Anyone who’s had semi-serious experience with stand-up comedy will tell you that it’s an art that can only be developed and refined in front of actual human beings.

So for many years, prominent stand-up comedians continued working out new material in the same way they did when they weren’t famous: they’d write jokes and test them in the low-stakes space of an open mic.

But technology is changing that. Well-known comedians who want to test out material in front of live audiences are facing a world where everyone has a quality video recording device — and the ability to instantly publish videos for everybody to see. It’s this reality that Chris Rock laments in a new interview with Vulture, in which he explains how it forces some sort of “self-censorship”.

“Prince doesn’t run a demo on the radio,” Rock says. “But in stand-up, the demo gets out. There are a few guys good enough to write a perfect act and get onstage, but everybody else workshops it and workshops it, and it can get real messy. It can get downright offensive.

“Before everyone had a recording device and was wired like [expletive] Sammy the Bull, you’d say something that went too far, and you’d go, ‘Oh, I went too far,’ and you would just brush it off. But if you think you don’t have room to make mistakes, it’s going to lead to safer, gooier stand-up. You can’t think the thoughts you want to think if you think you’re being watched.”

Weeks before the interview, Rock stopped by an open mic in New York and told the audience he was “there to work out stuff”, as host Aparna Nancherla recounted later. According to Nancherla, Rock then “gets into one of his first bits. He gets out the setup and then suddenly addresses someone in the audience to put away their phone, because he can see them taping. Oh. No”.

“It gets worse,” Nancherla continued. “He goes back to start his joke again, momentarily thrown off, as he’s just there working on stuff. And then notices another person taping him, a guy in the front row. It seems like the guy starts arguing with him a little, and then Chris gets fed up and walks offstage, barely over a minute or two after he got there.”

It’s potentially embarrassing for a famous comedian to have a still-rough bit posted online — and it can also affect a comedy star’s livelihood. In 2012, comedian Patton Oswalt got into a back-and-forth with an audience member who he caught filming a bit that he was still working out. It resulted in a very public argument, as Oswalt continued to tear into the woman after she left.

“It’s the equivalent, to me, of sitting at a table in a coffee shop or library, writing the first draft of a short story, or screenplay or, were I a musician, song lyrics, and having someone walk by, snap the sheet away from my fingers, snap a pic with their camera, and then say, ‘Hey, I’m a fan of your stuff. I want the new thing you’re working on permanently on my phone now. I’m deciding when it’s ‘done’,” Oswalt wrote later.

He also said new jokes he was planning to use for a stand-up special had made their way to YouTube weeks before taping.

There’s a valid argument that anything said in public is open game for criticism, that you should have to stand by remarks you made before a small audience just as much as remarks you made for, literally, anyone to hear.

And YouTube means those jokes can take on lives of their own, far removed from the confines of a comedy club or theatre. After a Hannibal Buress bit about rape allegations against Bill Cosby went viral, Buress told an audience in St. Louis: “I was saying that [stuff] for the 600 people there, not for the internet.”

The problem of phone recordings is most pronounced for already established comedians, as Rock explained to The New York Times in 2012: “The sad thing, with all this taping and stuff, no one’s going to do stand-up. And every big stand-up I talk to says: ‘How do I work out new material? Where can you go, if I have a half an idea and then it’s on the internet next week?’”

Rock continued: “I’m just trying to figure out how I’m going to do it. ‘Cause the few times I’ve gotten onstage and thought about touring, immediately, stuff’s on the internet, I’m getting calls, and I’m like, this isn’t worth it.”

Instant publishing has democratised and broadened comedy. So many more people can consume stand-up now than when it was mostly confined to late-night television, comedy clubs or records.

And as in music, film and other mediums, technology and social media have given comedians new ways to find their audiences. A booker thinks you’re too young, or too weird, or whatever? Get thyself to the YouTube and post your musings there. Bo Burnham started as a 16-year-old on YouTube.

—By arrangement with The Washington Post

Published in Dawn, December 4th, 2014