and demand geolocations all that kind of stuff but for from a creators perspective like uh that would be an ideal thing uh I think you know it's very clear what technology is doing to Comedy in general which is democratizing the ability to distribute it from a Creator's perspective from a Creator's perspective it's beautiful in that it's the art it's finding people I didn't even know would want to find it you know what's always astonishing to me is going to a show and in Tacoma Washington and having a 68 year old white lady and her Native American husband there we saw you on reels I'm like wait you're retired and you're all reals okay cool like it's it's beautiful to see that the the drawback is that there's a lot of there's a lot of chaff now you know it's a lot there's a lot of people democracy has its pitfalls and that a lot of people everyone gets to do whatever they want to do um and not everyone necessarily needs an audience and so that but that you know that's a gift in the curse that's the that's the double-edged sword we kind of play with um when it comes to the various platforms I I can't see it I don't know I can't see it make it I can't see it making comedy redundant or or um what's the word obsolete because there's just so much of it out there now uh you know I mean like just a cursory search of YouTube specials it's like an infinite number I can't get like so many people have it which is great in that it's a beautiful sign of people's hopes um and I I hope the best for all of them you know my special so thank you China is still only at like seven or seven thousand views or something um uh which to me is lagging but you know that is what it is but like the the idea of everyone being able to shoot their shot is is pretty cool to me yeah that's awesome um so you've written for SNL uh literally sing and you produce a public full frontal with Samantha Bee so do you ever see a situation where you would be a showrunner like you like make your own create your own show like have some like do we see that happening anytime 100 I mean look if if Google or YouTube want to give me a late night talk show I'm happy to enter that conversation uh uh I think as a stand-up I rate my I rank myself pretty high right and create um you know I would love to do a late night show you know when I was at when I was working at Lily when I was working at Sam B when I was working at SNL there were elements from each one of those programs I was like man it'd be so much fun to just do this on my own and have to be in charge of this and to to make my vision of what I think this could be a reality you know with Lily it was the freedom to create sketches and say whatever you wanted but same B it was the ability to obviously you know talk to camera and take a long form segments on issues so to speak and with with an update when I was a writer on update at SNL it was just the ability to make jokes about anything like if a news story came across their desk and you could find a joke in it then that joke at least got written um and then hopefully got told but uh short answer yes uh I would love to do that there's a goal of mine um if you guys at Google and YouTube want to accelerate that I'll ask your boy uh I think I'd look pretty good on camera and uh I can tell a joke so awesome so like if you were to pick like if Fallon ml Myers like all of them decide to quit on the same day you know which one would you pick like which show would you pick I will pick the Chris Rock show uh from early 2000s late 90s I don't know if you ever watch that show but there's probably an episode or two that got uh that's out on YouTube Somewhere um but it used to be on HBO but that was like to me I was fairly Young when it was out but you watch it back now it's like oh that's what I think a talk show could be it's like just Chris doing stand-up his version his like you know like right now the the thing with all the late night shows uh they all kind of feel the same but you're what you're getting is like uh uh a very similar voice across all the all the channels right like Kim old Set uh Jimmy the rest like they're all very similar um they sort of their purpose step is like a bit more political Colbert's obviously very political Jimmy is can do whatever he wants and Kimmel does whatever he wants as well but to me like what Chris was doing was a perfect embodiment of his actual stand-up because he would take his take on things and then you would get sketches that were like Chris Rock sketches and it was such a you knew that person's voice so well that it bled through everything from the interview to the from the monologue to the interview and the credits you know like and the music artist that came on whereas on these other shows it the the voice is a bit more deluded it's more for the audience than it is for the comic I think and for me like Chris is obviously the goat uh and to do a show in that vein would be what I would want to do cool that's awesome like I'll have to check out that show uh Again YouTube you know if you got money to throw uh I got some ideas yeah awesome it's awesome so outside of Comedy what do you do like what do you do to recharge de-stress shrooms uh uh every now and then uh but on a day-to-day it's like um I have to make time to do the things that make me good at comedy like you know all science says that you need to sleep well so I'll try to sleep well all science says you gotta work out so I try to work out all science says you got to read uh to encourage your brain to write and it's like yes I gotta do all those things and those end up helping me recharge because the thing I'm most stressed about or focused about not not stressing like oh what's going to happen way but stressing like I got to get this stuff done way it's comedy so anything I'm doing to like help me quote unquote unwind or whatever it is I know ultimately feeding that machine I got going on deep in the back of my brain which tells me I got to be doing stand up or I got to be doing something comedic like I'm getting into a habit now trying to watch a movie at night or or