Joke Theft & The Zit Costume
Yesterday, as I was engaging in some light life-ruining (scrolling on Twitter), I randomly came across a Gif (pronounced “zhif”). This Gif featured a prominent television personality saying a line from one of my stand up jokes. I brought my phone closer to my face and studied his animated mouth as he spoke the words in the yellow caption. Yes, he is saying those words, and yes, it is something I used to say on stage. At first my blood ran cold, but then, it cooled into a gelatinous lukewarm as I initiated my protocol for handling the Biggest Crime In Comedy: joke theft. There have been many joke theft scandals over the years. Recently, Conan O’Brien settled a lawsuit brought by a man who was convinced Conan’s writers were stealing jokes from his Twitter feed for their monologue. (Conan wrote an illuminating piece on the debacle, the link to which is at the bottom of this.)
In my opinion, one must approach any potential instance of joke theft with the detached objectivity of a detective poking around a gruesome murder scene. Here’s the system I’ve developed over the years.
When you suspect that someone has stolen your joke, before you lash out and start a #ThatsMyJokeYouFuckingThief campaign, go through this checklist first.
COMPARE. Ask yourself, for real, how close is this to my original joke or idea? Is it word-for-word the same as yours? Does it make the same point as your joke, but it’s worded differently? That could be joke theft too, but it would make it more difficult to prove. Make sure you know the difference between original writing and standard joke devices. Is the joke similar to yours because you both are using a tried-and-true joke device, like misdirection? Also, acknowledge the difference between actual jokes and joke territory. Just because someone is commenting on HGTV shows, it does not mean they are doing the same jokes as you about HGTV shows. Shiplap is for everyone, as long as your take on it is original.
CONFRONT YOUR UNORIGINALITY. Even if it is a carbon copy of your joke, what are the chances that your joke is so broad or basic that almost anyone could think of it? As a comedian / writer, you are convinced of your own genius. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have the steel balls it takes to put your work out into the world at the risk of it being met with hate-filled silence. Ask yourself, is this joke really that original? If you do a quick Twitter search of it, would you find that thousands of others have already thought of it? And that most of those others are not comedians? Did you just pick the lowest hanging fruit off the tree? It is very difficult to admit that maybe you wrote something that the unfunniest guy at the accounting firm could come up with, but it’s essential to do - not only for your joke theft investigation but also for your development as a comedian!
CALCULATE THE ODDS. If you still believe that the joke in question was lifted from your own act, it is time to consider how it actually could have happened. Where does your joke exist? On an album, on TV, or strictly in a live setting? In some cases, I believe that if your joke has only existed in a live setting, it is more tempting for a thief to steal. It’s harder to prove if you can’t show you said it first, with something definitive like an album or televised set. We have all heard tales of more established comedians watching younger unknowns and lifting their jokes and premises, simply because they hold all the power. I believe this is rare, but it happens. Additionally, measure the distance between yourself and the alleged thief. If you’ve only told the joke at a small open mic outside Memphis, what are the chances that a writer or comedian with a national presence was actually there to see it? Even if you think the comedian or writer did see it, do you think they intentionally stole it? What if they heard it, and literally forgot it was yours? This has happened to me and every single comedian I know. Try to hush the conspiracy theorist in your head and examine only the facts.
KNOW WHAT YOU’RE UP AGAINST. Finally, if you’ve dug deep on all of these questions, and you still feel a theft took place, it is important to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of accusing someone of stealing your joke. Consider the power dynamics. Are you accusing a beloved celebrity or a tv show with a large writing staff of stealing your material? If so, I can tell you, that unless you have really solid proof (almost to the point of, like, you have actual video of the person seeing you perform it, and then a video of them performing the same joke, verbatim, at a later date), you run the risk of sounding insane and being known as the “guy who accused someone of joke theft” instead of “funny comedian.” Trust me, I have both experienced this myself and observed it countless times. Accusing someone of joke theft will likely have a chilling effect, to say the least. On top of all of this, even if this beloved comedy entity did steal your joke, the chances of them admitting to it are almost nil. Even if the joke IS the same, they can always default to the safest alibi in comedy: PARALLEL THINKING. Parallel thinking is when two people think of the same joke without ever being aware of the other person’s joke. It happens a lot (see item 2), and it’s the easiest defense in these situations, and almost always the most logical explanation.
