Live Laugh Lube
A collaborative comedy project contending with social media
The woman who ran my Parent & Me classes believes we will look back on smartphones and social media and see them the same way we now view cigarettes. I believe her. She is a smart woman with a PhD in infant neurobiology and a history as a practicing therapist. She believes this so much that she will not let her teenage daughter have a smartphone—citing studies about how smartphones turn users into dopamine addicts, especially harmful for those with developing nervous systems.
Why, then, do I continue to use Instagram? Because, as an artist friend once told me, “Resistance is futile.” My friend is a record-setting artists who uses some of the most advanced technologies (AI and blockchain) to make potent work about motherhood and mortality. Yet this was her sentiment about social media. It reflects a bind that many artists feel, including myself. Social media may be a scourge on humanity, but the ramifications for not participating (i.e. not having a viable career) feel too great.
Before hiring a social media coach, I considered exiting social media altogether—consequences be damned. Before resorting to that, however, I decided to give myself one last chance to have a radically different (even spiritual) relationship to Instagram.
How can I have a spiritual relationship to something on par with cigarettes and the tobacco industry in terms of harm to human life? The answer is simple. I believe in something more mighty than nicotine or dopamine-hacks, more mighty than corporate greed or capitalism. Call it God. Call it Gaea, Universe, Life. Call it whatever you want. The name does not matter. All that matters is the way this source makes me feel: alive, full, connected. Meta’s exploitative algorithms and X’s darkest corners can’t hold a candle to this state.
It is from this belief that the idea for a new collaborative project formed. The project follows a simple set of instructions. 1. I ask a comedian to give me a 1-3 word imperative about visibility. 2. I turn the words into a painting that the comedian and I post on Instagram. 3. I give the painting to the comedian who recommends two other comedians, one with more visibility and one with less. 4. The cycle repeats over and over, until I reach an arbitrary stopping point.
I don’t know what to expect from this project, which I’ve titled “Live Laugh Lube” in honor of my first collaboration with Melinda Hill. I have an intuition, informed by my time with Melinda and my sponsor, to work with comedians, comedy writers, and clowns. I have an intuition, informed by my experience with generative art, to include chance elements outside my control. Maybe the project will fail. Maybe it will be an example of my underearning tendency to give away my services to no real benefit for myself. Maybe it will prove to be a bad influencer marketing plan, weakly disguised as art. Maybe I’ll realize that the only way to have a spiritual experience with social media is by signing off it forever. Or maybe the results will change and heal me—and others.
Next week: what my friend Dan Greaney, Emmy-winning writer at The Simpsons, thinks of this project
The video Melinda and I made together for Instagram. If you like, please let us know!
🤞🤞🤞 I think it’s a great collaborative project.
I love this, what a creative approach!