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Shane Gillis and the Limits of Credentialism
Shane Gillis is being criticized for an SNL monologue joke about women wearing unseemly attire at the gym — this alone is totally uninteresting cw fodder — but the question of credentials got my attention. A number of the women offended at his joke have invoked their credentials to explain why Shane Gillis is obviously not a good comedian. A uniquely qualified student of comedy invokes her prestigious internship with a smirk to inform you that she knows about comedy. A graduate of comedy writing believes that her classes permit her to speak with haughty authority on comedy. A former working comic explains from a “craft perspective” why Shane Gillis’ joke didn’t work. Of course, none of these people have even vaguely approached the level of popularity of the critiqued comedian. For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that the foremost credentialed comedy expert in the world has made such a criticism: Harvard undergrad in writing, Princeton PhD in comedy studies, highly published in the highest-impact comedy studies journal. How seriously should we weigh the view of the credentialed against the comedian?
I am tempted to say that the credentialed should have zero weight added to their opinion due to their credentials alone. The only credential in comedy is whether you know how to make people laugh. It would be epistemically arrogant to think that “comedic authority” could ever be bestowed upon a person by way of credential when we barely know the origin and social purpose of comedy to begin with. I recently came across a cool study and overview of one set of theories on humor published last month (the intriguing bits in bold so you can skip through):
The Contents and Function of Humor Among Hunter-Gatherers
There are many branches of discourse to swing off from here. Did Shane’s norm violation go too far in the eyes of some women, thereby evoking their ire? Did some women misinterpret of Shane’s monologue, though filled with abundantly placating self-deprecation? Or perhaps it was clipped and they didn’t see the full monologue? Is there reduced social trust and affiliation between the genders? Has the dating crisis gotten so bad that a woman wearing lingerie underwear at the gym approaches the untouchably sacred? Was Shane’s humor better off in the company of only other dudes? Are women just not very funny (this is no laughing matter)?
There’s something else worth exploring here. If the above theories are true, then comedy seems tied to social intelligence, at least within the “competitive” comedy circuit. Humor is an accurate signal of a person’s ability to “socially read the room”, to know where others stand on trust / affiliation / values / sensitivities. This is interesting because comedic skill seems to be unattached to IQ. The most popular comedians are not at all the smartest, in fact many do poorly in school, like Gillis / Louis CK / Theo Von. There is no actual “Harvard undergrad in writing, Princeton PhD in comedy studies” comedian, and I don’t think this is from a lack of trying as it’s the perfect job for a trustfund kid and provides an extremely glamorous social life. I wonder if this is evidence for a social intelligence not adequately predicted by g factor?
And maybe one more thing worth considering. If comedy is the measure of affiliation and trust, then the oft-criticized KillTony (I mean criticized by left media) is actually a wonderful vehicle for national unity. Having men, women, foreigners etc all criticizing each other in offensive ways to laughter is the exact utility of humor you’d want if your interest was to increase affiliation and trust between citizens of different backgrounds.
Has anyone involved in this scandal in any capacity had the temerity to state the obvious - that women are generally not funny because nobody expects them to be so?
I have a slightly more nuanced take on this, but I didn't sleep very well last night so it might come out a little disorganised.
It's emphatically not the case that women aren't funny. My current favourite standup comedian is Jordan Jensen, who I discovered via clips she shares on Instagram. When I saw her live, I could hardly breathe from laughing so hard.
Click on the link in the paragraph above. If you're a heterosexual man (as are most of the people who post here), I'm betting you didn't look at her picture and think "would". And indeed, Jensen constantly cracks self-deprecating jokes about her appearance, complains about how often she's mistaken for a lesbian, how she envies women who are more naturally feminine than she is, and how in many regards she's more masculine than the man she dates. She's also rib-crackingly hilarious. I posit that this is not an accident.
So it's not the case that women generally aren't funny. It is absolutely the case that hot women generally aren't funny.
The reason for this was cleverly illustrated by an old CollegeHumor sketch, "POV: Hot Girl". The titular character goes to a bar and meets a male childhood friend and two of his friends, one of them asks where she works, and she replies "I work for a PR firm. It's a living!", whereupon all three men laugh uproariously. We hear her internal monologue: "I should seriously consider doing standup comedy". The joke, obviously, is that the men aren't laughing at her lame joke because it's funny, but because they want to get in her pants. In social settings, hot women essentially never receive accurate feedback on which of their jokes are landing and which aren't, as people will laugh at their jokes for reasons unrelated to their comedic value ("boys will laugh at girls when they're not funny"), meaning attractive women never get opportunities to hone their comedic craft. In the tiny pool of female standup comedians successful enough to make a living off it, there are essentially zero lookers, despite physical attractiveness generally being considered an asset in the entertainment industry. (Amy Schumer isn't turning any heads even post-Ozempic.)
