There is No Such Thing as "Punching Down"

"Comedians should punch up, not down" is a "rule" that fundamentally misunderstands what a joke is and what comedy can be.

“Comedians should punch up, not down"

This is a comment I see frequently on social media, written by people who do not understand comedy.
For some reason, people who rarely (if at all) enjoy comedy or buy tickets to stand up will often lecture those who perform it and deride those who laugh at it.

Often used to reprimand a comedian for the crime of telling a joke that got laughs in the room, “Punch up, not down” is a comment that exposes its author as a member of the phone addicted language police.

People who say that comedians should only punch up, genuinely believe it’s some kind of widely accepted rule that should be followed; and when broken, should be called out.

These fools are so stupid that to laugh at them would be considered “punching down”

I personally have received this annoying comment many times.
Most recently after a few jokes about "furries" went viral on TikTok. As always, the vast majority of viewers found it funny, laughed, and scrolled onwards in search of thirst traps and fit checks.

However, a few (hundred) people saw the flurry of furry jokes and wrote paragraphs on how offensive they were, on behalf of the community being joked about.

Most of these comments included the "rule" of punching up, not down.

The jokes that accrued the comments

I've thought a lot about why, as a comedian, this phrase has always annoyed me.
The simple answer is that funny is funny. The moment we start adding rules like this into types of creative expression, we lose the spark of freedom that can ignite into truly original art.

Ruling out subjects based on perceived societal privilege or lack thereof to me sounds exactly like telling all painters a certain colour is off limits.
Who are you to tell an artist what can or can’t be explored in their art, with no regard for how it’s executed?

If the joke gets laughs, its funny. If it doesn’t get laughs but the artists intent was to elicit laugher, yes it needs work - it might even be so bad the joke won’t ever be funny.
But the attempt must be protected.

Placing a moral judgement on bad jokes is like calling a guy who sucks at piano evil because he’s learning how to play.

We all understand that music played poorly by a beginner will one day be music played well by a pro.

Comedy is rarely afforded this grace.

The simple answer however, doesn’t really address the concern people who are against “punching down” have.
Their concern (to my understanding) is that jokes from a person with privilege or power, directed at those without it, harms those people and can normalise discrimination or violence against them.

To be sure we understand the term “punching down” here’s how the Cambridge dictionary defines it:

Punching Down:
To attack or criticize someone who is in a worse or less powerful position than you:

If a comedian punches down, they make fun of people who are less powerful or privileged.

If you're doing so much better than everyone else, why punch down?

If I’m being honest with myself, a big part of the reason why I do not like this “rule” is because I’m pretty high up on the power/privilege scale.
The higher up you are, the more limiting the “rule” feels.

I’m a straight white guy, recently handsome.
Position of influence, arguably successful, first world, non immigrant, two parents, no (childhood) trauma, physically healthy and tall.
Thankfully, I’m likely autistic. But in a Warhammer way, not in a stared at in public way.

Reading the above paragraph you could make an argument that me joking about almost every other type of person would be “punching down” and a gross violation of the “rule” so many non comedians like to cite.

And this week, many people did.

However, while my jokes about the furry community were being called bigoted, offensive, mean and labelled as “punching down”.

My dm's were flooded with actual furries, sharing the video to their own social media. They left positive comments, tagged their friends and had a laugh at themselves with me.

From what I could tell, not a single upset commenter was personally a member of the community they were trying to shield from my jokes - or, as they would say, my "punches"

This reveals a stark contrast between what the defender of the marginalised and the comedian joking about them think of the same group.

The comic sees them as an equal. A normal person, capable of laughing at themselves.

The defender sees them as weak. A victim only they can protect.

This is how I often end up with the frustrating situation of a few very upset comments telling me not to joke about a certain type of person, while that type of person is watching the same joke, laughing their furry buttplug out.

I’m currently on the road, touring my new show “Serial Pest”, This is the biggest tour I’ve done, spanning multiple cities, countries and continents.

Come see me live in 2025

When I’m on stage and I look out into my audience, I see a radically diverse group of people. Not just of race, faith, physical ability or sexuality.
I see a diversity of thought, beliefs, political affiliation, visa status, income and wealth or lack thereof.

I see human beings who have come together to laugh.
Not just at stupid stories about my life, but at jokes about others in the room with them and yes, even at themselves.

What I don't see are different groups of approved or off limits joke subjects, based on an arbitrary power and privilege scale born of an online American culture war that I want no part of.

Races, sexualities and disabilities ordered from best to worst by university educated ladies with a few published pieces in White Guilt Magazine but little experience with real hardship.

If I thought that way about people, like the few comedians who shackle themselves to the “rule” of never punching down,
I would be completely unable to make anyone laugh.

There are three main problems with "jokes should punch up, not down"

The first, as I've begun to explain, assumes that certain types of people are too weak to handle jokes about them.

To me, this is infantilising and exclusionary.

Ironically, assuming a person from any marginalised group is too fragile or stupid to be the subject of a joke, feels like one of the more discriminatory beliefs you can hold without making the news for it.

As an almighty straight white male, I rank higher than women, yet every time I joke about them at my shows, the women in the room light up.
They laugh, nudge their boyfriends or girlfriends and say "that's me!"

Stupid women.
Don't they realise they're being punched?

Two weeks ago in Sydney, I performed in a gay bar, the front row from left to right looked like this: Muslim couple, Christian with a cross, Autistic kid with his father, trans lesbian couple and one immigrant.