HAVE FAITH IN YOURSELF. Finally, every time I’ve ever been suspicious that someone stole a joke or idea from me, I follow these steps, and then I almost always do nothing. That’s because I have cultivated faith in my own writing. So what if someone stole my joke? I am talented enough to write a new one. When you’re young and starting out, each funny joke feels like squeezing cold brew from a cinder block. You’re so insecure in your ideas that when you finally land on a good one, it feels like Your Precious. But later, you start to realize that your creativity is a well that never dries up, and Your Precious is just one of a lifetime of funny ideas. There are situations where joke theft can feel particularly unjust and insidious (for example, if you work on a show in a non-writer capacity and writers casually take your quips and ideas and pitch them as their own NOT THAT THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ME). Even in those cases, it is still important to tread carefully and ask yourself, is this worth the drama and potential backfiring? For me, it usually is not. NOTE: This is not to say that there are never instances in which it is appropriate to seek justice. Just make sure you know why you’re doing it and what you’re actually trying to achieve. If you’re simply trying to prove to the world that you are as funny as that successful person/show, consider the act itself as proof and let your entire body of work be the evidence.
ANOTHER NOTE: Social media joke theft by large meme accounts is an entirely different beast - one that Megh Wright over at Vulture has exposed and covered extensively.
Yesterday, when I saw that Gif, I followed all the steps above. 1. The joke was verbatim the same as mine. 2. But the joke could potentially have been thought of by someone else. It is original, but it’s not THAT original. 3. BUT! The proximity was close. I personally know writers who work on the show. 4. HOWEVER! This is not an entity I would be wise to confront, even in private. Is it worth putting a stink in the air around my name over a string of a few words, which could very arguably be parallel thinking? 5. I am more than those words. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened and it won’t be the last. I feel sorry for the person who is so insecure that they would steal a joke. I don’t need to do that, I am just fine coming up with my own. I know this, because I knowingly stole a joke almost thirty years ago.
I was in seventh grade, and it was Halloween. I had an idea for a costume that I was certain would be the funniest thing my middle school had ever seen. I “got” the idea at Makemie Woods, the site of my church youth group’s annual fall retreat. Makemie Woods sounds like the perfect location for a rash of unsolved murders, but I assure you, it wasn’t. It was magical. Every October, we would load into a few sixteen-passenger vans and bump down the highway to a rural pocket of tidewater Virginia, where the campground sat upon 300 acres of crunchy fall land. Makemie Woods was autumnal as fuck. We slept in cabins with huge screen porches, wore a lot of flannel, and cried big fat teen tears about our love for Jesus and each other.
That year, we had a costume party on the last night. Two seniors, Heather and Kim, wore a joint costume. We didn’t know what it was at first; dramatic music filled the room. Heather and Kim huddled together beneath a red blanket, with their heads poking out the top. Said heads were wrapped in toilet paper, and their faces were painted white. We were confused, but already laughing. Suddenly, a third senior, Vicky, entered the scene. Vicky started massaging the blanket with her arms, pushing this way and that. Heather and Kim started to flail back and forth, gradually rising up, the red blanket still wrapped around them. They were getting squeezed and squeezed, until finally, they burst out of the red blanket, revealing head-to-toe white outfits. They triumphantly announced: they were a zit, and we had just witnessed them getting popped.
I. was. dyyyyying. I had never seen anything funnier in my life. Teenagers dressing up as the number one thing teenagers hate? My mind was blown. It was brilliant satire. Here, comfortable in our own skin, we could laugh at the horrors of our own skin! I already idolized the older kids in Youth Group, but this took me to a whole new level. I was so inspired. I wanted to do what they did. I wanted to make people laugh as hard as I was laughing that night. When you’re howling uncontrollably in a full-body state of joy, everything else just melts away. It was wizardry. At the time, my home life was spiraling out of control, and I was drawn to anything that gave me a sense of power. This could be it: the power to make people laugh, to make it all okay, to take people to a sort of heaven, even if just for a tiny moment.
