When Art Becomes Content, Artists Become Nothing

I have had two profound, brief, existential crises in the last 6 years regarding what I am doing with my life.  The latter one occurred during my very failed run for Congress earlier this year.  When I was out canvassing for the 500 signatures I would need to get on the ballot I was struck by the rudeness of many people (as I have joked, holding a clipboard is the universal sign for “bitch not worthy of common decency” – it’s like the opposite of cauliflower ear) and the ignorance of basic politics on the part of many others, even in affluent, educated parts of the district, which is a lot of my congressional district.  I felt relief and joy at the many good exchanges I had, but I would be lying if at least once a day I did not have a Jesus on the Cross moment of doubt thinking, “Are these people I want to represent?”

Comedically, and much more familiar to many of my fans, was my experience during the pandemic, where I had an explosion of fame and virality for my impersonations that was quickly submerged in a much bigger wave of fame and virality by someone lip syncing the subject of my impersonations.  I then came under attack many times on social media for not showing proper deference to the talent of lip syncing (and to show I am not picking on one person, even after having a more recent burst of millions of views (look up “Trump reacts to Bad Bunny” – hit 2 million+ views on 3 different platforms, I have seen new Trump lip syncers surpass me by factors of 10 in followers and views).  And the thought, even more profoundly upsetting, after spending my adult life honing and prioritizing my comedy, to reach a relative summit in my career only to think, “are these the people I have been trying to win over and entertain?”  Little did I know it would not even be that good again.

The Dream is not coming true.

There comes an uncomfortable time in an artist’s life (and let me pre-emptively stop you from being the 1,000,000th person to try and rationalize never adjusting your expectations or contemplating quitting because “Rodney Dangerfield did not make it big until (insert age around age of person you think you are cheering up)) where you have to accept that you have peaked or plateaued or, more bluntly, your dream is not coming true.  I have come close. Really close.  Multiple times in my career (killer late night debut in 2007, 10x guest on Adam Carolla when he was the big thing in podcast, a regular segment on The Dan Lebatard Show, going mega viral in 2020 and making more money from comedy in a 2 year stretch that I ever made working for law firms in a 3 year stretch, getting a role on Billions, releasing a great special on Amazon Prime, are some of the highlights that made me think I actually might “make it.”  Especially in light of the fact that almost all of things occured without the benefit of industry help.  I would have probably quit working as a lawyer during this time both because all my needs were more than met with comedy earnings, but for the fact that in 2009 I made the mistake of thinking “I was close.” Three years of road gigs later the only thing I was close to was $0 in my bank account.  But for all my complaints, valid and hyperbolic, about the awfulness of the entertainment industry and the overall sycophant scab character of a majority of the comedy community, I never comprehended that the audience itself might become contemptible.  And yet, as we turn art into content we have guided an audience, already nourished on smart phone slop, into one that no longer values art and merely consumes content.  And that is when a dream becomes a nightmare.

Art Becomes Content

My blog used to be the biggest thing about my comedy career.  I complained as early as 2011 about how comedy was becoming a place where there was no middle class )and how that comedy could be viewed as a canary in the coal mine of American society).  But now algorithms dictate whether anyone is aware that I put out a video, a special or a blog post.  And as I accumulate more fans followers across all platforms, my views and engagement continue to shrink, so there is an almost exponential disconnect between building a fan base and having people see and hear what you produce.

I put out 8 stand up albums in 18 years. Most of my fans have not listened to any.  I was doing this for artistic pride and fan consumption, before there were algorithms to feed.  We now have a comedy ecosystem where A.I. bots will never be necessary to perform comedy, because most comedians are now willing participants in the algorithm.  Why buck the system when you can get more views and potentially more dollars?  Because why should art be about something greater than commerce and clicks?

I know this may seem contradictory – J-L, you seem to want it both ways – you want people to consume your art, but then complain when people deliver what will be consumed.  Yes.  That is the problem – art is in an algorithm death spiral and the only people with the power to push back, artists, cannot or will not.  But perhaps I should explain what small incident drove me to this final breaking point.

