Review Mode: Don’t Reassure Someone About Something They Don’t Feel Bad About Yet

Welcome to Review Mode, a biweekly newsletter where I mark up my social interactions, mining my, like, medical-grade self-monitoring for your reading pleasure.

Apparently, “Well, they were a tough audience” is not a great thing to say to a stand-up comedian who wasn’t feeling bad about their set.

I recently did one of those gimmicky stand-up shows where people complete game-like challenges in between their sets. The audience was pretty uptight. You’d think the premise would bring out the “fuck it, let’s go along with this” in people, but evidently not.

On this show was a comic who’s far more successful than I am. Let’s call him Andy. Andy’s been doing standup for a long time, and he has a bunch of shiny TV credits. He’s queer, so we know each other a bit from doing some of the all-queer shows together over the years. I’m always a little nervous around him, because of the power imbalance.

So after this challenge-y standup show, a bunch of us were hanging the venue. Personally, my set hadn’t gone great, but I’d done okay on the word scramble puzzle after. Andy’s set had gone well by this audience’s standards, but that wasn’t saying much. A few light laughs, maybe one bigger laugh. For his challenge, he failed to execute a bottle flip within three tries.

“What’d you think of the show?” I asked.

“I had fun!” Andy said. “Even though I ate shit.”

“Well, they were a tough crowd,” I said.

Andy was quiet for a sec, making sense of what I’d just said. Then he said, “…I was talking about the challenge.”

“Oh right, yeah, that makes more sense, because—” I started, but before I could try to save it with because I thought your set went great, he interrupted.

“I thought I’d done well.”

“No, yeah, you did! I just didn’t want to dismiss what you were—”

“Anyway, I should probably get going.”

GAHHHHHH.

So from his perspective, he’d had a great set. He was feeling generous with his time, figured he’d chill with some of the less experienced comics for a bit. Maybe he’d even be a little self-deprecating about his performance on the bottle flip, so we’d be less intimidated. And then this fucking open mic-er who doesn’t even have the self-awareness to realize what a gulf there is between their talent levels had the gall to reassure him???

Not an amazing look for me. But hey, at least I can land a bottle flip.1

The Lesson I Should but Probably Won’t Learn from This: You’d better be really sure that someone’s feeling down on themself before you try to reassure them. (Especially if they’re higher status than you, TBH.)

Carson’s Life Updates

• In crafting news, I constructed a fully functional ink pen out of a seltzer can (the nib is cut from the can), and now I feel powerful. God-like.

• I was in central Pennsylvania for a show (shout out to St. Nell’s) and went thrifting while I was there. I look forward to never wearing my new t-shirt and then eventually, like a year from now, offering it to a friend who actually does wear ironic shirts.

  

• I also went to the local history museum, the Taber Museum, known in part for its extensive collection of model trains. My favorite train was the 1957 Lionel Girls Train, which bore the following description: “This train, with its pink locomotive and pastel colored cars, was an attempt by Lionel to attract young girls. The attempt was a sales flop.”

  

The Boilerplate

Carson Olshansky (still they/them, despite the haters) is a Brooklyn-based comedian and writer. You can follow them at @carsonolshansky on Instagram and TikTok and at @carson-olshansky on YouTube.

Join their mailing list to find out about shows near you (which helps us all be less reliant on social media technocrats).

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