A Serious Look At Joke Stealing
from the no-laughing-matter? dept
Last week's story on Joe Rogan accusing Carlos Mencia of "stealing" jokes, followed by Mencia's decision to claim Rogan's video of the confrontation violated his copyrights certainly got plenty of attention, including quite an interesting discussion in the comments. One reader, Chris, pointed us to a very relevant story in Radar Magazine about the common practice of joke stealing (which includes a bit on Carlos Mencia, but also outs Robin Williams as being a notorious joke stealer as well). I was thinking about this over the weekend, when I was flipping through a copy of Isaac Asimov's Treasury of Humor for something totally unrelated to Techdirt. The book includes 640 jokes, which he readily admits to taking from others (at least the large majority of the jokes). He notes that he's always gathered among friends and joke tellers and tried to collect better jokes and stories from others that he'd be able to reuse himself. As he notes as well, jokes are more than just the joke, but in how you tell it. Indeed, seeing comics steal others jokes is nothing new at all -- and the fact is that some comics do tell jokes better than others. It's like we've said in the past about plagiarism. Sometimes people make a big deal out of it, even though it's used to make something entirely new and creative in its own way. Joke telling has everything to do with style and timing. So there's a good argument to be made for the idea that maybe there isn't anything wrong with taking someone else's jokes and using them in your act. During the original confrontation between Rogan and Mencia, Rogan claims that if the same thing were happening with a different type of creative work, like a song or a book, there would be a ton of news about it -- but with a joke, no one cares. Perhaps it's not that no one cares, but that people just want to be entertained -- and the person who first comes up with a joke isn't necessarily as interesting as someone who is funniest with that joke.Except... there's a price to pay for it in terms of reputation. The backlash against Mencia is exactly that price. His reputation is taking a big hit, and he seems to keep digging himself a deeper hole by refusing to admit that he repurposed others' jokes (and, in fact, is apparently still doing so). So, perhaps the real issue here is that this is an issue that can be solved by social norms, rather than laws like copyright. If you're going to make use of someone else's work, it's going to come back and bite you if you're not willing to admit it. There is still value in being a good joke teller, even if you're using other people's work -- but if you keep pretending that you were also the creator of that work, it's going to come back and hurt you in terms of your reputation. While that may have been less true in the past, thanks to things like the internet, it's going to be increasingly easy to call out those who violate the social norms of taking credit for a joke they didn't write.
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Ya well
Mencia denying that he is stealing jokes, or at least getting ideas for jokes from others is absurd though. The best PR would be to admit that your jokes are influenced by others, and at least give partial credit to those who came before you, much like today's musicians do.
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joke stealing
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Re: joke stealing
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Re: joke stealing
f*** them if they can't take a joke.
Umm, I think you got that wrong.
Perhaps it's not that no one cares, but that people just want to be entertained -- and the person who first comes up with a joke isn't necessarily as interesting as someone who is funniest with that joke.
F*** 'em if they can't tell a joke.
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joe rogan gained a lot of my respect for this one
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Re:
The other side of the story.
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Plagiarism
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RE: Plagiarism (correction)
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No, we don't. If I read a couple different sources (e.g. encyclopedias) and learn a few facts, and then relay those facts a week later to a friend, I probably won't say "I read that in wikipedia" after every sentence. If I regurgitate it on a blog, I may not cite the source either (unless I want to for the benefit of the reader). If my opinions are influenced by a radio talk show host, I don't have to quote the talk show host every time I restate my opinion. Same goes for jokes I hear on television.
Unless I'm directly quoting a substantial piece of art and claiming it to be my own without changing it in any way, plagiarism is a hard thing to really prove. And as stated above, jokes have more to do with how they're told than what they say. That can't be copied well.
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Plagiarism
Sue me, I dare you.
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It's an old story
Milton Berl was constantly accused of stealing jokes to the point where it became part of his typical banter when he was with another comedian. He'd pretend to be insulted, and the audience laughed. Alan King started his career doing George Jessel's material (he admits this in his auto-biography). Jessel was incensed by this and never forgave King.
I also remember hearing about the problems that comics would have at the famous "roasts" at the Friars' Clubs. With a single target, there would be many people coming up with the same jokes, and the comics that were on later would have to listen carefully to the jokes being told and try to figure out how to come up with something different if a few of the jokes they planned were already told. Who is the originator here? The comic who is lucky to give a joke first?