So, when we returned to our suburban homes the next day, I immediately set to work on my own funny Halloween costume. Fatefully, October 31st fell on a Monday this year, which meant we got to wear our costumes to school. The weekend away had emboldened me: I decided to copy Heather and Kim’s idea and go as a zit. Of course, I’d have to go solo on my zit costume and there would be no companion performance, but I figured that everyone would immediately get it, and I’d be heralded by my classmates as “the future of comedy.”
Always a great planner-aheader, on Monday morning, about 30 minutes before the school bus came, I asked my mom for some white clown makeup and a roll of toilet paper. Naturally, I refused to tell her what I was doing. I ran into my room, slammed the door, threw on a red sweater, red jeans, hastily smeared the thick white paint all over my face, rolled some TP around my head, and triumphantly walked down the stairs. My mom stared at me for a moment, and then asked, “What...are you?” Her voice got extra high-pitched, the same faux-innocent questioning tone she’d get whenever she asked “Is that what you’re wearing?”
I told her, “a zit!” and waited for the laughter to roll in.
Silence. I could see her searching for the right words, something that wouldn’t scar me for life. Finally, she said, “Okay, have a good day, sugah.”
It was my first bomb. For a moment, I got a little nervous, like, hey, why isn’t this working like it did at Makemie Woods? But then I remembered, oh, she’s a *mom*, she has no fucking clue what’s funny. I grabbed my backpack and jauntily made my way to the bus stop.
The bus stop reaction was... tepid at best. I had to explain the joke too much. I found myself laboriously describing the skit: “So there were these two older girls at Makemie Woods, and… oh, well Makemie Woods is like this awesome church camp thing and there’s a sharing circle and this year Alex really came to terms with his relationship with both Jesus and his father….” By the time I got to the part about my head literally being a whitehead, my neighbor Billy had started playing stick football with my other neighbor Neil. (Stick football, if you’re not aware, is a sport boys resort to when a girl at the bus stop is taking way too long to explain her zit costume.) My initially tepid audience had gone completely cold.
Now I was really starting to panic. As I boarded the bus dressed as a pimple, I thought to myself, “My God what have I done?” It was the longest bus ride of my life. The thick clown makeup was so hot, it felt like it was sliding down my face. The toilet paper was coming loose and I had to keep doing repairs. We arrived, I disembarked, and the school loomed before me like a courthouse holding a jury waiting to convict me of murder.
I had no idea at the time that this is exactly what it would feel like to do stand up comedy. You walk into a place filled with a bunch of hostile strangers with too much makeup on your face, wholly aware that you’re going to have to act like an idiot, praying that they get the joke.
This time, they most certainly didn’t. The girls were grossed out. “Ewww Sara, that’s disgusting!” By second period, I stopped trying to explain the costume altogether. Kids would pass me in the hallway and yell “What kind of mummy are you?” Another kid yelled back, “A dummy mummy!” Their victorious high-five sent tremors through my gut. I somehow managed to make it through lunch without disintegrating, as I absorbed one bewildered look after another. After lunch ended, I grimly marched to the bathroom, slowly unwrapped the toilet paper from my head, and gave myself two more years of acne by using the industrial-grade powdered soap to scrub off the makeup that was supposed to make me look like acne. I had just learned the meaning of irony in English class, and I thought to myself, oh yes. This is that. In defeat, I resumed the day costumeless.
I was humiliated and furious at the world for not getting the joke, one that had landed so hard at Makemie Woods. I couldn’t understand it. It was funny when they did it, so why wasn’t it funny when I did it? Maybe that was the problem. It wasn’t my joke to begin with, and maybe this was punishment for taking it. The whole incident put an icky feeling on rotisserie in my gut. I loved the power being funny gave me, and I soon learned that it was most successful when it came from my brain and my gut and my heart. It would have to be me out there, dangling for the world to either embrace or reject. The embrace was worth the risk.
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Conan O’Brien: Why I Decided to Settle a Lawsuit Over Alleged Joke Stealing