When I called on a Thursday afternoon, Alex English was supposed to be on summer vacation, but he’d just finished two stand-up comedy shows in New York and was making last-minute packing for a night flight to London, where he’d be performing at Top Secret Comedy Club this weekend. In other words, for a working comedian, the work is never done.
Since joining the company SNL During the Writers Room in 2021 (Season 47), English demonstrated an uncanny knack for the kind of humor that hits you in the right place (all the more impressive considering he had no prior sketch experience). SNLDuring his brief but remarkable tenure, he told audiences,Hot Girl Hospital” “Nice Prison” and the instantly iconic “Lisa from Temecula” he says, adding that the song was inspired by a vacation trip to his hometown of Detroit.
English says his humor comes not from social media, but from analogue experiences. “I talk to people, I talk to my family. I read the newspapers. I read a lot of books,” he says. “I love people-watching. I’m an old guy.”
English is part of an exciting new generation of queer comedians, including humorists John Early, Bowen Yang, Sam Jay, and Joel Kim Booster, whose goal isn’t the viral moment but a shared understanding through life’s absurdity. English is adamant that social media has ruined not just the art of comedy, but our relationship to it. I asked him to explain how we got here and how we might get back on track.
Jason Parham: What scares you about the current state of comedy?
Alex English: I was on a plane recently and another passenger was watching a video on their phone and I thought, “Oh, I know this person.” Not even seven seconds into the video, the person scrolled away from the video. I’m sure that time was spent by the comedian preparing or addressing the audience. It scared me. I thought, “I don’t want anyone to do that. I don’t want anyone to scroll away.” Also, it’s saturated because everyone is doing it. The videos I’m watching aren’t unique. I’m not bashing people who do it. I just feel like I shouldn’t be doing it.
That’s fair.
Long gone are the days when you could perform in a club and someone in the industry would see it and put it on a platform to elevate your performance. Instead, the business now is whether you have 500,000 followers by promoting your material online and talking to the audience. As for working with the audience, I’m the one who came to work. The audience didn’t come to work. They came to laugh. I don’t see the reason to obsess over that. When I’m on stage, I don’t care that much about the audience. Who cares, “Are you all dating?” There’s no special story like that. And they’re not paying me.
Who is to blame?
I’ve noticed that especially since the pandemic, Instagram and TikTok have ruined a lot of the audience when it comes to comedy. It’s changed the audience’s perception of what comedy, especially stand-up comedy, really is. I did a show a few months ago that went well. A woman came up to me after the show. She was sitting near the front. I said, “Oh my gosh, I thought you were going to talk to us tonight. I thought you were going to make fun of us.” I said, “You think that’s stand-up comedy now?” Now, the audience has expectations because of what they’re consuming online.