According to the “rule” I am frequently told to adhere to, there would be no way to do any sort of crowdwork without punching these weak, defenceless victims from my heavenly perch above them.
(Maybe the christian could cop it, but his cross looked steel, not silver so he could have been poor. better safe than sorry)

Instead I dove into row two.

First guy I spoke to? Indian guy on crutches, with brain cancer, a rare form of heart disease and a skin condition.
I had no choice but to apologise to the audience, end the show and then kill myself.

Kidding. Instead of spontaneous suicide, I went in on the guy. I joked about him, his country, his illness, his brother who wasn't ill (but was still Indian), I went in on everything about a man who sat as far down the bottom of the power/privilege scale as you can without being born Gaza.

And do you know who pulled back a little?
A small section of the audience.

You know who didn't?
The guy I was joking about.

He laughed, threw in a few of his own zingers and afterwards thanked me for making fun of it all.

You can see me “punch down” here

My family has been personally touched by violent tragedy, and more recently cancer. It's terrible. It's not funny.
It makes you want to scream and cry but fuck, man. Sometimes it makes you laugh.

Without those laughs, without a little bit of fucking levity, the despair of it all might be too much to bear.

The few people in the room who pulled back while I hammered the guy in row two that had been hit by a marginalised multiplier combo from God did so out of empathy. Out of a desire to protect.

This well meaning attitude I understand, but, as someone who has been through a LOT of shit, as someone who intimately understands tragedy and especially prolonged illness.

I can tell you one thing for certain.

These things knock you down but they don’t make you weak.

People who have really been through it get looked down on as victims by those who haven’t all day every day. For goodness sake let us have a laugh at the comedy show!

It’s not gonna kill us, that’s what the illness is for.

The second issue with "Punching Up Not Down"

is that it inherently limits the art of standup from a medium of free expression and understanding of other people, to a list of approved “targets” that, as a comedian becomes more talented and hopefully as a result, more successful, progressively narrows.

If a comic can only make fun of people higher than them on the power/oppression scale, successful comics can only joke about those more successful than them.
People with more power, money, physical ability or whatever else we subjectively determine to be privilege.

What do we get when only those with more power than the average person can be joked about?
We get comedy that is, to the average person, completely unrelateable.

For stand up, and any art form to thrive, the audience needs to see themselves in it.
Sad songs make us cry, because we resonate with the story being told in the music, we relate to it.

Comedy makes us laugh because we relate to the story being told, or are surprised an outsider has noticed a particular thing our in group does without thinking.

This brings me to the third and biggest issue with "punching up, not down" and that is the word "punching"

Jokes are not violence. Jokes are love.

Yes, we call them punchlines, but we also describe doing well on stage as killing.
If we’re to take all words describing comedy literally, every comic would have to treat every club like a cinema in Uvalde, and I don’t think that would be good for business.

Speaking from my experience, I can not joke about something or someone that I do not understand.

Listen to my podcast or see me live, the vast majority of jokes I make are about my passions, my hobbies, my frustrations, my grief, my relationships and what news I've been obsessed with.

These are the things I understand the most, therefore it's what I am naturally inclined to write and joke about.

There's a reason why I get criticised a lot for joking about autistic people.
I write what I understand.

I don't hate myself, I don't hate being retarded, there are days I get frustrated and overwhelmed by the world, but that's the price I pay for also being able to read and recall 50+ Warhammer books and give you a timeline of The Horus Heresy, as well as a list of all The Primarchs and their motivations behind betraying or supporting The Emperor of Mankind.

People who get upset at my jokes about autism, do so because they think autistic people are fragile little retards, and looking at me, a 6'8 traditionally handsome (as of 2024), confident man, I don't look like what they think of when they picture someone on the spectrum.
Because they picture a victim. Because they don't understand them.
And that is more harmful than jokes.

Jokes are not violence, good ones anyway, because a good joke cannot be written without an understanding of its subject.

Comedian Andrew Schulz rocketed to stardom because of crowdwork clips and stand up bits written about cultures Schulz is not a part of.
Millions of views and fan s accrued by pointing out all the little things people thought only their own cultural members knew about, or didn't even realise they did until an outsider got on stage and said, have you guys noticed no one else does that?

I’ve been a comic since 2014, almost 11 years and I can honestly say that I've only gotten better.
Yes, I work hard. I get as much stage time as I can and I write every day. But, I would argue that the biggest contributing factor to a comedian, or any artists growth isn't just technical skill, but life experience.

When I got on stage at 18 years old, I didn't know shit about anyone in the audience or their lives. I had a few silly stories about me and highschool but what did I really know about the world?

Now, I'm 31, I've been through it and I've been an adult interacting with people in real life all across the planet for over a decade,
I understand different types of people more than I ever have, and I still don't know shit. But the more I learn, the funnier I get.

What I’m describing is why comedians are the opposite of athletes, and not just in health and looks.
When the sports hero is retiring at 28, the comedian has only JUST started to get kinda good, and compared to most comics in their 50s, they ‘aint shit yet.

The more we understand people, the better we can write about them.

If I write a joke about a type of person, I've done my very best to try to understand them, and rarely can I understand someone without appreciating, liking and even, dare I say it, loving them.

Jokes are not violence.
Jokes are not punches.
Jokes are love.

So, I reject this "rule" about punching up and not down.
Because I am not punching at all.

Love from,

Lewis Spears.

https://lewspears.com/