and if and because I know that hey that turns my brain off for a little while uh it turns off the gear that's thinking about comedy but I know that turning that gear off that is thinking about comedy ultimately helps turn that gear on that's thinking about comedy you know like your brain needs to rest and I again I try to do anything and I can make that brain rest and make that rest active if I can whether it be you know right now I'm reading a book sorry it's underneath this iPad keeping this uh iPad a float but yeah you know just like anything and everything that people say to do to recharge whether it be work out or dance or drugs or whatever I do so that's awesome so like um you've been touring a lot like I've been torn a lot too much does it get to a stage where like you feel like um that starts taking a toll on you and like the other things in your life other commitments and stuff does it feel like man there's like too much I'm doing too much comedy do you feel that yes and no uh uh yes in the sense that you know traveling being away from family and friends is always taxing and I learned uh not too long ago the value of those things oh okay not too long ago but also too long ago that learned the value of those things like it was being away from them always kills me uh yeah but at the same time it's like this is this is what I set out to do um this is what I'm doing and nothing uh comes without sacrifice and so like I got to keep that in my brain kind of like oh this I got to be doing this I got to be working this hard and the internet step away like if I'm I was on vacation in you know in November for like two weeks and by that that end of that second week I was like all right time to go back on stage like I need I need it like it's like a bug that you feel um uh and so like I hope that never goes away but again like larger point being that I know that there are some things you have to step away from in order to service those things and so like with stand-up is one of those things like I know I'll have to step away at some point just to be able to have the juices in my brain reset and Reflow like I've been so focused on this hour-long set I got going on right now that can't really focus I can't really think about anything else and so I know once I step away from that it'll start helping me turn the gears all the gears in my brain I can start thinking about other stuff and then that'll slowly turn into more stand-up that of only strengthened that muscle in the last two years and uh uh that can't be a bad thing that I know that that's gonna um that's for the better so that's awesome so I think I'll pause here now and take some questions from the audience uh let's see let's see the first question okay Jeff asks does tick tock short form video impact how stand-up comedians structure the sets jokes great question Jeff uh the answer from me is no uh when I'm doing my like the stuff I put out on Tick Tock YouTube shorts Instagram reels those are just things like a lot of it's been crowd work and a lot of it's been like one-off jokes that I've told uh during a set because I I wrote a joke and I was like let me get rid of it I like it it's funny let me put it out uh uh and so it impacts in that sense but I know for other comedians I'm sure like there's tons of comedians like I've even thought about okay maybe I'll just record like 60 Minutes of one minute jokes to camera while I'm on stage because I know that they don't go into the longer hour long set but they would make great marketing material uh Tick Tock and YouTube and Instagram are ultimately just marketing tools for the live show and if I can if I can create marketing material that isn't revealed in the Live program that's just uh added that's that's great because that means people are going to hear some stuff they never heard before and they've come in off the strength of something that I don't really care about or didn't care enough to integrate into like a four hour long Set uh so yeah yes and no Jeff sorry not sorry not give you a a yes or no answer and that's the answer is yes and no I don't necessarily but there's definitely comedians that do and I might at some point in the near future it impacts uh it's all marketing so uh let's take the next one Michael Romanek asks what is your favorite joke bit sketch that you wish you wrote that I wish I wrote I mean joke bits and sketch sketches are all well jokes and bits are kind of the same but sketch the favorite I mean my favorite sketch that I wish I wrote uh it's probably player haters ball uh Dave Chappelle uh but you know that's only a sketch that Dave and Neil could have wrote like it's if you haven't seen it turn this off go go to YouTube you can play a haters ball It's the funniest sketch ever um favorite joke that's that's tough I mean my favorite probably my favorite joke that got me to stand up and uh uh was off a bigger and Blacker uh the opening lines like I got on the elevator Chris Rock says I got this is right after Columbine I was at my hotel I got on the elevator two High School White Boys try to get on with me and I just Dove off like y'all ain't killing me like that is like like the perfect way to say that you're afraid of young white boys like Chris done so perfect I wish I wrote that you know granted I might have had been around a time when I might have been doing stand-up at a time when that was a huge thing but that's my that's one of my favorite bits uh that opening line the bigger that opening bit to bigger and black and that joke in particular is just so perfectly visual so perfectly topical and yet Savvy timeless awesome uh let's see the next question girl record asks do you feel like comedy translates differently live versus online what are the differences you've noticed if any and does it affect how you curate your jokes Comedy content Corey this is a softball uh obviously uh comedy translates very differently live versus online uh you know there's something that intangible thing of being in a live audience that's so like you don't laugh as hard when you're watching a movie uh