“Today you have to create content, otherwise you’re dead,” says comedian Léopold. For him, the observation is clear: you have to go where the people are, that is, on social networks. A comedian for ten years, he hosted La Matinale de l’humour on Twitch for two hours. He also has a TikTok account where he takes morning excerpts from him. Two platforms that have now become essential to try to break through.
Ten years ago it was on Youtube where everything happened. Through 3-minute videos with home editing, the young people filmed themselves in their rooms. Norman and Cyprien racked up millions of views. Others, like the Palmashow, bet on much more written sequences, close to the short film.
But in 2020, during the first lockdown, TikTok experienced an explosion in France. Comedians, deprived of showrooms, try to keep people smiling with their videos. A good way, above all, to maintain a link with the public.
Almost mandatory passage
Funny on forums or on social networks, the two professions have become two sides of the same coin.
The comedian with 36,500 subscribers on TikTok and more than 500,000 on his Facebook page, officiates every morning at CMR. In his radio columns, he reacts to current affairs. So, after a first show in 2015, the video format above all brought him a new audience. “All the dates of my last shows were sold out. It also taught me a lot about writing and gave me a return to radio.”
For others, social networks have been a way to make themselves known. This is the case of Ana Godefroy. With 700,000 subscribers of hers on TikTok, she writes a column on the morning show Le double espresso on RTL2 and her visits to stand-up rooms in Paris and throughout France are on the rise.
Ana Godefroy and Arnaud Demanche experienced a boom in notoriety during the first confinement. Ana Godefroy for her imitations of journalists, Arnaud Demanche for his videos on the news.
The latter underscores the imperative of not betting everything on social media. “Being on the radio protects me from an arbitrary decision to suspend an account, which would come from across the Atlantic, and could ruin a career in an instant.” He confesses to being sensitive to statistics but considers them above all as an informative tool: “thanks to statistics I see what people are sensitive to. As artists we tend to talk a lot about ourselves”.
know the codes
The humorist Léopold organizes once a month the twitch comedy club, during which he broadcasts an evening of stand-up on Twitch. Why come to the theater if you can stay quietly on your sofa to see the same show? “In theaters, laughter is contagious. Those who make this criticism have never come to see a monologue, ”she argues. And as a test, during your morning you will have to adapt to the fact that you do not have an audience physically present and you will have to adapt your jokes: “The references on Twitch are aimed at a specific audience that is used to the platform. If I talk about Twitch in a standing room , 99% don’t know what it is”.
On Instagram and TikTok the difficulty is double. You have to differentiate yourself from other content creators because humorous accounts multiply and try to understand your work tool. To do this, Arnaud Demanche tries to understand the codes. “That requires imposing your universe very quickly. You need content that generates an impact, for example visual, that is not intellectually impressive, but very humorous”.
On the other hand, there are several points in common between the room and social networks. On the one hand, jokes are received differently depending on where they are told from. “There are things that I allow myself to do on stage, that I don’t say much on the radio and that I will never allow myself on the Internet. The very black humor doesn’t pass because the recipient has no certainty about ‘who is speaking to me’. You can’t say shocking things after 15 seconds,” explains Arnaud Demanche.
The other point in common between the places and the social networks is the rhythm, but it is not in the same place. On stage, the comedian must engage the audience, get them used to his humor, and build to a crescendo. “There may be jokes that don’t happen at the beginning of the show but will happen very well at the end of the show. On stage, a fall can be fun without necessarily being the whole story”, testifies Ana Godefroy.
In social networks, the rhythm is in the edition. Ana Godefroy “writes with edition”. By dint of making videos, she got used to it and knows in advance if a video will last exactly one minute. Léopold, she had to get used to a new format: the reactions of the public arrive out of phase and she must rely solely on the comments of her viewers to recover.
Algorithm dependency
Can we laugh at everything on social networks? For the three comedians, the answer is nuanced. Léopold argues that “yes, but under certain conditions. I pay much more attention to what I say on Twitch.” Ana Godefroy, who does not practice “black or borderline humor”, nevertheless pays attention to what she says or to the way she formulates certain phrases. “In the networks it is very framed, you cannot address all the issues. On stage it is very different, people know that they come to see humor.” For Arnaud Demanche, “people have much less second degree in social networks because they are not for that”.
But the three humorists interviewed emphasize above all the benevolence of their community and did not report any major incident. The fear is rather on the side of the reuse of the content: the extracts of the videos can be taken out of context and then transmitted, a bad rumor quickly arrives.
Although the comedians adapt to the policies of the platforms, not everything depends on them since the algorithms also come into play and, above all, you have to be brief. “At first it was a limitation, today I work with that. In any case, people like what is shorter and shorter”, advances Ana Godefroy. “I understood that algorithms are constantly changing. Knowing this is a relief because when you see low statistics, you wonder if it is because our content is less good or if it is related to algorithms”, analyzes Arnaud Demanche.
Comedians who are very present on social media sometimes find themselves not really understanding the fuzzy mechanics of their tool of the trade. “I don’t always understand the TikTok algorithm. They do not offer us content from people to whom we subscribe”, explains Ana Godefroy. And for good reason, TikTok aims to become less and less of a social network. “I have a community, but in the end I think half of them don’t see what I post. In my statistics, 80% of the people who saw me are not subscribed to my account. So the number of subscribers doesn’t mean much. Instagram is becoming like this. It’s both embarrassing and frustrating not to understand their tool of work.”
In fact, the recommendations and suggestions policy of Instagram and TikTok does not help comedians. The distribution of content without links between them blurs the attention of users. “They chain a video of Emmanuel Macron, a scientific youtuber, a comedian… Everything is put on the same level, you chain things that have nothing to do with each other. Everything is smoothed out, all content is the same,” he notes. Arnaud Demanche.
In order not to lose their audience and their accounts, do comedians practice self-censorship? On stage or on social networks, this eternal question does not have a definitive answer. With regard to social networks, in particular Twitch, it is rather the content of nudity that will be censored, explains Léopold: “On the platform, we are subject to American rules, it is a matter of knowing them.” For the RMC columnist, “comedians know more or less which areas you shouldn’t go to when broadcasting on the Internet.”
Comedians or content creators
Creating content on the Internet is not always synonymous with monetization. Far from it, for these comedians. Monetization is not your priority. Leopold accepts the classic system of possible donations on Twitch, but this is mostly symbolic for him. For his part, Arnaud Demanche rejects all the advertisements offered to him.
Ana Godefroy receives many association proposals, but she accepts “only when it is consistent with what I do. For example, when she promotes culture because it is an area that touches me a lot. Economically, I consider it a plus”. For example, she made videos at the Château de Chinon. Partnerships are often well paid, so it can be tempting for her, “but I don’t do my videos for the money,” she says.
Do they consider themselves, in social networks, humorists or content creators? Ana Godefroy gives a nuanced answer: “When I go on stage or on the radio I am a comedian, but on social networks I prefer to say that I am a content creator even though I am not a fan of the word. For me, being a comedian is really a profession in itself and is not very suitable for networks.
The humor even finds its way into the metaverse. In Lille last February, as part of Lillarious: it was possible to attend a comedy or improvisation show thanks to a virtual reality headset. Moment in which several comedians take turns for moments of improvisation.
Source: BFM TV
