Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Each of their dispatches ends in medias res.
Theres no conclusion or resolution; the run time trickles out mid-groan, mid-sentence, or mid-nothing.
Someone just turns off the camera.
Its a hard cut to void, their fates left twisting in the wind.
According to Limperis, thats the point.
I think its just funnier to leave that with the viewer.
Just to show them what that actually looks like.
The traditional precision of a sketch the writerly fussiness to craft the perfect kicker or gimmick has atrophied.
Reality has a lot of awkward conversations or awkward pauses, she continues.
It feels closer to life to not give these characters a perfect ending.
Comedy is basically all timing and messing with expectations and surprises and stuff.
There are so many ways to do it; you just have to find a new way each time.
Its more freeing, she says, to make jokes without worrying about cleaning up afterward.
Ganachepic.twitter.com/0F55sKbvkM
Im not giving [the audience] any more information.
Its just Heres this joke, make of it what you will, she explains.
According to White, the clip cuts off shortly before he broke character and started apologizing profusely to Murray.
Bill Murraypic.twitter.com/vTMlX1gbvW
[Its] almost like a magic trick.
Ill rewatch some things ten times just to figure out what exactly I just saw that made me laugh.
It also allows the viewer to kind of fill in context for themselves, White says.
You basically get to keep heightening, then just bail at peak comedy or chaos.
In that way, without a clean ending, it adds to the craziness of the whole thing.
Chris Distefano is the same way.
His Twitter videos present him as the patron saint of northeastern fuhgeddaboudit sleaze.
Like, What did he say?
I think it makes people watch it again.
Telling jokes to me feels very old-school and dated, he says.
The cutting off of those videos is in that world.
I think people like a non-polished bit more than a polished-up bit nowadays.
Happy#anxietytuesdaypic.twitter.com/dwr3X9zPyM
That lack of polish is a difficult thing to bottle.
Twitter videos are like news bloopers; the humor comes from the sheerloosenessof the debacle weve just witnessed.
The internet is messy, and its made our comedy brains messy, White says.
That frustration can spill over into stand-up, too.
(As Okatsuka puts it, You say something and you get an immediate reaction.)
But Fabrega did occasionally struggle to integrate her Twitter videos into her stand-up sets.
In those moments, the advantage of the mid-bit cut is most evident.
Videosend.Eventually, youre staring at a black screen.Theres no such benefit onstage.
Thats the rub with Twitter videos.
They exist in a weird place between sketch and stand-up.
It makes us, as comedians, more relatable.
Thats what people want, he adds.
They want to get to know you.