Nowadays, any TikToker with 100,000 followers can get fifteen minutes at the Laugh Factory – until they get bumped by a real comic with 1.4 million fans.
No other artistic medium was as radically reorganized by the short-form content revolution as stand-up comedy. Long before algorithms, follower counts and posting schedules determined which comedians were headliners and which ones kept their day jobs, "paying your dues" was a miserable sacrament that every comic had to endure before booking gigs that paid the bills.
Then the world collectively decided that 60-second, front-facing sketch comedy videos posted on social media are more indicative of comedic talent than a laboriously tested tight five, and before the grinders knew what hit them, the clubs were awash with content creators filming their crowd work in 4K.
But if the new world order of comedy prioritizes content over material, then all an actual comedian needs to do in order to reclaim their stage time is shoot a few vids themselves, then trust that their battle-tested chops will beat out all the SEO specialists pretending to be true comics.
That was Dylan Carlino's hypothesis when, as a struggling comedian waiting tables in between sets like so many artists before him, he saw too many sub-talents cut the line and start booking stand-up gigs using only their Instagram audience metrics.
Now, Carlino has multiple massively popular social media accounts filled with front-facing sketches, and he hasa packed calendar of tour datesto show for it. At the recent South by Southwest Comedy Festival, Carlino spoke toCrackedandDen of Geekabout how "spite and resentment" inspired him to fight fire with funnier, more artful fire.
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WhenDen of Geek's Alec Bojalad commended Carlino for his flourishing social media presence, Carlino was quick to note that postingcountless viral video sketches about fictional women in various states of scandalwasn't his Plan A.
"It did come from spite and resentment, if that helps," Carlino said of his online success, "I was waiting tables and doing stand-up for almost 11 years, and I was watching influencers blow up online and then take our weekends at comedy clubs, and I was like, 'Are we just gonna stand by and let the influencers who are bad at stand-up takeourweekends?!'"
Carlino then hatched a plan that would take him from stand-up comic to viral sensation instead of the other way around, as he recalled, "I was like, 'No, I'm not going to do Instagram and TikTok like a stand-up comic, I'm going to do it like an influencer.' And that's when it changed for me."
The results speak for themselves – Carlino now has 1.4 million fans on TikTok and nearly 700,000 followers on Instagram, many of whom were drawn in by his clickable, character-filled, front-facing sketch content rather than his stand-up clips. "And now I get to go on the road, and then the people who come out, they get to see someone who's been doing stand-up for ten years instead of someone who started doing (stand-up)afterthey started doing Instagram," said Carlino.
"So they leave, and they're like, 'I loved it!' and I'm like, 'Yeah, this is what lifeshouldbe like!'" Carlino continued, "Any person who you've seen blow up online and then they start doing stand-up, everyone's like, 'They're really bad.' It's like, yeah, they're the reason I'm successful, because I'm incredible spiteful like Taylor Swift."
Posting like an influencer and performing like comic lets spiteful artists like Carlino enjoy viral success while the venues that book him get a real stand-up show. Unfortunately for audiences at all the influencer comedy shows that have poisoned the stand-up scenes in places like Los Angeles and New York, Instagram fame is no replacement for the comedic skills that come from a decade-plus of stand-up experience, and watching a terrible comic bomb is so much more excruciating when you can't just keep scrolling.
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