If you're offending your audience, write better jokes

You can’t punch people in the arm until they burst out laughing

Trigger warning. Lots. If you want to skip the really dark stuff jump to the second cat picture.

Don’t get me wrong, I love dark comedy, I’m a sick puppy. In many situations and particularly on the improv stage, I try and hold back on some of my darker ideas because I don’t want to offend people. I’m a Jewish person that lives in Germany so those there troubles is something that easily springs to mind, but I find it a bit of a hacky topic that has been overdone, and is perhaps is a little dated? My problem is not the dark ideas themselves, it’s the cowardness and laziness of an incomplete joke. A good joke is well explored, it’s rolled around and looked at from all angles. So do I really want to go there? Do I actually want to evoke images of the actual holocaust? No, it would be kind of a bummer.

Here, you’ll need this

I used to run a show called We Are Not Gemüsed, it was in a pretty claustrophobic basement (which was part of what made it good). So many comedians that made Joseph Fritl jokes. “Joseph Fritl would love this place!” and the audience would giggle. EWWWWWWWWWWWW. Which corner in particular do you think he’d like to imprison and rape his own daughter for 24 years?. Over by the curtain? I’m not saying don’t do the joke, but give me at least one afterthought to show you understand the depth of the subject.

A good way to decide if a joke is too dark for you is could you take it the whole way?

That’s the end of the really dark stuff

It’s only a joke!

You might say “it’s only a joke!”, but if people aren't laughing then it was a shit joke. You can’t punch people in the arm and go “Eh!? Eh!?” until they laugh. I love dark comedy, but it’s difficult to do well and as a beginner I would urge you to work your way up to it. These subject can be hard to joke about without “causing an icky”. That is to say that the negative emotions of disgust, shame, sadness ring louder than that intended humour. A dark joke should be so precise, silly, and brilliantly hilarious that it bazookas all of the negative emotions out of the water leaving only deep guttural belly laughter in its wake. If half of your audience are feeling offended and weirded out by your joke, you have nobody to blame but yourself.

Beginners love doing dark comedy

It’s very easy to make people laugh with a dirty joke. Not laugh very hard or long, but just laugh because rude things make you giggle. The audience probably want to show off to their date or group of friends that they’re an easy going type that can laugh at everything. A beginner will steer in to a “dark punchline” because it gets an automatic laugh, but they are often missing out on much better authentic jokes. Young comics often revere darker stand-ups, they make the mistake of thinking that choosing darker topics automatically makes them good. The truth is many of their favourite comedians (Often balding straight white men in their 50s) did not start out with dark humour, this is something that came as a result of many decades of craft.

Bill Burr in 1997 on how expensive trainers don’t make you better at sports, and how you can only buy plates in 4s

Just like any young comic, they had to do open-mics and showcases in front of a variety of audiences. This then lead to doing 5 minute spots on TV talk-shows. All of this material has to be very tight and very clean. I’m not saying you have to be a clean comic, but its a really good thing to practice. The topic can still be dark and it should always be you. Depression, loneliness, suffering etc. are all excellent and authentic topics for your comedy, but there’s never an excuse for being a hack.

Turn hack jokes into great jokes

Also, why would you want your comedy to be all one note? Use your formative years to explore all aspects of your authentic voice. Don’t use it to do some shallow impression of a middle aged comic. You’ll soon get blocked and frustrated, as you’ll want to be writing jokes outside of that style but they won’t fit.

Petition to rename “Dark comedy night”s to “I couldn’t think of a better punchline night”

If you feel your comedy is not connecting with people, don’t get caught in the trap of saying “Oh that’s what I meant to do – I’m an edgy misunderstood rebel!”. That’s your ego talking, and now you’ve put yourself in the position of not having to improve. Then you’ll probably surround yourself with other like minded “rebels” and start your own “rebel shows” for “rebel audiences” and you’ll create the 1000th show called “Trigger Warning” with a slurry of lazy comedians who have mistaken “PC culture” for “People that like things to be high quality” and “edginess” for “jokes that need a lot more work”.

I’m sure some dark comedy nights are really good, but if your comedy only works at these types of shows then you really need to expand your set. Your first 5 years should be about creating a set that kills in every room.