Are You Making Art, Or Are You Making Content?
What's the difference? And which one should you prioritize?
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Today I want to talk about an Instagram post that came across my feed from the comedy writer Mike Lawrence:
@mikelawrencecomedy: I truly believe the endgame for comedians attempting to follow algorithms instead of just making the stuff they want to is a world where we’re all replaced by AI because we’ve ruined people’s palettes to the point they can’t tell the difference between artificial content and lazy pandering and trend chasing. Go out there and be weird and risk bombing, it’s the only way the machines don’t win!
Like Matt Ruby’s Substack, Letters to A Young Comedian, Mike shares a lot of macro-level thoughts about the comedy industry on his IG. Highly recommend following him.
I think part of what Mike is articulating in the above post is a shared frustration by many comedians1 to simply share their art online without any adjustments for digital.
Meanwhile, the “algorithms” tend to reward distilled, inauthentic “content”.
This is largely because the role a comedian plays on social media platforms is completely different when compared to the live setting in which the clip was filmed.
Live comedy is an artform, and audience members typically pay the artist (and/or venue and/or ticketing platform) a certain amount of money to go watch some comedy.
Contrast this with social media, where the apps are "free" to use, and any user is "free" to upload their own posts.
But these platforms only exist "freely" because advertisers pay billions of dollars for thousands of commercial slots in front of millions of eyeballs a day.
So the entire incentive structure, and therefore censorship, timing, pacing, subject matter, metrics of success, etc. have an entirely different end beneficiary in mind.
And so the moment a joke or set gets posted online, it becomes "content". Or rather, something created with the intent of making money, rather than existing as art for art's sake.
The key distinction is that the entity making the most money off said content is no longer the comedian who wrote and performed it, nor the club, nor ticketing platform.
Instead, it's Alphabet, ByteDance, and Meta. Because that joke or set was identified as a "good" piece of "content" by their “algorithm” to serve between ads upon ads upon ads, and help keep millions of eyeballs glued to their infinite scroll.
The writer Chuck Klosterman posited a similar idea on last Wednesday’s episode of the Bill Simmons podcast. It comes around the 1 hour 36 minute mark:
Klosterman: (referring to sports reality TV series like Hard Knocks or Drive to Survive) Regardless of the subject, these things are ultimately art. Now, what kills art?
Simmons: A lack of authenticity?
Klosterman: Self-awareness. When art becomes too aware of its own existence… it starts to fall apart.
So as long as comedians (and all artists, really) are heavily reliant on highly volatile distribution networks that are effectively glorified commercial booking agencies, I worry comedians will always be beholden to outside forces, and themselves forced to adapt accordingly.
I personally think comedians should strive to own their own deliverability and distribution of their art, lest it become "content".
Services like Patreon and a mailing list come to mind.2
But is this problem really new?
Mike’s post frames it as though algorithms and AI are unprecedented threats to artistic integrity, but history suggests otherwise.
Networks and streamers have always operated under systems of censorship and compromise. They have their own vested interests, paid sponsors, and ad-driven incentives. A comedian performing a set on Late Night with Seth Meyers must also navigate a carefully curated set of rules about timing, language, and subject matter. They’re working within a system optimized for commercial breaks, brand safety, and the broadest possible audience appeal– much like social media “algorithms” today.
Substack Founder Hamish McKenzie’s recent article, The Elon Times, makes this point clearly: while it’s easy to vilify today’s tech giants for their control over creative distribution, the reality is that these dynamics aren’t new.
As Mackenzie notes, “The power shift from legacy media to social media, then, is not much of a shift at all. It’s just swapping one set of players for another.”
The platforms may have changed – from NBC and CBS to TikTok and YouTube– but the underlying pressures remain strikingly consistent.
And here’s the uncomfortable truth:
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