I Used to Love Amy Schumer
In fact, it's not like I don't like her now. But I did see something a while back that gave me pause, and it's surprising how little moments like that can foreshadow bigger changes coming. One of the things I saw was her campaigning with her relative Chuck Schumer (second-cousin twice removed ... so barely related), the United States Senator from New York. But that wasn't the first thing that made me think, "I think this girl's career might be over, she just doesn't know it yet, and no one else does either." You see, I'm a forecaster. I try to predict the future. I'm not a soothsayer, I just look for patterns, study psychology and try to anticipate how large numbers of people will change their behaviors over time. I predicted that Barack Obama would win the Democratic Primary and the Presidency twice in 2007. I predicted that Tesla Motors would be a successful company when its stock was just $30 (actually long before that, that's just when I bought). And in 2012 I predicted that the Real Estate market in New York City would rebound when I partnered with someone to buy a Brooklyn Brownstone (FYI the real estate market peaked in 2015 so don't get any ideas). My forecaster-gut seemed to be telling me something. Could one predict whether an artist's career had peaked?
Cousin Chuck
Her cousin Chuck first came to my attention when he spearheaded the effort to ban the disgusting alcoholic beverage 4 Loko. I actually liked 4 loko because I don't like most booze. It tastes gross and it made me really tired. 4 Loko could be fun because the caffeine seemed to combat those effects. I didn't drink it much, and never more than a single, more often that as a lark. It was just fun, "Drinking 4 Loko." But apparently Chuck didn't think I was capable of making these decisions for myself. The ban seemed 100% political which gave me an epiphany, "How much do you want to bet that whatever asshole is behind this, he's funded by the alcohol lobby?" Well that asshole was Chuck Schumer and he is one of the industry's favorite politicians. And for good reason, after banning 4 Loko he went on to ban powdered alcohol. Note: the ONLY difference between powdered alcohol and his friends' products is that powdered alcohol allowed you to bypass the guys who package their alcohol in big heavy bottles that they have to burn massive amounts of fossil fuels transporting across the globe. This was one of the many formative moments which led to my realization that if you wanted to, you could make predictions about the world even without perfect information. I didn't have to know that Chuck Schumer was a slave to the alcohol industry in order to deduce it from other facts.
Don't get me wrong, alcohol is a scourge on our Earth.
Sometimes when I go out on the weekend I pretend we live in a dystopian fiction where the world has become dominated by alcohol consumption. I mean, it has. It's ubiquitous and not only is it insanely bad for you, but it makes people angry, violent and dangerous. I couldn't possibly count the number of times I read about some heinous crime and thought, "I bet you they were drunk." Low and behold there would be some casual reference to a "history of drug and alcohol abuse." Bitch, they weren't high on weed and have you seen someone on heroin? Not exactly active. They were fucking drunk. Maybe they took a bump to get their energy up. I hate alcohol, but you know what? I can live with that hate without having to tell other people how to live their lives.
The problem with Chuck Schumer isn't that he hates alcohol, it's that he's a corrupt politician who doesn't give two shits about alcohol consumption (which is why he takes the lobby's money) but is more than happy to prey on people's fears and leverage them to benefit his political career, even if the consequence is lessening our freedom just a little bit, and stifling innovation and economic growth just a little bit.
When I saw that Amy had started campaigning with him it gave me pause. What I love about comedians is that they're counter-culture. Could you imagine Bill Hicks or George Carlin doing that? Of course not, because they never did. But Schumer was a talented comedian, maybe not quite their level, but close. How could she come to such a different conclusion?
Amy "The Joke Thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiief" Schuuuuumerrrrrrrr
The answer came when it was revealed, much to the public's disinterest, that a surprising amount of her most popular bits had been pilfered from other comedians. Of course, when people try to project a persona of moral righteousness, their victims are almost always the people they profess to care the most about, in this case women. Don't get me wrong, accidental joke stealing is a thing. Dane Cook stole form Louie CK. But the bits were about fairly universal topics (like men's itchy assholes) and they had a decidedly Dane-Cooky flair to them. Given the sheer quantity of material Cook had and the original perspective from which he approached the material, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that the theft wasn't intentional. So did Louie CK btw.
