> At this point you’ve put in the time. There you go. There’s no way around that.
Interesting how the internet is changing this rule. Bo Burnham [1] became a famous YouTube comedian at the age of 16. When he started touring, his shows immediately sold out and he got a deal with MTV for a TV show. Apparently this annoyed some comedians because he didn't pay his dues [2].
I wonder if this is a market saturation issue. As much ad i love Louie, an think it's innovative, the world is really pretty good on stories of self absorbed white dudes. If you want to get noticed in the line of succession that includes Woody Allen and Seinfeld, you've got a difficult shot you are aiming for.
But good stand-up comedy for teenagers is almost non-existent. Good media for teenagers has been historically lacking, too old for cartoons but too young for adult TV.
Add to that the tech savvy of kids, and whst we're seeing now is a that teenagers are in a kind of feeding frenzy of media consumption. It's like a content gold rush.
In a few decades I expect those markets will saturate and it'll be harder to break in to them.
What does LCK being white have to do with anything?
I am starting to notice people mentioning white people's race - which I just don't get. If someone does not position/think of themselves as a "color X", why bring it up?
Also - Woody Allen and Seinfeld are jewish comedians. While they are certainly white, it's probably as relevant as them being male or human. Ie a person can obviously have overlapping identities, but if one identity is shared with 15m people and the other with a billion, the former one matters more.
There's an idea taught by marxist academics that being white means living life on "easy mode"[1]. A lot of people on hacker news believe it because there is a high level of average education on HN. This belief is often used to denigrate the achievement of white people. In Wisconsin, the K-12 school system asks white students to wear a brand to remind them of how privileged they are for being white[2].
There are a lot of poor, underprivileged white people in the country, but racism is not logical.
Fair enough, but that advantage is well deserved if they worked to build it.
Honestly, if you want to be on top in 10 years, spend your weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers.
These areas will give birth to the new Facebook, and it's mostly white males who are playing with them right now. Get into it now, don't come whining in 10 years when a Hollywood movie is made about it and it suddenly becomes cool.
"well deserved if they worked to build it"- does that still apply if it involves centuries, decades of colonization, oppression, slavery?
" if you want to be on top in 10 years, spend your weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers."
how many black kids- or poor kids in India, for instance (consider Ramanujan) do you think are going to have the OPPORTUNITY to spend their weekends toying with bitcoins, drones and/or 3D printers?
There's a REASON it's mostly white males who are playing with those areas, and it's not "White Men Work Harder".
African mothers work harder than anybody else, walking tens of miles everyday to bring home water to their kids. Where's their well-deserved advantage?
You realize that when someone says 'white male' they are saying it in the context of other types of people in the same society? Ie we're still talking about the First World - just juxtaposing them to black males, asian females, white females, etc.
The existence of 5-odd billion non-white people around the world isn't really discussed :)
> Fair enough, but that advantage is well deserved if they worked to build it.
But the point is we didn't work to build it. Merely being born were I was gave me extremely high odds of being amongst the richest people in the world.
At most you could claim my ancestors "worked to build it", but that's still a massive stretch - the main reason for the wealth I grew up around was oil and European imperialism.
How does recognizing you are lucky imply "needing" them? Telling well of American children to keep in mind their privilege and that most people in the world don't have what they have hardly seems like Marxism to me.
No. Wrong. Privilege implies no such thing. Privilege is not a moral judgment: it is a description of a condition. You are privileged when you have advantages due to your religion, birth class, sexual orientation, or other socially relevant criteria.
You are a dick when you refuse to recognize when you are privileged and act to reinforce your privileged position.
Pride (or shame) in other people's actions seems irrational to me (unless you had some involvement).
Why should I feel proud that I am from the same country as Isaac Newton? Or shame about the bombing of Dresden? I had nothing to do with either of those things.
There's an idea taught by marxist academics that being white means living life on "easy mode"[1]. A lot of people on hacker news believe it because there is a high level of average education on HN.
Marxist Academics believe x.
Hacker news readers are intelligent.
Being intelligent means believing in x.
Whatever the correct term is for people who use privilege outside academic discourse is, Marxist is not it. I would suggest Social Justice Warriors™, they're the kind of people who don't believe in racism against white people or sexism against men, as possibilities.
Assuming that "white dude" is a race, not an ethnicity; then that has nothing to do with it. Race is culturally defined. If most people perceive him as being white, he's white.
His father is a Hungarian Jew who immigrated to mexico at a young age. He has no Latino blood. Both of his parents were ivy league academics: so he had a big genetic advantage, but that's just life.
From Wiki: "C.K.'s paternal grandfather, a Hungarian, immigrated to Mexico, where he met C.K.'s paternal grandmother, who was a Catholic Mexican of Spanish and Mexican Indian ancestry".
I am not sure what to make of your "big genetic advantage" comment however having educated parents can definitely be considered an advantage in some circumstances.
Interpretations vary, of course. I think he's underhandedly criticizing the discussion of white privilege; other people who saw that special with me disagreed.
Not paying your dues is the way into the comedian inner circle true, so that will have a chilling effect on his career.
What will be worse is that he has not paid his dues - learnt both the emotional resiliency of near continuous rejection and the ability to handle the hundreds of different situations that occur on and off stage.
At 16 he may be talented and appealing to the right demographic, but most likely he will need to trust some mentor and learn those lessons we all need to - success is a limited subset of the phase space of life. Failing - everyone does it in their own way
Interesting how the internet is changing this rule. Bo Burnham [1] became a famous YouTube comedian at the age of 16. When he started touring, his shows immediately sold out and he got a deal with MTV for a TV show. Apparently this annoyed some comedians because he didn't pay his dues [2].
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obIGsb-IZMo
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Burnham#Uphill