Mencia was called out by Joe Rogan for stealing material from a person that previously opened for him. Whether or not he did so isn't important. I know of a few comics that have more important things to do than watch their opening act... hearing the same jokes over and over makes them unfunny. Mencia might have been subject to the same problem that the Friars comics had: a lot of Mencia's humor is about Mexicans. It's quite possible that he came up with the same joke that somebody else wrote. It's also possible that he stole the joke.
The "right" thing would have been to laugh it off. It's not very easy, especially when he was called out on stage in front of an audience, but comics are expected to be able to deal with the unexpected, and being seen as not having a sense of humor about the situation could be deadly to a comic's career.
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Lar3ry; point valid, however irrelevant.
People spend years, even the better part of a decade trying to make a name for themselves in the comedy business. When someone gets the recognition they've earned and then sees some fraud just walking on the scene and getting the limelight they don't deserve, they need to be called out. That's what's happening here, and everyone knows Mencia's been doing it for years. This is just the first time anyone’s cared to make it widely known to the public. The 3minutes or however long clip is just one very isolated small instance when it's become public knowledge. For those of us who care we always knew Ned was a hack and will continue to be if he's able to salvage what shred of a career he might have left.
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It's all in the delivery
So while the delivery is key, and great performers will be great performers, if someone is great at coming up with jokes, hire them. It reminds me of Larry David, who comes up with a lot of funny shit, but he worked with someone who was a better performer for many years, and that ended up helping them both, along with many others.
So just give credit where credit is due.
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the thing that gets me is..
What most people don't realize is that there are only so many ways to make a joke so they all look/sound the same if you remove the "content". The late Steve Harvey(hope I'm getting his name right) wrote a book that clearly showed how one could make their own jokes from the patterns of old jokes. No big freakin' deal. Joe and his friends clearly didn't recognize this concept because they accused Mencia of rewriting Pryor's material as well.
I'm not saying he didn't steal the jokes, only that there are very few original jokes in the world if you look at them from the proper view and claiming one is entirely your own is likely to make you look like a liar in one regard or another.
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No more Knock Knock Jokes...
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Entertaining joke stealer
Carlos didn't even tell it very well.
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The Aristocrats
I agree that he should have copped to it and it wouldn't have been such a big deal. But, that's the problem with ego.
And by the way, who gives a crap what a no-talent hack like Joe Rogan says? The only way that guy could be funny is if I get to watch someone hit him in the head with a shovel. He should stay away from comedy and stick to something he knows, like eating horse ass.
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How do you say Irony?
Carlos discusses the fight and starts talking about the new bits hes doing. The new bit he is discussing is actually a stolen bit from another radio show!
The DJ announces Carlos is banned from the Mikey show now for using stolen material then all hillarity ensues...
If you listen to the audio, Carlos specifically said he made up the idea himself. About 2/3rds into the audio Carlos says: "...And I was like, 'You know what? I'm going to have a stereotype olympics'...".
At least in the audio, he doesn't say the guys come up with the idea, he says HE DOES. He then tells you the details and passes it as what he did.
http://a1135.g.akamai.net/f/1135/18227/1h/cchannel.download.akamai.com/18227/podcast/SANDIEG O-CA/MSHO-IP/carlosmencia63006.mp3
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Credibility
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The mexican wall joke
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Limited Material
As humans we absorb things though out our lives and don't remember where we get them from, that's just the nature of the human brain. The fact that he says he creates all his material says to me that he takes credit for the details and considers the outside influences to be inspirational. Its the nature of the business. His ego could use a little toning down for his own good, but that is his character so its a compromise.
Lastly, the people he 'stole' from should be the only ones to throw a fuss.
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As has been said, jokes will be retold, in different forms, all the time. I heard Jeff Foxworthy in his Totally Committed show yesterday tell a joke fairly similar to George Carlin. The subject and the substance was the same, but they were told very differently (and it didn't seem like a hard one to come up with).
However, I read the day this story came out that it was more than Mencia just "being influenced" by other comedians. More like him sitting in the back of comedy clubs watching other comedians, and then later being heard telling the exact same jokes.
I don't think it would be so big if this whole comedy thing was just a hobby or a pasttime. But for a lot of people it is a [potential] career, and when someone like Mencia, that has a much more public outlet to tell jokes, starts telling it, he gets the credit and publicity for it, even though he might suck at telling it, he gets seen and heard more than a newbie or less known with a comedy club being the only outlet for them. Since Mencia already has a lot of publicity for the stuff he says, he will get credit for a "new" joke before/instead of the original, less known creator will.
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Researching the origin
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jay thiefos joke thief writers
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