Comedians are finding TikTok is essential for growing their careers, and getting heckled can mean hitting the jackpot

• Comedians are using TikTok more and more to grow their careers.
• Four comedians explain what content works, and why it's not always the stuff they are proud of.

When comedian Lucas Zelnick's set began one night in October, there was no indication anything out of the ordinary would happen. He knew heckling was often something he had to put up with, but didn't realize that an interaction with a couple of audience members would end up being quite so uncomfortable.

In a six-minute clip Zelnick shared to TikTok, which was viewed 5.6 million times, his demeanor is vastly different compared to his usual playful crowd work videos. Several people in the audience repeatedly yell out to him, guessing his punchlines, and are generally disruptive while he tries to do his routine.

"I just wanna do my jokes but this has become extremely difficult," Zelnick says during the video, trying to keep things light-hearted for the rest of the audience. After several more interruptions, Zelnick then asks the rest of the crowd if he's over-doing it with his responses. He receives a resounding "No." Shortly afterwards, after yet another disturbance, Zelnick calls over security and one of the hecklers is thrown out.

Heckling videos have become a mega-popular genre on TikTok. It's part of the evolving online comedy industry that is being shaped by how the audience and comedians use various platforms to share their content. Because comedians don't like to give away too much of their sets up front, crowd work — usually asking the audience questions or responding to a heckle — tends to make up the majority of comedy clips on TikTok. It just so happens these moments are more likely to send a comedian viral as well.

Heckling, broadly speaking, is talking to the comedian if the comedian is not talking to you. Much of it is benign, Zelnick said, like someone resonating strongly with a joke and exclaiming or involuntarily cheering. But this situation was "a totally different story."

"In that particular example, I tried to make it funny," he said. "But I was really upset."

TikToks are 'the singles that drive the album'

Comedian Abby Roberge, who has been doing stand-up for 11 years, told Insider he thinks heckling videos perform so well for the same reasons "man on the street" content does.

"People are interested in that human connection," he said. "It's so enhanced because there's so many people in the crowd also watching and participating in this moment."

TikTok has created a generation of comedians that lean into crowd work in a way they may not have done before, with many different styles, and varying degrees of talent. Some comedians Insider spoke to said they've begun to "self edit" their sets on stage if they foresee a moment with the crowd doing well for them online. For better or worse, TikTok is now part of the show. Roberge, for example, said if there is a joke he wants to post to TikTok, he will deliver it slightly differently on stage.

"I will even catch myself if I fumble the words on a joke or a premise," he said. "I'll restate the premise very clearly because it'll be a good hook for the TikTok video."

Ashley Gavin, a comedian who has been in stand-up for almost nine years, told Insider that TikTok, where she has nearly a million followers, has "become a part of my brain space" while she's performing. "Which is kind of the worst," she said.

"But if I need to take four minutes out of my hour-long set to create a great advertisement for my hour-long set, that seems like a very logical use of my time," she said. "The TikToks are sort of like the singles that drive the whole album."

TikTok has become a necessary part of any comedic career

Zelnick, a Manhattan native, has been a stand up comic for three and a half years, giving it a try six months before the COVID-19 pandemic started and never looking back. He started showing up to open mic nights on the comedy circuit while he was working on getting his MBA from Stanford University, performing every night and posting every day. Then, by the time he graduated, he was successful enough to do stand-up full time.

This year Zelnick started a comedy club with fellow comedian Jamie Wolf called Sesh Comedy which is based on the Lower East Side. One of the main reasons he says he was able to get the club running so quickly was because of how they both consistently used TikTok from the venue's inception.

Zelnick attributes the effective use of TikTok, where he now has 250,000 followers, to mentor and fellow New York comedian Ashley Gavin, who he says pioneered the comedy tidbit on the platform. She was the one who told Zelnick and Wolf they had to be filming all their sets and posting the outcomes.

Gavin started out in comedy almost nine years ago, seeing her career evolve in an increasingly digital world. As a millennial, Gavin always felt in the middle of two comedy generations — the previous of which was focused on traditional media and getting a Comedy Central half hour set, and the latter who put more emphasis on followers and online exposure.

"Building your own fan base is the most important thing," Gavin told Insider. "TikTok has been way more effective for my career than any of the more old school routes."

Gavin records every set she performs, and said any comedian "in their right mind" is doing the same, both to analyze their comedy and find clips to post on a regular basis.

"There's no easy path in comedy, to be clear," Gavin said. "But I do think most comedians have recognized that this is the easiest path forward in terms of getting directly to your people."

Even as Gavin thinks TikTok "is the silliest thing on the planet" — especially when she posts "another lesbian comedian roasts straight guy" video — she believes it is unavoidably a key tool for comedians trying to break through.