alone as you do if you're watching it in a crowd like if you watch super bad alone it's it's fantastic but if you watch it in a crowd remember when that came out like you were dying of laughter that laughter is a social thing and the more people are around and enjoying it with you like the more connected you feel to that material that's being delivered to you uh I forget what the second part of that question was what was it what are the differences you've noticed if any and does it affect how you curate your jokes Comedy content oh hold on I think I just uh okay there we go uh and he doesn't affect how you curate your jokes and comedy count I mean yeah Beyond like it doesn't the the thing that translates more online for whatever reason at least for me has been um crowd work and I think that's because uh people like appreciate their they can appreciate more the quickness with which something is reacted to um and so like the stuff I put out online tends to be more crowd work a because it's stuff that's throw away and it doesn't really matter to me but also because people connect to it the most um and it's odd that I guess live too that uh people connect to crowd work like I can notice bigger laughs In Crowd work but again that you're just hitting that like expectation nerve you know yeah I hope that answers the question um Gothic tell me if I did answer the question I think so but yeah I think so a lot of people are talking about the content like I just wanted to quickly ask what are your thoughts on like AI writing jokes like I read some relationship that like AI wrote like a like an episode of Seinfeld recently it's like what are your thoughts and AI writing comedy material and like would you ever use a Mateo like let's say you know that way uh uh no I wouldn't use any AI generated material unless it was clear that I had used AI to generate something ridiculous but I I know about AI writing material and I've seen it happen and I know there's some programs that are like pretty advanced in terms of writing stuff and it is I don't think AI could ever fully write jokes maybe they can't I don't know but whenever there's an AI program I forget what it's called but you could put in like a scenario and it'll beat out different Advanced things that could happen afterwards and I don't know what's that that's based on what what data sets went into creating that AI but it is fascinating to see what comes out of it um and I think this if if I were to utilize AI or if any comedians or any one of the creative field was to utilize AI is to spark ideas in your own brain he's like oh okay like this is where this computer thought this was going like that's an interesting vein let me see what else maybe that Sparks the AI in my brain I can think of something um it is terrifying that if South like if that South Park uh joke robot comes the fruition uh uh that would be that would be pretty interesting and maybe who knows I don't know you guys are smarter than I in terms of where AI is going um and I hope AI never gets to write a proper joke but I welcome you I welcome the challenge I'll fight any robot yeah I think it's it's better if if we approach it more like you know like improving your chess game or playing against the computer to up your skill okay let's let's see if it has an address there yeah yeah uh arbaz asks Azure fan base grows do you find it harder to get unbiased feedback on new material no uh um you will never the YouTube comment section is always uh full of people that hate your guts and are unafraid of of telling you that you everything you're doing is bad that you should quit that you look stupid that your shirt selection is bad that you're sweating too much that you drink too much water or you don't drink enough water there's never a a shortage of negative comments um the the direct answer to your question is that I've always been kind of cognizant of an audience that's honest versus an audience that just loves me and we'll laugh at anything I've said and I always I always am cognizant of that bias happening because I've seen it with friends and and people I've worked with and always say the same thing they're always like nah they just like me that's the that's the that's the uh uh Fame gift that you get sometimes and but that that that gift wears off pretty fast if uh you get like maybe 10 20 extra percentage points at the beginning of a set yeah and then uh you got to keep it coming otherwise they'd be all right that bias wears off very fast and uh I don't think I'm at a point where uh that bias is all that strong just yet you know I'm a lot of people's First comedy show ever yeah and so uh and a lot of people obviously still don't know who I am so it's kind of hard to be like everyone's biased towards me like I think fans will uh be biased for a little bit but that wears off very thin and then again like if I need an ego check I just check my YouTube comments okay oh okay thank you basement dweller for for your opinions I appreciate it yeah so like when you write new material so like who is your first audience like is it fellow comedians or your friends outside of Comedy World family it's me it's me always uh it's probably like that's I like I think one of my comments I get a lot is dude laughs at his own jokes it's like well most of those laughs are very honest yeah uh I can I I can know when some laughs are like forced or Faked or whatever but for the most part like I'm genuinely having a good time up there and it's uh it's because I wrote something so stupid that I get to then say honest like I I'm always in all the fact that I was pre-med Finance at NYU and how I get to tell stupid jokes you know for money it's like the it's such a stupid beautiful thing to me and I I'm always laughing at what a cosmic joke that is that's like I always laugh at that like in my soul um uh so yeah like but beyond that the distance between me writing a joke and me being on stage with it has decreased dramatically now that I've been on tour and so like a lot of times the first audience I'll have is the first show that I have in a