Schumer's theft, on the other hand, was quite bald-faced. She barely changed the bits! See for yourself.
Of course there's no way to know for sure whether she either intentionally or unintentionally stole the bits. There's always a chance that she just happened to come up with bits that are practically identical those of other comedians. It was the nature of her response that really sent up the red flares. The bits were the same. What you say is, "I don't know how this happened, it wasn't intentional. I will be extra careful in the future. I apologize." She said she didn't do it. She would neeeeever do that. Um, no you did it, why are you trying to persuade me into thinking that you didn't do it? Her response was essentially to say, "I didn't do that because I'm a good person. She's basically asking us to trust her based on her own beliefs about herself. I have always been of the view that the people you should trust the least are those who say, "Trust me." I still feel that way.
That Time You Laughed at a Comedian Pretending to be a Racist
Somewhere in that mess I remembered something else she had said which irked me, but didn't seem particularly significant. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter she said
A lot of stuff bothered me about the comment. First off, um yeah, we know you were playing a character on stage who was irreverent and racist, we enjoyed it because it gave us an outlet for all of our own irreverent and racist thoughts. It wouldn't have been very funny if we thought you were an actual racist. It also wouldn't have been funny if WE were actual racists. It would just be someone saying things we agreed with. The comment seemed surprisingly dumb as did abandoning the persona that skyrocketed you to fame. That would be like Elon Musk saying, "I was just pretending to be into sustainable transport to sell cars." How could I appreciate a comedian this stupid? Not only that, but did she just call me a racist?
Hey, you know all those jokes you found funny? Well they were racist, and I was pretending to be a racist. Why did you laugh?
I laughed because we all have racist thoughts at one time or another. Have you ever known a single Asian person? They are completely racist against other Asians. Chinese hate Japanese, Japanese hate Chinese. Think I'm being racist? That's a bit I stole from the comedian Tom Segura. He's funnier than me.
But there was even more to unpack in that little snippet. She was playing a white privileged Republican? But she wasn't that because she was a poor democrat? Wholly virtue-signaling Batman. First off, within the politically correct narrative of white privilege, I'm pretty sure it's basically defined by the inability of white people to escape from it by virtue of your life circumstances. Rich Republicans aren't the only ones with white privilege the last time I checked. In addition, there are lots of poor people in the Republican party. Also, I'd always been a democrat, but my family had money. I guess according to Schumer that would probably still put me in the "white privilege" camp from which she had escaped based on her own special rules. And as everyone knows, white people get to determine the parameters of white privilege.
At some point you start to realize that you might be obsessing over the words of a moron
Amy Schumer may not be sociopath, but to co-opt the parlance of autism, "She's certainly on the spectrum." But she's also not very bright, which is a problem because people don't like sociopaths and they don't tolerate them for long unless we're at war or something and we need them to kill our enemies for us. What she seems to really share with her distant cousin, the Senator from New York, is a belief typical of tyrants that the ends justify the means. She's just smart and talented enough that by impersonating a funny character and supplementing her comedic talents with the work of others, she could achieve a level of fame, at least for a few years, that would enable her to make enough money so that she would never have to work again. But people are smart.
The intelligence of the crowd never ceases to amaze me
Individuals, even a lot of them, may get the facts wrong like they did with The Ahmed Clock Hoax (I was one such person). And they even may never admit they were wrong. But ask yourself, "Whatever happened to Ahmed?" Why isn't this kid the national spokesperson for the Science Fair or the National Ambassador for Muslim's in Science (or some bullshit title like that)? In fact, where the fuck is he? Oh, QATAR. That isn't weird at all. What happened was that we all kind of "got" that we were duped. We might not have admitted it, we might still not admit it, but the attention faded. The "life force" behind the event has been drained. The adulation faded. We basically collectively went, "Let's call this a wash and all go home. Don't push this because we are teetering on the edge of deciding you're a piece of shit who is making us doubt our liberal natures."