"It really does work," she said.

Heckling may have gotten worse, but it's always been an issue comedians have to face

While everyone in the room was supportive of Zelnick during his viral heckling encounter and were glad when the belligerent audience member was removed, the video received more of a mixed response online. Controversy tends to mean more views, Zelnick said.

Zelnick thinks the video did so well because it's interesting to "watch two people getting into a street fight."

"Even when I watched it back for the first time, you get a little bit of adrenaline because you're like, who's gonna win?" he said. "This is a showdown."

Because Zelnick posts so many heckler videos, people in his comments on TikTok sometimes suggest that the problem may have gotten worse as audience members specifically come to comedy shows to try and be part of a viral moment. Zelnick said it's hard to say whether this is actually the case. People heckle for a lot of different reasons: sometimes they're drunk, sometimes they're over-excited, and sometimes they don't even realize they're doing it.

"People will see an over representation of heckler videos because people at large only see 10% of the videos I even post, and that 10% are the heckler ones," he said. "If I do 10 sets but I get heckled once, I'm going to take the heckler video first because I know TikTok wants to see that."

Roberge, who has also posted many heckler videos, said he thinks it's actually the opposite, and people are heckling less because of TikTok and are more aware of how it can end badly for them. Roberge only started posting consistently on TikTok about two months ago, but has seen his follower count jump from 10,000 to 66,000 in that time, and now gets recognized on the street a lot more often than he used to. But he has mixed feelings about it.

"As much as I am enjoying this whole TikTok thing, a part of me is a little bit worried that it's gonna evolve," he said. "I think some people will eventually start hiring improv actors to come and be hecklers and stuff like that."

Zelnick already knew his heckler videos were some of his most popular ones. But he's not always proud of what he ends up posting on TikTok. Ultimately he hopes people resonate with his mannerisms and his style, which motivates them to watch more of his content or buy a ticket to his show.

"People will be like, 'Do you have any material?' And I'm like, yeah, but you've got to pay for it," he said. "I'm giving you the outtakes on TikTok cause you're scrolling it for free."

Gavin said she doesn't think her TikTok clips necessarily wholly represent who she is as a comedian, because the nuance doesn't shine through. But she's learned the way the algorithm works is that people enjoy watching something that has the possibility of ending in a conflict.

This is why crowd work and the tension that comes with it is the right formula for TikTok — quick, original, and low stakes for the comedian. Gavin said there are a lot more crowd work comedians than there used to be because it is such a popular online genre. But there are a lot of bad ones.

The best crowd work comedians make the audience feel comfortable, Gavin said, because that's when you get them to talk about the "really weird shit."

TikTok is very different to a live set, but it may be shaping the comedy industry in several ways

Gauri Bhasin, a comedian based in Berlin, Germany, has been doing stand-up for about three years, since she went to a women's empowerment workshop in Munich and ended up making the whole room cry with laughter during one speaking exercise. Bhasin didn't look back, and now has a style that she's still developing, buts she say fans have described as "horrifying and hilarious" — telling jokes about "things that really matter," like women's rights and LGBTQ issues, "but in a fun way," she told Insider.

She's always loved using TikTok, where she has grown a following of 75,000, to connect with people all over the world and growing her career. But she said it's only part of the equation because no matter how good you are at the online stuff, "you still have to build your craft." Being successful on TikTok is no measure of how successful you are as an artist, she said.

"You could have a viral video and you could have so many people come to your shows, but maybe you suck live, you know?" Bhasin said. "It's both the things that are important, but they're two very, very different things."

There are so many aspects of live comedy that cannot be translated on the internet, Bhasin said. There's just a couple of seconds to grab someone's attention online, whereas with a stand-up set the comedian has to "seduce the audience" over an hour or more.

On TikTok, someone is also watching from their "safe space," on their sofa or in their bedroom, "and this stuff is happening to somebody else," she added. But during a live set, everyone in the audience is experiencing it together. This is why something can kill in the room, but totally bomb when a clip is posted on social media.

"The comedian has spent probably 20 minutes warming up the room, seducing them, making them aware of or drawing them into the comedian's world, which does not happen on TikTok," Bhasin said. "When the audience is immersed in the comedian's story and they like the comedian they're enjoying hearing what the comedian has to say, they are very much connected to the artist."

Zelnick said he doesn't want to be known as "an internet guy" forever, and has dreams to be a solo headliner with an hour of solid material he's really proud of. But he's grateful for his success so far and where his comedy career is currently at.

"I think right now I hopefully just want to get better," he said. "I want to feel like if you see my best crowd work moments online and love what I'm doing, that you'll get to the live show and be like, 'Holy cow, this guy really is taking this stuff seriously.'"