Aziz Ansari is taking an analytics-based approach to his new stand-up material, asking show attendees to provide their name, gender, age, and relationship status before entering a ticket lottery. He explains on his website that, so far, his “writing process has been very interactive”:
One thing I found very interesting is how differently these conversations are among different groups of people. Single people between the age of 18-25 view these topics in a much different light than say single people over 30. Or married people over 40.
This gave me an idea. What if I could setup small shows to talk to very specific groups about these topics? What if I could do a show with half an audience of younger people and the other half is older married people? What if half the audience was single women over 30 and the other half was single men between 18-25?
Gabe Stein appreciates the experiment, but hopes it doesn’t come at the expense of creativity:
By knowing the approximate demographic makeup of his audience, Ansari can decide to tell specific jokes each night that he thinks will work for a particular audience. He can then gauge their feedback, and adjust his jokes accordingly to make sure audiences of all ages, genders and marital statuses respond positively to his shows. … [B]y using the web to collect data on his test audiences, Ansari is, however slowly and basically at first, starting to take comedy into the realm of data science by trying to understand who his audience is and what different segments of them like. If he succeeds, it’s only a matter of time before other acts and creative professions follow suit. Let’s just hope that the data doesn’t wash away the creativity entirely. That would be ironic, but not particularly funny.
The Dish 