This is what I suspected would happen with Schumer. She's a female comedian and actress. Hollywood is being called every kind of bigot even though it is literally the most liberal place on Earth. Which is not to say there aren't bigoted people there. But there also aren't many Republicans there. No one's going to torpedo one of the most successful comedians of all time, even if we all know she got their by exploiting other, poorer FEMALE comedians. People just aren't rational enough (or rational at all) to perform such a nuanced analysis. But the unconscious is a powerful beast. In fact, it's responsible for the majority of our thought. I believed that over time these realities which our conscious minds (with all of their biases) could be blind to would eventually get through to our often more perceptive unconscious minds and her popularity would wain over time.
Now for the data
Below is a Google Trends chart for Amy Schumer
As you can see, her popularity peaked in July 2015, but bottomed out before the theft allegations came to light in around December 2015 and January 2016 which gave her mentions a healthy bump. It's true that for the right person, someone, who is good at what they do like Barack Obama (Reverend Wright) or Donald Trump, there is no such thing as bad publicity. They can use any publicity to remain relevant and in fact grow their brand. Unfortunately for Schumer the trend quickly reversed downward to new lows. I would argue that's because she doesn't actually know what she's doing. She's funny. She has, let's say, a morally flexible disposition that provides her with certain advantages under certain circumstances (most sociopaths are successful). But she isn't very smart. For example, while researching this article I came across an article posted yesterday in Vogue titled:
Amy Schumer Doesn’t Care If You Like Her—She’s Changing the Game
In Schumer's mind (or the minds of her defenders) that we MIGHT have something against her is our fault. It's something she shouldn't care about because it's not a reflection of her. The problem is, it's hard for me to imagine any thing people might not like about her aside from her joke thievery. Her camp seems preoccupied with portraying her as fat and ugly, but she's not fat and she's not ugly and no one would ever say, "that's why I don't like her." This is fully in line with some kind of hero complex where everything is happening to her and despite the material wealth that the public and hollywood have showered her with, she's still committed to playing the victim. Good luck with that. If Amy Schumer doesn't like having baseless accusations leveled at her, what makes her think we will? After all, there's isn't video of me online talking about how I've now decided that, despite liking her for years, I have decided to dislike her because she has a vagina (I guess I was unaware of this feature in the past). There is, however, video of her online telling bits that are practically identical to other bits... that are also online!!!
Of course, it's entirely possible for her to reboot her career. She has a movie coming out and a new season of her TV show, and I would be surprised if those didn't boost her numbers a bitbut from a forecasting perspective I would say that she has some seriously "bearish" forces working against her. Her fundamentals are weak (she's talented, but not that talented). She abandoned the persona that skyrocketed her to fame and failed to fully appreciate what the fallout of getting caught stealing jokes would be and then failed to respond to the allegations in a way which neutralized them. From a technical standpoint (looking at the chart) it's hard to imagine her numbers recovering. She's fallen back below a high she established 2 years ago, before she released her successful movie "Trainwreck" (which was hilarious BTW).
I have to be honest, I do take pleasure in seeing her career decline. Do I want her to be destitute? Of course not. But she doesn't deserve what she had, and it's always nice to watch Karma in action. What I get the most pleasure from is seeing my abilities as a forecaster improve and expand, which is precisely why I consider myself a forecaster. So what predictions can I make now? The thing about being a forecaster is that it just isn't any fun to make easy predictions, even when those predictions only appear easy to you. It feels easy to say that Schumer's career has probably peaked and what we are now witnessing is a slow inexorable decline. It's not that we'll dump her completely, but new comedians will come up, new women like Maria Bamford (who isn't exactly new, but is new to the national stage) will show us what real genius looks like and Schumer will just fade into the night. A harder prediction to make would be to say that at some point in the future she will get a flash of news attention when she looks back at the long and steady decline of her career and says, "It was because I was a full-figured woman in a man's world." Forecasters look for patterns that don't change over time. One such pattern is that there are two kinds of people in the world: people who take responsibility for their actions and how the universe responds to them, and people who think that everything good that happens to them is their own doing but everything bad is someone else's fault.
No Amy, it's because you just weren't funny enough
Amy Schumer is not a hero. If you want to see an innovative and revolutionary comedian who is ACTUALLY changing the game with her TV show by destigmatizing mental illness, check out Lady Dynamite on Netflix.
Written with StackEdit.