Dec 2024: Breaking The Internet

The pros and cons of (temporary) internet fame

What a crazy month. I went from being an unknown comedian, to being featured in the New York Times, to being an unknown comedian in the space of about 2 weeks.

I don’t know if any of you have been in a celebrity feud before but I do not recommend it. I did manage to be in a feud with the only celebrity in the entire world who has less charisma than me so that was a huge plus. Definitely recommend that.

The whole mess this month was actually the second time I was accidentally a big news story.

The first time was when I featured in a ‘try not to laugh video’. It was me against a male comedian. I did not laugh at his joke and millions of men and one woman were really mad about that.

This time I tried to put on a musical about an Aussie breakdancer who then threatened legal action causing Barbra Steinsand to emerge from her hilltop mansion and scream “There’s only room for one ‘Funny Girl’ in this town!”

I’m trying to imagine how I could have been a bigger news story than I was for those two weeks and the only way I can think of is if I attempted to assassinate Taylor Swift or if I slept with Donald Trump and he was so into it, he tried to leave his wife for me. I promise that neither of those things are ever going to happen. I love TayTay and with DonDon it’s just a physical thing.

I don’t want to talk too much about the ins and outs of the legal stuff except to say, she’s lying but I think everyone kind of figured that out on their own so there’s no need to carry on about it.

Weighing up both attention incurring incidents I have learned that Alt Right dudes love writing stuff on the internet. But what I found far more interesting was that they hate someone threatening their free speech more than they hate women in comedy.

Don’t get me wrong, they hate women in comedy but not as much as they hate someone taking away their right to say they hate women in comedy. I personally see this as a huge win. We are getting all upset about these dudes being disgusting misogynists when it’s not even their top priority. They are busy ladies.

HANDLING THE FUSS

I hate attention, which is crazy considering my job is to stand on stage and command it. I love it when I am performing but outside of that, I hate it. I watch other comedians finish their sets and then rush off stage and into the crowd so they can bask in the warmth of compliments and attention they earned from being funny for 10 minutes. I will sit back stage for a hour after the show if it means I can avoid speaking to a single person. I don’t want to meet them and I don’t want them to meet me. What if I disappoint them by being super awkward? What if they have notes? What if they find out I wasn’t joking about doing anal, and think they might be in with a shot?

I’m not the only person who feels this way but it’s difficult to convince people that I love this job and also hate the fuss that goes along with it. Thankfully, as a female comedian (yuck), it is very rare that someone will want to talk to me after a gig.

To me, negative attention and positive attention are both awful. I know one is good and one is bad but they both scare the shit out of me equally. Whenever a huge group of people make a fuss over me, I instantly feel like a child who has shat their pants at school and I want to run away and hide forever. I’m getting a bit of credit from my comedian friends for not milking all the media attention I received. That wasn’t me being humble or strategic, that was pure survival instinct.

I also don’t want to sound ungrateful for any of the positive attention I received so I want to be clear that there were a lot of pros too.

PROS OF BEING GLOBAL NEWS

• Tickets are selling really well

• My instagram following has almost doubled

• Most people were on my side. A few 60 year old women still think I’m a bully but that’s ok. They’re really bad at trolling. They write 8 scathing paragraphs with perfect grammar instead of writing bwitch and moving on.

• I went on The Project

• People I haven’t spoken to for decades came out of the woodwork and it was nice to catch up

• Huge comedy community support

• I have every news reporter’s phone number now

• So many people reached out to offer to help for free. My lawyer (yep I had a lawyer) Justine Munsie was one of these incredible people and she is the sole reason that this whole thing is now over (I hope)

• My friends were amazing and supportive and sometimes it’s nice to be reminded how lucky we are to have those people in our lives.

• It’s fun being gossip.

CONS OF BEING GLOBAL NEWS

• There is a lot of pressure for the show to actually be good now (if you’ve read my previous Substacks you would know that I am a huge fan of failing secretly)

• I had to go on The Project

• I had 500 conversations that started with “You know what you should do” and ended with “but I’m not a lawyer”.

• My mum was super stressed out

• I lost a friend who’s ego caused them to behave in a very selfish way

• I ran out of nice tops to wear on TV

WHAT DID I LEARN FROM ALL THIS?

I don’t know. I guess I learned that I really don’t want to be famous. I think I thought that maybe I did want to be but I don’t. But I do want to perform 400 times a year every year until I’m dead and then they can roll my head floating in a vat of formaldehyde on stage and play the set I prerecorded on my death bed. I want attention while I’m performing the thing I made that I am super proud of and then I want to fade into obscurity and go to the shops in my ugg boots, is that too much to ask? Probably. I’ve learned that everything we want comes at a price. There is no 100% good or 100% bad with anything. In the same way that there are no real heroes or real villains. I’m not a hero or a villain and neither is RaygunTM. We are both humans and based on her instagram videos and breakdancing, we are both female comedians.

If you would like to see Breaking the Musical tickets are moving quickly but you can absolutely still grab one for Adelaide or Sydney. For all other cities, join the mailing list for early access to tickets when they go on sale.

Ticket info here

Thanks for reading this crap,

Happy New Year!!!!