This is the woman I was writing about the other day, the one on TikTok.
I spent hours watching female comedians on the service and she never showed up. But scrolling today, while doing my back exercises, she appeared! Nearly instantly!
Her TikTok handle is: @notalimac I'm now following her. I don't want to lose her again.
So I'm watching her and usually when you come back to something that piqued your interest you're not in the same mood and it doesn't resonate. This happens all the time with music. You love a track, and then you come back and ask yourself WHAT WAS I THINKING? But in this case, Ali still resonated.
It's her voice.
I wrote that it was her deadpan delivery. But that doesn't accurately describe it. And the funny thing is people e-mailed me with suggestions, but none of them were her. I started to think she was a wannabe.
But she's a PRO!
Yes, she's appearing in comedy clubs, she's even traveling by bus! And that's a definitive threshold right there, whether you can go on the road. As for traveling by bus... You can't have a day job and do standup like this.
So I start looking at the statistics.
Ali has 108.4k followers on TikTok. Once you break 100k you're somebody. That's the threshold. Actually, I'd say it's a bit lower than that, around 65k. It's nearly impossible to get there. Used to be much easier, but today there's so much competition!
And Ali has 1.3 million likes. Pretty good.
But Ali only has 2,776 followers on Twitter. And that's better than your next door neighbor, but far from significant. And she hasn't given up like some do, she's still posting. And the dirty little secret of Twitter is almost no one sees what you tweet. So, if a tree falls in a forest...
Maybe Ali's generation is not on Twitter. After all, she's 26. And in truth, it's older people who inhabit Twitter.
And all those comedians who used to post on the short message service? They rarely do anymore. Some were funny, like Albert Brooks, but the return on investment was super-low.
Now Ali has 149k followers on Instagram. But most of the posts are static shots. Who wants to see pictures of a comedian? Talk about boring...
And Instagram gained traction long before TikTok.
But then I went to YouTube, where the rubber meets the road. And Ali's clip "Googling How to Orgasm" had 3,210,403 views. Now that's popular. That's for real. Once you hit seven figures you're way above the hoi polloi, you're established.
But then I saw it was on the Just For Laughs channel.
She's got a recent clip from Comedy Central that has 151,075 views. It's newer than the Just For Laughs one, but that's not great.
And then I went to Ali Macofsky's YouTube page and the first video was entitled "Farewell."
What?
Turns out Ali had a podcast. She's done 152. Most of the recent ones had around 2,000 views. Going back to the era of the pandemic, of lockdown, there were clips with bigger numbers, one with 6.4 thousand, about "Body Hair & Old Guys." Turns out those with erotic or dangerous topics, like cannibalism, did best. One even broke five figures (that's over 10,000 for the math-challenged). But the podcast is not building, numbers are actually a little worse now. So she gave up.
You think you want to start a podcast. The traction curve is near vertical. You ain't goin' nowhere, as Bob Dylan sang. I mean Ali's not starting from zero, and she couldn't make it happen.
There's just too much in the channel.
But her jokes, her standup?
Watch this one about body hair:
bit.ly/3pmkQvB
And this one about going to the pharmacy:
bit.ly/3Arwhsh
And this one about being a bald eagle:
bit.ly/3zUn3mI
And finally, one about her crazy mother:
bit.ly/3Aob6HA
I don't expect everybody to like the above clips. Hell, I don't expect everybody to watch them!
But many of those who do, will send back hate.
Ali addresses this:
bit.ly/3QRnJjV
It's demoralizing.
It's one thing to have talent, it's quite another to show it off, to get out there, to subject yourself to feedback.
So, Ali is a relative newbie on TikTok. And her standup clips are great, the ones just taken from life...are not as good.
And then Iliza Shlesinger is ranting about the Kardashians:
bit.ly/3QPPSYm
and:
bit.ly/3Arj96r
This is not comedy, this is anger. Iliza is standing up for the truth and she's so frustrated because she has little power, little effect against the tsunami of Kardashian B.S.
Yes, even with status, with specials, you're still not heard. You're still upset you don't reach more people.
This is what it's like trying to make it in show business today. And believe me, TikTok, as well as Instagram, are show business.
But I dig Ali Macofsky.
And I can own her.
Remember how it used to be in the sixties and seventies?
Maybe you don't. There was the mainstream and then the landscape was littered with the relatively unknown that you liked, paid attention to, bought, went to the show of, devoted yourself to...because they were good and you were part of a cult, not one of the mindless masses. However, if the act ever broke through to the big time you were happy, you knew everything about them, you'd helped them get there.
That's how I feel about Ali Macofsky.
There's definitely something there.
Is she the next Lenny Bruce? I don't even think she's the next Mrs. Maisel!
But if Ali hangs in there... She's got a point of view, and she's got the delivery down. You can see her development over the three years since that Just For Laughs clip.
I found Ali Macofsky on TikTok. No other outlet could have reached me with her. No other outlet even tried!
It's all about humanity. Feelings. Stuff too absent from music these days. But it's there in Ali Macofsky's standup, check it out!
www.tiktok.com/@notalimac
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