The Cyclical Fashion of Stand Up Stills
How a decade-old format has made a surprising comeback.
Hello and welcome to the 31 new subscribers since my last post, a 100-show guide for the annual New York Comedy Festival. I had a fantastic time at all the shows, happy hours, and events I attended, even if they rigged the Comedian vs. Industry basketball game on Sunday… And a special shout-out to those of you who attended the panel I spoke on over the weekend! Hoping to appear on more of those in the near future.
Today I want to talk about a trend I’m seeing more and more frequently on Instagram.
The multi-slide carousel post.
I was skeptical at first, but the results are undeniable.
For a gold standard, look no further than recent JFL New Face Conor Janda.
And here is his set from Montréal in July, which I highly recommend watching:
Conor’s Instagram has exploded in the past few months, in large part because he has embraced the carousel post.
For those of you over 35, carousel posts contain multiple images within them, like a mini photo album or flipbook.
Most Instagram users (non-performers) use this feature to share highlights from a bachelorette party weekend in Nashville, or a recap of the past few months.
But those in the business of show are using it as a way to repurpose video content.
I encourage you to browse Conor’s profile on the Instagram app, in order to get a feel for this content type:
Rather than posting a video of a joke, the text of the joke is spread over several, still images. The viewer swipes through the joke at their own pace, shares it with a friend, and pats themself on the back for actually reading something today.
Part of my skepticism here stems from the fact that this format is a little at odds with something I preach constantly, which is that for stand-up comedians, the product is the content is the marketing is the show. In other words, the stuff you post online is a facsimile to the stuff you do onstage. A carousel, meanwhile, attracts people who enjoy reading images of you, not necessarily people who want to see you in person or watch your actual act. I worry sometimes that these viewers are applauding the wrapper rather than the candy. So I was prepared to roll my eyes at this, too.
But Conor has found these carousels significantly outperform their video counterparts.
They lead to a higher proportion of follows per view, and reach an entirely different crowd within Instagram:
According to the Instagram insights he kindly shared, Conor’s Reels tend to reach a predominantly male audience, whereas his carousels are mainly seen by females.
Some of these posts have netted over 5,000 follows, and his overall following has ballooned to 76K followers in the past few months.
While there’s a limited sample size of live shows since the rapid growth, it’s leading to ticket sales, and more views on his and Nico Carney’s new series, Boys Club:
Another person experiencing a ton of success with this trend is Jonathan Van Halem:
Jonathan even incorporates images of brand logos within the text of his jokes. He feels this might convince strangers to him to stop and linger for a moment:
JVH was initially dubious of this content type as well, but his doubling, tripling, and quadrupling down on the format suggests he’s pleased with the results.
I imagine this will be one of the main subjects in his next Substack post, where he frequently shares hard data and personal anecdotes about being a working comedian:
I’m old enough to remember the heyday of r/standupshots, a subreddit old enough to get its braces off.
This was long before the days of vertical videos, or TikTok, or Instagram allowing video uploads.
Back then, the only way you could consume stand up comedy online was watching proper specials on Netflix (not yet a dime a dozen), poorly filmed sets from the back of a comedy club posted on YouTube, and looking at pictures in this very subreddit.
Hell, I used Wayback Machine to see what it looked like back in 2013, around the time when I first discovered the subreddit. It’s basically the same then as it is today, just with more bots and paid upvotes.
The carousel post is the same format, but with checkpoints along the way that reward you for making it 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% of the way through all that pesky text.
It’s microdosing the concept of reading.
As for some hypotheses why this is experiencing a mini resurgence in 2025?
On Instagram’s end, they’re seeing that users spend a lot of time swiping through this entire “photo album”, and sharing it with other people who don’t follow this account. Since Meta mainly cares about maximizing your time spent on their platforms, that’s a pretty good signal that this “photo album” should be shown to other users at scale.
But for the users themselves?
I think people love the false sense of accomplishment they get from doing something that could be considered remotely “educational” within the junk food slot machine.
It’s like they snuck a few apple slices into the Cheetos bag.
It scratches the same itch as doing the NYT Mini-Crossword, or reading The Skimm.
It’s juuust manageable, easy on the eyes, and ultimately not actually that challenging.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m entirely overthinking this phenomenon, but I’m reminded of when people would post PEMDAS problems on Facebook in the 2011-12 range.
Don’t these people have anything better to do?, I wondered at the time.
Nine, they answered, incorrectly.
And so once a day, thousands of people get to feel a sense of pride for actively consuming sweet content nectar, rather than passively consuming empty nonsense with their eyes glazed over like those little old ladies at the penny slots in Vegas.
So while I still believe the best bridge between the internet and the stage is a great video of a great joke from a great show, it is hard to ignore a rising tide when you see one. If carousels are helping comics reach new audiences, sell tickets, and get more people in the room, then that is worth paying attention to, one slide at a time.
What do you all think? Are you noticing anyone else have success with this trend? Let me know in a reply to this email, or in the comment section below.
Is that nine like nein? Wow
Dear David,
Fascinating piece!
In response to this: "Are you noticing anyone else have success with this trend?"
My answer is I HOPE TO FIND OUT!
Thank you for sharing as always!
Love
Myq