Now, open-mics are made to test jokes.
That is the whole point of the open-mic. You go to some bar, it’s an open sign-up, and you say whatever. Sometimes, people use the open mic to test a set they’re using for an event. At that point, a lot of their previous material is going to be repeated.
But should you solely be using open-mics to test new jokes?
Fuckkkk, no!
Before you take you new jokes to a stage…
Try them out somewhere else.
A lot of people will recommend finding a comedy group, and testing it with them. Think of it as the only entertaining business meeting you’ll ever have. Everyone is there to share and get feedback.
Now if you are a lonely hoe like me, who don’t have comedy friends, you can try them out on real friends. My friend’s call me out-of-pocket, but honestly, what is on my mind most of the time is a joke. If my friends have a good reaction to that joke, I’ll think about and morph it into an open-mic joke.
But please don’t only joke around with your friends. That is how you lose them. The last thing I would want is taking Ethan to a Mexican restaurant and all he does is joke about abortion.
Like dawg, please let me eat my enchillades.
What if I don’t have friends?
The last thing you can you can do if you have 0 friends, is joke around with co-workers. Now if you are in office setting, that is probably impossible. But a majority of comics I know, don’t work in an office.
Personally, I work in a kitchen. If you know anything about a kitchen, some of the most henious shit gets aside behind those walls. Customers may hear it from time to time, but anything goes in a kitchen.
Quite a few of my jokes I have said were tested by my co-workers’ laughs.
Also, find diversity
Please don’t only test your jokes out on a certain demographic.
Don’t only test your jokes out on 30 year-old white males who have been convicted. The people who show up to open mics range from all genders and backgrounds.
The hard part about comedy is making a joke that everyone likes, which is super hard. If you want to make a trans joke, it has to be funny for trans people too. Which is hard because they are sensitive, and I know this because I have trans friends.
A really good piece of advice, if you don’t know it, don’t joke about it.
If you didn’t grow up in a gang, don’t make jokes about being a blood.
As a white person, I cannot joke about soul food without trying it. Even then, soul food is not from my culture.
If you want to make a joke, you must have experience in the area you are joking about.
Personally, I will never make a joke about being rich. I grew up middle class. The only time we got gifts was Christmas and birthdays. My ass was scared to ask for a videogame on release day, because I don’t want to get yelled at.
But I will joke about not being able to afford somethings. I didn’t understand it at the time, but my family would always stop at a Goodwill for shopping. Now that I’m an adult, I don’t think I’ve ever been to Goodwill, mainly because I’m too tall to shop their.