Akella, Vishnu

Two specials let audiences click to determine which jokes they hear. It’s both an innovative way to add meaning and a further fragmenting of the culture.In his new special, the comic Danny Jolles grouses about the magician David Blaine, famous for stunts like burying himself alive or holding his breath for 17 minutes. Jolles describes him as an insufferable psychopath: “At some point we have to take a stand. He’s not doing magic. He’s just trying to kill himself.”You only see this quip if you click the phrase “I hate David Blaine” that pops up onscreen at the start of his bit. If you choose the alternative, “I love David Blaine,” then you get Jolles praising Blaine as the greatest living human and bemoaning those who take him for granted. “Everyone’s like, What is David Blaine doing today? The impossible. And everyone just moved on.”Jolles’s “You Choose” is part of an adventurous new trend toward interactivity in specials, with the potential to be the most dystopian comedy innovation since the laugh track. Such a high-tech development is not as bizarrely futuristic as the hologram of Keenan Thompson that performed at the Laugh Factory in Chicago last weekend, but it could be more consequential.In his 2019 Netflix special “Lobby Baby,” Seth Meyers tiptoed into giving viewers control over the final edit, allowing them the option of clicking a box and skipping over political material. But two new specials — the one by Jolles, which premiered Thursday on YouTube, and Vishnu Akella’s “For You,” which became available on his site over the summer — are more comprehensive experiments.Vishnu Akella’s special “For You” digs into viewers’ pop culture knowledge and demographics for its interactive approach.Every time Jolles introduces a subject, two choices appear at the bottom of the screen. Which one you take dictates the joke in a way that enables you to avoid opinions you might disagree with. Akella uses a similar device, though it asks less about your opinions than your knowledge of references or your demographic. As a result, boomers will get different punch lines (not to mention larger fonts) than millennials will.These specials are the culmination of two worrying hallmarks of the culture today: how fragmentation incentivizes pandering to niches or fandoms, and the cheap, double-edged appeal of interactivity, a useful artistic tool that often becomes a crassly commercial one. These comics are not only aware of all this, but they also adopt the posture of a skeptic more than an evangelist. Their specials are sly enough to satirize themselves.As is so often the case, David Letterman got there first. In the early 1980s, he often simultaneously spoofed and exploited the overhyping of technological innovation, particularly in themed episodes like “the custom-made show,” written by Chris Elliott and Matt Wickline. It began with a populist introduction: Letterman said he was taking power away from network executives and giving it to the people, letting them decide everything from what he would wear to the order of guests. The studio audience’s response to multiple-choice questions, recorded by an “applause meter,” was the key metric. Of course, the crowd’s choices gave Letterman a chance to sarcastically marvel about the wonders of democracy.It’s asking too much of these young comics to display Letterman’s light touch, but also, our current internet age demands a blunter tone. This reveals itself less in the onstage jokes by Akella than in what comes in between — the questions for the viewer and the onscreen text that riffs on them. If you click on Gen Z when asked about your age, the script will ridicule you for easily giving up data to TikTok.Akella tells subtle jokes that mock the stupidity of generational stereotypes while emphasizing the illusion of choice. At one point, he gives you the option to cancel him if his joke offends you, but if you click on the box to do it, he questions the entire framework of “cancel culture.” This is smart stuff, the form perfectly integrated into the content.His fundamental theme is how social media pigeonholes us and mines our data, a condescending phenomenon that treats us less like human beings than abstractions made up of marketable information. Before the closer, a message informed me that it was removing references I wouldn’t get and adding “palatable jokes about race so you can feel like an ally.” Onstage, Akella tells us he feels sad that his generation is being treated like lab rats, and I believe him. There’s a sense of constraint and even anxiety about his stand-up persona. His voice only becomes comically vivid in the impersonal text onscreen.Phillip OrtizJolles is a more experienced performer, and his first special, also released on YouTube, displayed an endearing puppyish charm. His new, pricklier show deconstructs that persona, telling the audience right from the start how he ingratiates himself, before asking them how they want their takes delivered.In her fascinating recent New Yorker article on the choose-your-own-adventure books, Leslie Jamison made the case for a sympathetic reading of their appeal rooted in the freedom to go back and change course, or as she put it, “the revocability of it all.”Jolles taps into this by making it easy for the viewer to rewind bits to see alternative versions (much more so than Akella). But he also pointedly creates polar opposite perspectives. These contrasting views are clearly designed to make a point, but doing so shoehorns him into an argumentative posture that doesn’t always fit his comedy.In taking an extreme position, Jolles can seem like he’s doing a bad Bill Burr impression. Usually, one of his takes is funnier than the other. Is that the one he actually believes? I’m not sure, though I suspect that deep down he’s a die-hard David Blaine fan.Jolles isn’t trying to appeal to both sides, but to show how comedians manufacture opinions to fit the joke — that everything is performance. He says he supports transgender rights, then undercuts himself by saying he knows that position will get applause. He illustrates how artists manipulate audiences with camera trickery and mentions that he doesn’t like outrage over comments made many years ago. None of this is real, he says, before adding, “Why would you trust me?”He’s onto something. Comedy audiences overestimate authenticity, a trait easily faked. But there’s also a touch of the juvenile Holden Caulfield rolling his eyes about phonies here.If comedians adjust material to make a better joke, does that invalidate everything they say? If art relies on dishonesty, does that mean there’s no truth to be found in it? This is the kind of casual nihilism that crosses comedic genres, showing up in the misanthropic cynicism of Tim Dillon and the artful irony of Bo Burnham. It’s often its own kind of pandering.To answer the question posed by Jolles, people trust comedians for all kinds of reasons, but primarily because jokes, well told, are powerful. They can lighten a day or destroy your confidence. They express taboo thoughts, offer insights and reveal the world, even when built on fabrications. The comic Rich Hall struck a sensible balance when he wrote in his new memoir, “All jokes are manipulative, and audiences laugh when you reach a truthful kernel with the lie.”Even if you don’t reach it, trying matters. So does the kind of ambition behind those attempts. The sturdiest connections built with audiences don’t occur when you give them exactly what they want, but something they didn’t know they wanted. There’s no stopping technology, but for artists to use it well, they must look beyond the screen. Deep down, people like to be challenged. And in the long run, the audience trusts comics when comics trust the audience. More