{"id":398285,"date":"2026-01-10T01:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T01:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398285\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T01:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T01:09:07","slug":"chris-gethard-on-the-collapsing-comedy-middle-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398285\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Gethard on the collapsing comedy middle class"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last five years have been a reckoning for Hollywood. As the industry continues to consolidate into fewer and fewer studios, it\u2019s also placed more undue burden on younger artists, the ones who should be replenishing the ecosystem with new ideas, styles, and sensibilities. What happened to all the movie stars? Why are there no more comedies? Where are the blockbusters? The so-called \u201cdemocratization of art\u201d of the smartphone and digital media revolutions was supposed to give new voices a chance to compete. But the game has been rigged against the players. Now, in order to stand out, comics have to work the algorithms so that they can stay atop the algorithms\u2014even though the rewards are fleeting and generally unpaid. They think they\u2019re working toward something, but all they\u2019re doing is acting as unpaid interns for Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai. It\u2019s no way to make a life. Chris Gethard<\/a> should know.<\/p>\n

In a new essay in Vulture<\/a>, Gethard, who went from \u201cboy wonder of the New York improv scene\u201d to \u201can old DIY uncle to the young artists,\u201d recalls his early days, making a revolutionary public access variety show during what\u2019s been called the second comedy boom. In the late \u201900s and 2010s, comedians had several ways to gain exposure and real-world industry experience they could carry forward. Now, the comedians are working the algorithms to stay in front of people who don\u2019t buy tickets to their shows. It\u2019s a closed loop: Feed the algorithm, stay in the algorithm. Gethard sums it up best in the intro to his piece, comparing working the algorithm to a coal mining town, where the \u201cplatform\u201d is owned by the company and it only accepts money they create:<\/p>\n

\u201cFor coal miners about a century ago, the company store was this idea that the entire town is owned by the coal mine: You can come work in the mine, and when you come to this town, you rent your house from the coal mine, you buy your food from a store supplied by the coal mine, and you are paid in what is called scrip, which only has value in the context of the coal mine. I do not want to co-opt the struggles of coal miners, but I think making stuff for the algorithm is the closest thing I\u2019ve seen in entertainment. From the big corporate players to the other options at our disposal, I don\u2019t think that any of them feel like a pathway for an artist in the way that existed 20, ten, or even five years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

The collapse of comedy\u2019s middle class is not so different from what one Jimmy Kimmel Show writer, Jack Allison, warned of in 2018<\/a>, when the streaming wars ushered in new, innovative ways to keep writers and actors underpaid and overworked. That was nearly a decade ago, and the problems have only gotten worse. Gethard opines that despite having roles and a writing job on some of television\u2019s most beloved shows, he lost his health insurance a year after his son was born and took a day job. In some respects, these are the problems the Hollywood strikes were supposed to fix. Unfortunately, the backlash against the social and labor movements of the last decade has sent many two steps back toward greater consolidation of power and hostility toward the arts. Still, Gethard is hopeful:<\/p>\n

I want to see who establishes a new, viable, actually DIY pathway that divests itself completely of the algorithms. Whoever starts thinking, Man, we need to rebuild this, will be the next group of artists that define what the next phase is. [\u2026] Please, young artists, find and build the new and more societally healthy infrastructure. And guess what? They\u2019re going to find a way to take that, too. But they\u2019re moving the pieces on the chessboard right now, and I think we, as artists, are chasing the terms they\u2019re dictating to us.<\/p>\n

The old DIY uncle is right. Read the essay \u201cAre We Participating in a Thing That Is Not Even Working?\u201d<\/a> at Vulture<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last five years have been a reckoning for Hollywood. As the industry continues to consolidate into fewer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398286,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[236,88],"class_list":{"0":"post-398285","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398285\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}