I know what you're going to say – sure, straight men have ulterior motives for laughing at a hot woman's unfunny jokes, but straight women don't, so hot women must still be receiving some accurate feedback on which material works and which doesn't. But I suspect the halo effect has a lot to answer for here, and in much the same way that attractive waitresses receive more tips even from other women, I imagine a straight woman might well laugh at an unfunny joke told by her hot friend. Women are also more conformist than men: if Plain Jane is at a party, Sexy Stacy tells an unfunny joke, and all the straight men in her vicinity laugh – Jane might well laugh along for the sake of fitting in.
But the more I think about it, I think the dynamic I'm describing might be even broader than this. When I saw Jordan Jensen live, there were two support acts prior to her. The second one was a short weaselly Jew (whose name escapes me), who was pretty funny. The first was a six-foot tall jock who looked like a J. Crew model, and he was hopeless.
Think about the most successful male standups in history. I daresay you will be hard pressed to find one that would be considered unequivocally handsome in strictly physical terms. (Shane Gillis himself is no head-turning beauty.) Louis CK, Dylan Moran, Patton Oswalt, Danny DeVito, Woody Allen, Rodney Dangerfield,
Eddie"Suzy" Izzard, Mitch Hedberg, Bill Burr, Bill Hicks, Jerry Seinfeld, George Carlin – I could go on, but I think my point is abundantly clear (especially given how many of these comics' routines feature bits in which they vent about the frustrations of being sexually undesirable). Black comics fare a little better, but I still think it would be fair to describe Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock as "a little funny-looking". The dynamic is much the same as for hot women: when a physically attractive man tells a joke, people might laugh at that joke for reasons other than its comedic value (namely, the halo effect; because they find him generally charming; because they're a straight woman who wants to be his girlfriend/wife), which inevitably gives the man a misleading impression of how funny he really is and compromises his ability to hone his comedic instincts. The only people who can get constant, accurate, real-time feedback on which of their jokes are landing and which aren't are people whom no one has ulterior motives for laughing at: namely, people who are ugly and poor.Let me illustrate it another way. There are many Hollywood actors who moonlight as models for fashion brands, watches, cologne etc. (e.g. Jake Gyllenhaal, Timothée Chalamet, Ben Affleck, to name the first three that came to mind). Can you name one person who first achieved fame as a standup comedian and who is still best-known for that vocation who does fashion modelling on the side? I honestly can't think of one.
Another potential rebuttal to my theory is that there are at least a handful of successful, attractive Hollywood actors who didn't come up through standup, but who turn in legitimately funny performances in comedy films. (Despite his reputation for portraying Literally Me™ in assorted serious indie dramas, Ryan Gosling was hysterical in The Nice Guys and Barbie.) The difference, I would argue, is that film is a fundamentally collaborative medium, and a lot of what makes a funny performance comes down to the chemistry between the actors, the director's coaxing of the performance from the actor, and judicious cutting in the editing suite. For standup, by contrast, the comedian is on his own, with no one to bounce off once the house lights go down. It's probably the purest kind of comedy there is, and to make it in that industry, you have to be really funny.
So, yeah. Being a jester is an uggo's game, because uggos are the only ones receiving accurate, real-time feedback on how funny they are which they can use to refine and improve their material.
Separate from this, I think there's a separate but related dynamic wherein men are sort of expected to be funnier than women. Guys go for looks, women go for status, and being funny and making other people laugh is one way a man can make himself seem higher in status and in turn make himself seem more attractive to the opposite sex. But even if an attractive woman could somehow make herself funny, that in itself wouldn't make herself more desirable to the opposite sex. People respond to incentives: if most men would rather date an unfunny twenty-two-year-old who's a 9 than a hilarious thirty-year-old who's a 3, most women intuitively understand that their time would be better spent making themselves hotter than making themselves funnier. The only women who invest any effort into being funny are women who have nothing else to fall back on to make themselves seem attractive i.e. unattractive women. In other words, there's more baseline competitive pressure for men to be funny than women.