weekend like that's like if I wrote something that I'm excited about I'd say within the first five minutes and that's the first time anyone's ever heard it and a lot of times likely the last time anyone's ever heard it because it didn't go as well as I thought it would uh but I had to say it and I get an honest response from the people that come out hopefully yeah makes sense yeah let's take a couple more questions uh sure let's see Christina Medrano asks how could social platforms be improved to better Empower you as a comedian and a creator how could social platforms be improved to better Empower you as a comedian and a creator I don't know I mean that's it's hard for me to fix what's not broken right now uh because the systems that I've used to put me in a place position that I'm in right now um have worked for me if there's things to improve they're all on my end in terms of I could probably make the quality of videos higher I could yeah caption things better I could post them at better times and look at analytics a bit deeper there's probably tons of things I'm not doing on my end uh that would improve the performance of of the the platforms I've uh uh utilized I think from a Creator's perspective and from a comedian's perspective it's just like like ease of use and ease of distribution um is the most important thing I wish I wish you know YouTube and Instagram and Tick Tock were not competing with all with each other and that I didn't have to do the same but my team didn't have to do the same task three times a day four times a day I wish it was easy to just be like all right well we're going to Syndicate to one platform and it's going to go to all of them and I know there's probably apps that do that like HootSuite and all those other programs that do that but uh to my knowledge like they they're not as easy to use as someone just uploading directly and doing all that um so yeah I think from like a user interface perspective yeah I think they're all pretty solid you know YouTube has it I mean uh Tick Tock and YouTube and IG all have their little uh idiosyncrasies and probably could be improved here and there but for the most part like even from someone who hasn't done it in a while but you know every now and then I can I'll go back in like oh okay this is fairly easy to use like if I want to go live stream on YouTube right now like on my phone I could very easily and like yeah it wasn't the case you know a year and a half ago a year and a half ago was a little harder um and now it's like I can do it with ease like yeah I'm sorry to be like no everything's perfect uh I'm sure I'm sure there are things that require some improvement but for my end like I think those things are again from my aunt like I need to there's things I need to improve upon to make myself a better user of those things yeah that makes sense I think we have time for like maybe one or two more questions just let's see okay CS asks are you elude a lot of confidence in the way you speak is this an innate quality is this something that you work on or is this something that has developed the more successful you have any tips I elude a lot of confidence in the way I speak uh the word is exude I don't know like I've I've always been uh a fairly competent person but I don't know if that's confidence that comes from some deep-seated insecurity and I'm just been pretended to be very confident uh to knock down to like no I'm not insecure I'm actually super confident and I think that fake until you make it thing is probably the greatest uh phrase to um to keep in your brain when you're thinking about confidence it's it's just like one thing I know about people that I've learned in the last you know 36 years of existing is that everyone wishes they were more confident and the reason confident people succeed is because everyone else's wishes they could be confident and so the people like that that then becomes an aspiration of things so the instant you become confident present yourselves confident you are a cop and people see you as confident and if it was an innate innate in me I'm not sure maybe I hit puberty and became six feet tall and that kind of had something to do with it but uh it's not something I worked on consciously it's just something that kind of uh came to be and uh it was definitely reinforced by my quote unquote success um I I definitely toot my own horn and and listen like do Blair a lot of Drake when I'm feeling down you know like that the answer is listen to Drake and just try to feel like Drake all the time just trying to feel like Drake at all times and you'll you'll find that confident keep yeah that makes so much sense I think like that's a great point to end on and before we end this uh listen to Drake is a great point to end on yet for sure yeah yeah like I have like one last question when was the last time you had a white blah when the last time I had a white claw yesterday on the train to Poughkeepsie New York okay okay we'll make you drink be my friends we went to uh uh uh an event and uh that Metro North ride to Poughkeepsie two hours uh north of New York City like if you're not having a white cloth like what are you doing exactly so like um is there anything you want to plug promote the special please uh yes well thank you Karthik for inviting me thank you Google for having me uh again my special is out on YouTube it's called thank you China if you guys can tweak your algorithm to get that in the seven million views that would be great uh if you're in New York I'm doing a show at uh two shows at Town Hall in New York City December 17th which is not too far away and then uh if you're in La I'll be doing a show January 20th at the ace theater at the Ace Hotel theater and if you're in San Francisco I'll be doing a masonic hall January 21st so come see me uh if you want to see me elsewhere finding nemesh.com tickets are right
there but uh otherwise thank you China and uh thank you YouTube thank you Google for having me guys thanks so much nimes thanks for taking the time thank you thank you so much [Music]
2023-01-10 07:56
