Mark Normand joined Neal Brennan’s I Wish I Knew podcast and didn’t hold back on how he feels the culture wars have drained the fun out of comedy and the world at large. When Brennan brought up his regret that he had expected the world to be more fun, Normand launched into a detailed breakdown of what changed:
“Well, uh, when I started comedy, you know, ’06-ish, uh, it was all about fun. It was about… It feels like the world used to be the NBA, and now the world is the WNBA. Like, the WNBA is a bunch of ladies who want to play basketball, but all it is is culture war, trans, race now. Everything is just this gumbo of bummer, you know, fighting.”
He pinned down what he believes caused the shift:
“I blame, I think it’s 60% social media, 40% Trump. You know, because Trump got everybody riled up, but then social media’s got bots and comments and people have an algorithm that feeds just to them so they hear their only bubble. So then you hear it when they hear one more thing from another side and they flip out cuz they’ve made that whole bubble their identity.”
Normand admitted he once hoped things would improve on their own:
“I keep thinking, ‘Ah, maybe it’ll change. Maybe it’ll go away.’ I remember I thought (2020) will bring us together. That made us worse. I thought the internet would bring us together. That made us worse.”
He described the broader effect on culture as a kind of manufactured negativity:
“We do this thing where we have to find the evil or the negativity and then blow it up. It’s… you know, they have Antifa? They have antifun. There’s antifun groups coming in.”
On comedy specifically, Normand pushed back on fellow comics who avoid hot-button topics out of fear:
“I hate these comics who go like, ‘Trey, you’re talking about trans? It’s so hacky.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, so you’re icing out a whole topic? Get the out of here.’ I just did a bunch of trans jokes in my last special. Every comment I posted them. Every comment’s like, ‘I’m a trans person. Nice to see a good trans joke. This is how you do it.’ And I’m like, ‘There you go. If I listen to that guy, I would have just cut the whole bit.'”
He also argued the perceived risk of controversial jokes is overstated:
“It’s all the people that got canceled were doing arenas.”
He added that the tension is now a reflex people can’t help bringing up, even when it isn’t warranted, noting that people get annoyed when he even brings it up, assuming it’s just a couple of white guys talking about cancel culture, when his real point was about the overall vibe of the country.
Normand did concede that things have improved somewhat compared to a few years back, though not because people have grown kinder:
“I only think it was better because we didn’t know how to handle it. You know, like, it’s better now because we’ve gone, ‘oh yes, this thing again.'”
He summed up the lingering damage with a pop culture reference:
“You remember in Ghostbusters 2 there’s that pink goo and when you step in it you turn mean and start yelling at each other? That pink goo is running through our veins now.”
