The internet's perfect for all manner of things, but productive discussion ain't one of them. It provides scant room for debate and infinite opportunities for fruitless point-scoring: the heady combination of perceived anonymity, gestated responses, random heckling and a notional “live audience” quickly conspire to create a “perfect storm” of perpetual bickering.
Heckling is an act of cowardice. If you want to speak, get up in front of the microphone and speak, don't sit in the dark hiding. It's easy to hide and shout and waste people's time.
Stand-up used to be much more of a form combat. Heckling was much more common [in the '90s]. And I couldn't get stage time, and so I would go out to Pip's in Sheepshead Bay.
I do not want to encourage heckling and outbreaks at all.
To say whatever nonsense comes into your head without any repercussions has got to be a bigger high than heckling a movie screen in a darkened theater.
I think when people watch a lot of artists, they're expecting this showiness, and I'm cracking jokes with people. I'm heckling back. I'm interacting.
Sometimes heckling can almost help a set, because it ratchets up the tension in the room. . . can even bring things to a climax.
Every week for me was the same audience, and every week they heckled me. The better I got at comedy, the better the audience was at heckling me. But it helped me with my joke writing.
