Twitter is already home to lots of funny people, and it’s basically replaced Johnny Carson and late night shows as the new launchpad for a comedians career. And now, Comedy Central announced it’s getting in on all the funny with #ComedyFest, its all-Twitter festival of laughs – except that, comedians are already tweeting some of their best material – so what’s the need to organize?
At the very least, a few of the 16 planned events should turn out interesting, if not hilarious.
During the five-day festival, Mel Brooks will join Twitter and get coached through the process by Judd Apatow and Carl Reiner. The whole thing will be livestreamed, so you can see what it’s like for an old-school comedy legend to jump on the micro-blogging bandwagon. And your interest may be piqued by “I Figured Out the Internet: Secrets of My Twitter Success,” which will feature a discussion among comedians who made their mark by tweeting. They’ll dive into how they managed to rise about the hashtags and make a name for themselves.
There’s also “Ben Hoffman Tweets on Ambien,” which is basically what it sounds like: A comedian tweeting on Ambien. The whole thing reeks of a cut-rate Vice article. And even though Amy Schumer’s upcoming Comedy Central show, “Inside Amy Schumer,” looks very funny, we’re not so sure her live-tweet of it will be the most riveting thing ever.
It’s admirable that Comedy Central is attempting to use a non-traditional digital platform for a comedy fest, but Twitter is a better place for pithy one-liners than it is for full-fledged bits or online discussions. Live-tweets can get overwhelming, and when people all use the same hashtag to discuss a topic, it’s hard to keep up. It’d make more sense to partner with YouTube and Twitter, or YouTube alone, than this current set-up, since YouTube lends itself better to sketches and live-streams. But this is the inaugural year, so we’ll cut Comedy Central some slack and check it out to see what works and what doesn’t.
