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Almost everyone who makes you laugh is desperately unhappy.
11 years ago
"1. At an early age, you start hating yourself. Often it's because you were abused, or just grew up in a broken home, or were rejected socially, or maybe you were just weird or fat or ... whatever. You're not like the other kids, the other kids don't seem to like you, and you can usually detect that by age 5 or so.
2. At some point, usually at a very young age, you did something that got a laugh from the room. You made a joke or fell down or farted, and you realized for the first time that you could get a positive reaction that way. Not genuine love or affection, mind you, just a reaction -- one that is a step up from hatred and a thousand steps up from invisibility. One you could control.
3. You soon learned that being funny builds a perfect, impenetrable wall around you -- a buffer that keeps anyone from getting too close and realizing how much you suck. The more you hate yourself, the stronger you need to make the barrier and the further you have to push people away. In other words, the better you have to be at comedy.
4. In your formative years, you wind up creating a second, false you -- a clown that can go out and represent you, outside the barrier. The clown is always joking, always "on," always drawing all of the attention in order to prevent anyone from poking away at the barrier and finding the real person behind it. The clown is the life of the party, the classroom joker, the guy up on stage -- as different from the "real" you as possible. Again, the goal is to create distance.
You do it because if people hate the clown, who cares? That's not the real you. So you're protected.
But the side effect is that if people love the clown ... well, you know the truth. You know how different it'd be if they met the real you."
"Rest in peace, Robin. You've given us a chance to talk about this, and to prove that this has nothing to do with life circumstances -- you were rich and accomplished and respected and beloved by friends and family, and in the end it meant jack fucking shit."
-David Wong
"Don't leave me."
-Chris Farley's last words to a hooker
2. At some point, usually at a very young age, you did something that got a laugh from the room. You made a joke or fell down or farted, and you realized for the first time that you could get a positive reaction that way. Not genuine love or affection, mind you, just a reaction -- one that is a step up from hatred and a thousand steps up from invisibility. One you could control.
3. You soon learned that being funny builds a perfect, impenetrable wall around you -- a buffer that keeps anyone from getting too close and realizing how much you suck. The more you hate yourself, the stronger you need to make the barrier and the further you have to push people away. In other words, the better you have to be at comedy.
4. In your formative years, you wind up creating a second, false you -- a clown that can go out and represent you, outside the barrier. The clown is always joking, always "on," always drawing all of the attention in order to prevent anyone from poking away at the barrier and finding the real person behind it. The clown is the life of the party, the classroom joker, the guy up on stage -- as different from the "real" you as possible. Again, the goal is to create distance.
You do it because if people hate the clown, who cares? That's not the real you. So you're protected.
But the side effect is that if people love the clown ... well, you know the truth. You know how different it'd be if they met the real you."
"Rest in peace, Robin. You've given us a chance to talk about this, and to prove that this has nothing to do with life circumstances -- you were rich and accomplished and respected and beloved by friends and family, and in the end it meant jack fucking shit."
-David Wong
"Don't leave me."
-Chris Farley's last words to a hooker
