Comedy is great when it is funny, but when it is dull, it is perhaps the most boring thing that one can experience. Watching bad comedy is like watching a train wreck in real time. You start to feel bad for the comedian at first; you think to yourself, "wow, poor guy is stinking up the place; maybe I'll give him a courtesy laugh or two just so he'll shut up and get off the stage". But what happens when that terrible comedian refuses to leave the stage? What if that subpar comedian grew so accustomed to your courtesy laughs that they actually started to believe that they were the funniest person alive? What if expressing distaste for a particular comedian's style or material became taboo and milquetoast comics came on stage demanding respect from complete strangers? What if the entire industry of popular comedy became about stroking the egos of popular comedians instead of delivering quality entertainment to its audience? If all that happened, you would probably stop going to comedy shows. You may even start to find it difficult to tune in to the latest sitcom. You may start to notice how costly going to the movies is: the snacks, the tickets, the inevitable dinner or dessert after the fact, all so you can take in a comedy that really wasn't that funny to begin with. You may even start to think that any idiot with microphone, a patreon and a few million bucks could be a standup comedian these days. Things may become so bad that you could realize that your jokes are funnier than what a lot of these hacks are putting out there. After that, you might say to yourself, "you know, if these movies and jokes are going to be so bad, they should at least be more diverse; there should at least be a few people who look like me on the stage if I have to pay for such crappy entertainment". Of course you would be right...about everything. It is your money after all and you should be allowed to use that money in a way that you see fit. Only a hack entertainer would ever fault you for this. As an entertainer, I know that the audience pays my salary. If you all do not care for what I put out there, then I look for ways to appeal to you that are different from what I generally find to be humorous. This does not mean I change my opinions; it simply means that I am providing the audience with a product that they prefer. I am making a conscious choice not to be selfish. The grumpy old comedians of today, however, think that you should come to their shows and laugh at them simply because they have longstanding reputations of being funny. Names like Jerry Seinfeld, Bill Burr, Dave Chapelle, and Bill Maher have basically turned into comedy corporate brands. They have ceased to be funny; many of them have completely stopped telling jokes altogether, yet they are still revered in comedy circles because they received rave reviews twenty, thirty or even as much as forty years ago. In other words, these people have had their time in the sun and that time has passed; but they still linger around like a pair of old dirty socks that you just don't have the energy to toss out. These grumpy comedians go around shaming anyone who does not worship the ground they walk on. They get irritated when people don't laugh at their jokes. "It's funny," they cry to yet another silent full house, "laugh at me like you did in the eighties!" Then they take to social media and cry to their fans that the "woke" left is cancelling them. Eventually the end up on Fox News talking about the days of old when everyone loved their jokes; you know, the good old days when their jokes were still relevant and edgy. These old comedians do not understand that audiences change; they grow old, pass on and are replaced by new, younger audiences. This only comes as a surprise to entertainers who are so self-absorbed that they never really saw their audience as people, but as a paycheck. These types of entertainers will never learn to give their audience what they want. They only take.