How do you make a stranger laugh out loud with only your written words?

See, what’s funny to you might not be funny to someone else. Humor is subjective. So far so clear.

But you can force your humor on someone else and literally make them laugh through your live performance. You’ve got the whole arsenal of tools ready to be fired: your words, your voice, your speech (rhetoric), your delivery (deadpan, animated/alive, relatable, confrontational, et al.) your facial expressions (smile, RBF, pokerface, et al.), your body language, your sounds (intentional and unintentional), and the X factors of context, ambience, aura, momentum.

Your story was weak, your punchline didn’t land, your English is not native, your audience doesn’t like you. You can screw all that up but you can get away with it when you use the other live tools you have as an IRL human.

But online you can decide how to deliver in the following ways:

1. live-streamed video (talking head or faceless)
2. pre-recorded video (talking head or faceless)
3. live-streamed audio (podcast, X Space, et al.)
4. pre-recorded audio (podcast, X Space, et al.)
5. written word

What do you choose?

Well, you choose what you’re comfortable with, first of all, and what’s available to you.

I like to imagine being on island 🏝️ with not much more than ocean water, sand, palm tree🌴 , coconuts 🥥, sky, clouds, and the occasional tropical storm destroying everything you have.

In other words, it doesn’t matter what you choose, as long as you make your comedy existential.

People like to die a little in a joke.

Because they know they will survive IRL.

It’s like throwing your baby daughter into the sky. She has a bit of free fall when you release her, so fear creeps in, but when you catch her, she forgets immediately and only remembers the playful moment you just shared with her.

Which is my last takeaway for you: be playful in your performance, have a good time, it will echo back from your audience accordingly.

So die a little on stage but make it look fun.

Happy dying (and resurrecting)

Alex

PS: Jesus references always work, for Muslims too