Buy Or Don’t Buy

Last April in Comedy class I was given the task of performing a five-minute stand-up comedy routine. Being the groundbreaking envelope-pusher that I am, i was determined to fill my five minutes with what i deemed ‘anti-comedy’: jokes that were so purposefully unfunny that they circled back around to become funny again.

But as I performed my act, I noticed something strange: No one was laughing at my jokes. In theory, this should have been a good thing — after all, unfunniness was what I was going for. But I got the feeling I was doing it wrong.

As it turns out, ‘anti-comedy’ is a subtle art; you can’t just go with the first bad joke you think of. You need to massage the badness. Take a look at the master of the craft, Norm MacDonald:

And it’s not just for shaggy dog stories. You can also use it to make fun of comedians you look down upon!

But until now, the societal benefits of anti-comedy have seemed slight. Until Jimmy Kimmel used it to mock/shame Jay Leno.

Nice work, Jimmy! We can only hope that anti-comedy will be the key weapon in the war to drive Jay Leno off of the airwaves forever.