It wouldn't surprise me if this fundamental dynamic likewise explains the underrepresentation of women in rock music and similar. Single-minded devotion to one's artistic muse is only one reason of many that people join rock bands, and probably not even very high up on the list: a big part is the desire to be a rock star i.e. to be seen as locally higher in status i.e. to get groupies into bed. I think most people intuitively understand that a smelly dude with a guitar is more attractive to women than a smelly dude without one, whereas a hot girl who plays in a band isn't necessarily more attractive to men than a hot girl who doesn't play in a band. If a woman is trying to nab herself a husband, her effort is better spent trying to make herself more physically attractive. It follows that the only women who'll join rock bands are either a) women who simply cannot resist following their artistic muses, or b) physically unattractive women desperate for something to make them seem more attractive or higher in status than they otherwise would be: no man really wants to date a girl who's a 4, but if you had to date a 4, a 4 who plays in a band might seem that bit cooler than a 4 who doesn't.
I agree with your overall point but you're overselling how focused guys are on looks and underselling how much they care about other factors. Both men and women are attracted to creativity and status. Every time I ask a friend what they like about a girl they just started seeing, something creative comes up. "She draws", "She published a novel", "She plays guitar". People with creative pursuits tend to be more interesting to talk to.
Girls max out how attractive they can make themselves. Maybe you start as a physical 5/10. With great effort you get yourself to 7/10, but you're unable or unwilling to advance further. The same distinguishing logic works for the 7/10 as the 4/10. 7/10 looks + cool beats 7/10 + boring. Also you seem more like a peer to rockstar types when you also have a musical career, so it's a winning strategy for nabbing them. See the singer from The Distillers marrying Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age.
Additionally: your theory predicts female rockstars should be mid, but that's not what I see? Girls in bands, both big and small, tend to be a bit prettier and more stylish than baseline. (Pop music girls tend to be just straight hot. Why that difference is another issue entirely). It helps get the audience emotionally invested when you're easy to look at. Once I went to a diner before a show. There was a girl there that was way prettier than anyone else there. She was getting stares the whole time. When I went to see the show I found out she was one of the acts.
Can I just say, the fact you two are using the Hold Steady and the Distillers to support your arguments make me feel like you're competing specifically for my favor and I love it. I hope you both win
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I would agree, but with a slightly different take: the female equivalent to Meatloaf (appearance-wise) would not make it.
Susan Boyle did kinda make it for a bit, but then again she kinda got through as a deliberate freak show and had the TV Talent Show pathway work for her where the Meatiness worked as a point of differentiation.
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Dare I say this effect might be contaminated by social desirability bias? "I like her because she's so creative" sounds a great deal less crass than "I like her because she has cracking tits and she's great in bed".
Even then, no one's debating that, ceteris paribus, creative people are more interesting to talk to. The point is, your friends aren't dating these women because they're creative. Your friends never would've asked these women out had they not found them physically attractive: physical attraction is the rule-in criterion, "being creative" is just gravy.
Maybe I'm overgeneralising from my personal experience + the most famous female rockstars. Dublin's post-punk scene exploded in popularity over the last decade, including a handful of female musicians, and I genuinely cannot think of even one that I would call more attractive than mid. Any list of the greatest female rockstars in history is bound to include Janis Joplin and Patti Smith, neither of whom were anything to write home about in terms of looks even at their peaks. Stevie Nicks, not bad-looking but hardly a knockout. I'll grant that Debbie Harry was a legitimate stunner.
Yeah, suppose a genie who offers men two deals:
I imagine deal 1. gets near universal denial and deal 2. gets easy majority acceptance, where the rejections to 2. mostly come out of risk aversion or concern for some type of monkey’s paw situation.
One point on the 1-10 scale is a big deal though. What if it was 0.1 points on the scale? 0.01?
My broader point is that looks aren't literally everything for guys, even if they're the most important factor. Guys aren't pure looks maximizers. They frequently make tradeoffs against pure looks. This is more pronounced when you look at relationships than casual sex. Imagine a 7.5 whose hobbies are watching the office and tiktok, versus a 7.3 who plays guitar at fun house parties and gets your homies invited. Which would you rather date?
Indeed, it only further highlights how little female “creativity” matters relative to looks, that it’s immediately conceded that we need to divide the delta by 5, 10, or 100 to make the thought experiment less obvious.
It also further highlights the male burden of performance and the female bar being on the floor, where “she draws” or “she plays guitar” is understood to be an earnest compliment for a woman by her boyfriend or husband. In contrast, “he draws” or “he plays guitar” by a woman about her boyfriend/husband would make him sound like a loser without further qualifiers, as such descriptors sound like someone characterising an elementary or a high school family member, respectively.
The 7.3 who likes drawing attention to herself by playing guitar at house parties is likely thotting around even harder on Insta and TikTok than the 7.5 Office and TikTok watcher.
