Ismael Loutfi yearns for the time stand-up wasn't macho and reactionary

I started performing stand-up when I was 18, towards the end of Obama’s first term. 

Still reeling from a recession and a decade of war, the time was tinged with a patina of waning optimism. Flannel shirts, bushy beards, and Modest Mouse tattoos were ubiquitous. Comedians like Maria Bamford and Kyle Kinane, known for their thoughtful and introspective styles, were becoming mainstream, buoyed by an ‘alt’ comedy scene that had risen in response to the hyper-masculine comedy of the Bush era (Dane Cook, Carlos Mencia). 

However, what made an alt-comic special wasn’t the type of jokes they told, but rather the rooms they told those jokes in – the back of a bar, a coffee shop, a laundromat. The stages themselves were positioned as a subversion of the anodyne comedy club. These were places where ‘cool consumers’ could gather, look at each other's ear gauges, form opinions on whether a comedian was a hack, and not be pressured into buying a minimum of two drinks. 

Early on, I felt at home at these venues. Alt crowds were typically open-minded and liberal, making them easy for me to do well in front of. While clubs encouraged a more generic style of stand-up, alt audiences prided themselves on being in on the joke, and wanted a performer to experiment, to try something new, and avoid crowd work at all costs. I wasn’t alone in feeling that the best place to grow as a comic was in front of these people. At the same time, I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was a loser for performing at a laundromat. 

As Trump rose to power, a wave of progressive ‘infotainment’ comedy shows flooded streaming services and cable television networks. Alt shows began to feature more diverse line-ups, and ‘clapter’ (where a comedian says something worthy of applause but not a laugh) became the norm. I could sense tensions rising at these shows – people would come for comedy, and they’d leave having received a diluted awareness campaign about the plight of the Latinx community. 

I’d be remiss to say that I didn’t benefit from this time in stand-up history– being a Muslim comedian in 2014 was basically a golden ticket to perform on any show outside a club, and I happily took advantage. But this epoch wouldn’t last. 

As a reaction to the over-saturation of comedy activists, a sort of artistic nihilism began taking shape across the country in the form of competitive roast battles, where two open micers would sling racial slurs and fat jokes at each other while an audience (who didn’t know the comedians on stage) would jeer and judge the respective meanness of the jokes being told. I didn’t like the roast battle era; the whole thing felt pathetic and small. But at least they were telling jokes.

Then came Covid. For nearly two years, no one performed on a stage that wasn’t in Florida, GenZ entered adulthood with literally no option but to become addicted to their phones, and millions of people died. Worse yet, millions more became really, really annoying. 

Exiting the plague, I found the alt-comedy landscape had been completely uprooted: venues shut down, coffee shops became unsettled by the idea of having large gatherings, and a new generation of comedic celebrities emerged from TikTok, rather than the stage.

At the same time, comics like Joe Rogan and Tony Hinchliffe had become incredibly popular through podcasts that appealed to a swathe of (mostly) men that were disenchanted by the woke years of 2015 to 2021. 

Stand-up on the whole took on a rightward slant, and the conceit that comedy was radical, rather than reactionary, seemed entirely untrue. This fact alienated the population of cool consumers that had made up the bulk of the alt audience, who were simultaneously ageing out of attending comedy nights altogether. Beards were shorn, ear gauges removed, entire scenes abandoned. 

Alt-comedy shows are few and far between nowadays, and the excitement that was once palpable from the crowds that do come out has been replaced by a cool indifference. A macho incuriousness largely pervades mainstream comedy now, as it had during the Bush years. 

I feel a sense of detachment from it, and mourn the lack of alternative places to perform. Often, I think about today’s younger comics, and wonder where they go to try something new, or find inspiration. Surely, posting on TikTok can’t scratch the same itch as working out material next to a poster for shrimp night at a dive bar on New York’s East Side? Maybe I’m just old.  

Every once in a while, I drive past a coffee shop or record store that used to host a weekly show. I feel a pang of sadness that where there was once community, there isn’t any more. But then I remember that those communities were never supposed to exist in the first place – a laundromat is for laundry, after all. 

• Ismael Loutfi: Heavenly Baba will be at Assembly George Square at 6pm for the duration of the Edinburgh Fringe.

Published: 18 Jul 2025