Over the course of my comedy career I have seen the comedy world change for the absolute worst, unless you consider nothing but crowd work and roasts to be the final Enlightenment phase of humor.  When I began, comedy specials were events, any video could go viral if it was good and you had some luck, and people bought albums both on-line and at shows.  There were some trade-offs for the increased exposure, and in some cases, the wealth that the Internet provided.  More free streaming, more reach. More subscribers, fewer ticket buyers.  I did not even want to join Cameo in 2020, for fear of looking like a loser and opportunistic. Cameo is now the single biggest source of income I have had in my life that is not named My Mom, or a Manhattan law firm.  But I still might look like a Z-lister for being on it.  I have tried, with mostly failure, to shift my audience of 400,000 total fans followers to a cheap Patreon ($3/month) and to encourage people to sign up for my newsletter (free) so they do not miss big show or special announcements that algorithms with undoubtedly hide from them.  It just seems at this point that fans followers view me mostly as a pleasant distraction.  This is not personal to me obviously, but it is tough to deal with when 2/3 of your career was based in a live performance, artistic integrity still a thing-era.  I reach more people than ever, with less and less of an interest and investment in art. My art is their content.  If you just started doing comedy 5 years ago, this may seem great. It isn’t.  And that brings us all the way to May 11-12, 2026.

With the Knicks playing well, led by Jalen Brunson, I figured it was a good time to re-share a joke of mine.  I compared Jalen Brunson to a secondary character on The Wire named Prop Joe.  The original had done well in 2022, so I shared it to Threads.  It garnered a solid amount of views and reactions and got me to pick up a few dozen new followers.  That was on May 11th.

My joke

On May 12th a friend alerted me to someone using the joke on their page.  The insult to injury was that, despite being unoriginal and having 70% fewer followers, his post had eclipsed mine in shares/views/etc. in 20 fewer hours on the site.  And it was someone who had commented on my original post with several laugh emojis (Yes, he includes a picture of the character with his – no one ever accused joke thieves of wanting their material to be less accessible.

“They’s joke”

One of the things I have hated about Tik Tok and Instagram, is I will see a video and find it funny. I will like it and sometimes follow the creator. And then over the next month I will see the same video done by dozens of people. I will not know who the original creator is (that would be the person I would want to praise and follow) and instead, I will be left in a swamp of joke theft, oh excuse me, content creation.  I, like may artists of my generation, live with the moral burden of have some respect for art and some personal integrity, which seem to be deeply irrelevant to today’s content landscape.  But watching this individual steal my joke, after commenting, and then stripping it of its authorship and acting like it is just some anonymous joke in the ether, is fucking disgusting. This obviously happens thousands of times a day on the Internet, but I have never had the good/bad fortune of catching a patient zero doing the damage.  By today there might be 50 people sharing it, innocent of the mens rea for theft, because to them it is just “out there.”

I have seen my work turned into A.I. animation (with attribution post fact, but no permission sought or granted beforehand) and grow a channel to double my subscriber base in 1/10th the time it took me to where I am.  The art into content assault is so complete that nobodies, frauds and clout chasers will steal it in front of you because artists are no longer supposed to be burdened with pride or integrity and audiences, like they do with their food, their fashion and everything else in 2026, no longer care how their art is sourced, because they no longer consider it art. It is content. It used to be said one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.  Now it is the case that any man’s treasure will become everyone’s trash.

I currently work a day job that I am very proud to work. I am an eviction prevention lawyer and it is a job I sought out because it was a place of need in our society, but also I wanted what I do to mean something.  My comedy work used to make me feel that way, but it does not anymore. And experiencing theft in almost real time was a deeper degradation than I was prepared for.  And I would be lying if there are not moments while I am working where I feel a resentment, like I have the talent and the reach and the volume of art that I should be touring and not sitting in a courtroom.  But then I realize, the comedy world I want to succeed in is a thing of the past.  I still entertain a lot of people and make decent money from my talent, but that is where it seems to end.   And then I get back to trying to help someone who is real.