I couldn’t care less about a girlfriend/wife’s ability to get my homies invited places, except insofar the caring goes into the negative, as such ability (holding looks equal) is correlated with traits I wouldn’t want in a girlfriend/wife. The bros are more than able to fend for themselves.
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Ah, this is why I'm terribly unfunny: I'm just too darned handsome.
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Iliza Shlesinger, Sarah Silverman, Nikki Glaser, Whitney Cummings, Kelsey Cook, Taylor Tomlinson, Maddy Kelly… and that’s just off the top of my head. And of course if you expand the criteria slightly to successful improv/sketch comics the field expands even more and you get people like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Kaitlin Olson, Tina Fey, Veronika Slowikowska, Ashley Padilla, Jane Curtin…. I could keep going, but I think the point is made.
I've only heard of half of these. Even in her prime Silverman was mid, as far as I'm concerned. Tomlinson is about as good-looking as Maggie Gyllenhaal, so not bad-looking by any means, but I wouldn't hold my breath for the start of her modelling career. Kelly I would also consider mid. I'll grant Whitney Cummings, Kelsey Cook and Iliza Shlesinger. "Three" seems numerically equivalent to "essentially zero".
Granted, but I'd consider them both more comic actresses than comedians, and I addressed the point about standup vs. comedic acting in the upper post.
Mid even in her prime.
Mid.
Mid.
Mid, even in her prime.
You are already moving the goalposts. (And revealing that you just don’t follow stand-up very closely, making the value of your takes on the industry pretty questionable.)
What goalposts am I moving?
And just because these comedians aren't famous outside of the US doesn't mean I don't follow standup closely.
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I'm not sure there's such a strong link between friends laughing at jokes in real life and the craft of being a stand up comedian. Even for men, looks and social status also matter pretty significantly in how likely you are to get a laugh. Indeed, I would say that women laughing as a form of flirting with a guy they are interested in is more common than the gender-switched variant you talk about (although they both definitely happen).
Although if you're looking for good looking female comedians, shout out to Taylor Tomlinson (who incidentally learned stand up as a fat teenager in church).
You're correct that there are a lot of people who are funny on an interpersonal level, but who would die onstage if they ever attempted standup. Making one's friends or colleagues laugh is a very different skill from making a roomful of paying strangers laugh. But I nonetheless think that, for someone who has never attempted standup (or any other kind of comedy, like improv or sketch comedy), the former is the best proxy for the latter a complete amateur is likely to have.
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I wasn't going to say that actually because the notion that hot women would ever feel compelled to tell jokes to or have banter with either other hot women or plain women never occurred to me.
Indeed.
I'd also argue they are in many such cases willfully entering a predominantly male subculture in order to increase their mating chances due to themselves not being able to find eligible mates the conventional way for whatever reason.
So, nerd queen.
Also, to be more generous, often times the sorts of women who are that obsessively driven towards an artistic pursuit or hobby don't get along with other women, or at least with the normie female social scene.
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Oh yeah, this is a valid point. Big fish in a small pond.
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I think there may be a degree of truth to what you’re saying, but remember Berkson’s Paradox. The null hypothesis is there is no relation between humor and attractiveness, no effect by which ugly people train their humor in order to win friends and influence people. You just never even notice the unfunny plain people, and they don’t become celebrities.
Keep in mind that there is a less-polite two-sided version of the paradox, too: not only do you not notice the unfunny plain people, the people who are funny and beautiful also go so far in life that they do not have to put themselves in front of the likes of you. There are more pleasant occupations out there than "stand-up comedian", if someone abundantly blessed with both wits and looks even has to work at all (as opposed to, say, being a cocktail party regular on some rich guy's yacht).
Notice how there's a massive gulf (even in Hoffmeister's maximally generous list) between the looks of "stand-up comedians" and "screen actresses who specialize in comedy". One gets paid a lot more for a much more pleasant job.
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For clarity, I don't think there's any intrinsic correlation between being (un)attractive and being the specific kind of funny necessary to be a successful standup comedian. My argument is that the only people who become successful standup comedians are people who are not unusually physically attractive, which doesn't imply that being unattractive in itself confers some kind of competitive advantage. Physical unattractiveness is necessary but not sufficient for a successful career in standup.
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You made an error in the code.
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Or does nobody expect them to be so because women are generally not funny? Chicken/egg problem.
I think women are generally not expected to impress men with sophisticated social skills.
Men have the burden of performance. It extends beyond sexual/romantic situations too.
Your male coworker who never has anything funny or interesting to say is one boring dude. Your female coworker who never has anything funny or interesting to say is just your female coworker.
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