How Nigerian online skitmakers avoided stand-up comedy’s high barrier to entry

In October 1995, Opa Williams organised the primary version of Nite of a Thousand Laughs, Nigeria’s first mainstream comedy present. The present loved important success and ran for 17 years, producing a few of the greatest comedy abilities within the nation like Basketmouth, Okey Bakassi, Julius Agwu, and Klint Da Drunk, amongst others. In that span of time, these artists went from being struggling comedians to multimillionaires. As the brand new acts turned profitable, in addition they created their unbiased present and occasions, cementing the concept that for comedians, the one route to success was via the stage.

As most of those occasions have been in Lagos, hopeful comedians would journey from out of state to navigate the politics within the business and safe slots at a comedy present. There have been operating “Warri” jokes amongst comedians, as a big quantity moved from Warri to Lagos for his or her careers. These abilities spent months tirelessly working to craft materials or scripts that have been ok to make the viewers cackle and earn them an invite to the subsequent present. According to Francis Ogudu, a preferred Nigerian comic fondly often called I Go Dye, getting a slot at a present wasn’t straightforward enterprise as a beginner. 

“Regardless of how talented you were, you needed the right people to invite you to the right shows in Lagos, because that was what guaranteed you success. You needed to know an organizer, a sponsor, or even have a friend who could get you on stage at these shows. You could have the funniest material but if there was no one to tell it to, what is the point?,” he shared.

But that period of massive comedy reveals as the one surefire manner for comedians to discover important success has modified over time. Thanks to the web and social media platforms, comedy’s notoriously high barrier to entry has been diminished, and as Nigeria’s web connectivity improved, comedy expanded past the stage. Recordings of bodily comedy reveals on YouTube amass thousands and thousands of views, signalling to comedians that there was an viewers past those that attended in individual. Soon sufficient, they began creating comedy movies for online audiences. One such present was AY’s Crib, created by the comic, Ayo Makun. 

Comedy on social media

But that was just one small step in comedy’s evolution. Today, Nigerian comedians can launch their careers wherever on the earth with a smartphone, web entry and primary modifying expertise. Some of the favored pioneers of social media skits embrace Crazeclown—a Nigerian physician then based mostly in Ukraine, whose skits sometimes demonstrated the hilarious relationship between a father and his mischievous son, Ade—and Woli Agba, whose skits observe the adventures of an overbearing prophet and his cheeky protege, Dele. Today the online comedy scene has many recognisable names like Taooma, Maraji, Justin UG, Josh2funny, Mr Macaroni, Mark Angel, and Lasisi. Without needing to transfer to Lagos and even seem or stage, they’ve turn into family names.

Making folks snicker is a variety of work

Justin Ugonna, often called Justin UG, is a US-based actor and content material creator who turned fashionable for his High School Chronicles, a collection that depicts the relatable realities of high faculty in Nigeria. From making dance content material for his three followers on Vine in 2009, he moved to Youtube and Instagram in 2016 after seeing how briskly the content material scene on these apps have been rising. 

Justin didn’t begin out wanting to be humorous, his movies simply occurred to make folks snicker, and in 2018 —after his video went viral for the primary time— he determined to take comedy significantly. Now, he has over 400K followers on Instagram and Twitter, though he says that he doesn’t create content material for fame or to amass massive followership.

At the second, Justin’s movies are quick and sharp, and he doesn’t write any scripts. “My videos are mainly about relatable, everyday stuff. They’re like real-life situations that nearly everybody has experienced at one time or another. So, I just think of scenarios that people would be able to relate to or would bring up nostalgia and just act it, improvising lines as I go.” he stated. “However, I’ve started working with a team of three storytellers and one scriptwriter and we brainstorm content ideas together. I always end up not using the scripts from the scriptwriters. We just decide what idea to work with and I shoot,” he shared with TechCabal over a cellphone name throughout his lunch break.

To shoot his movies, Justin makes use of his cellphone, an iPhone 14 Pro Max, and does practically all the things by himself because it helps him keep autonomy and work on his time. On uncommon events, he employs the assistance of his roommate to document sure angles he’s unable to seize together with his tripod.  “Once I return from work, have dinner and wake up from my nap, I start thinking of what to shoot because I post at nine o’clock Nigerian time every day, which is 1 am for me. After shooting, I edit —which takes one or two hours—, and post, then use another hour to reply to a couple of comments and see how people are feeling about the video. I try not to shoot videos during the weekends, but it’s almost as if my body is used to it and I can’t sleep otherwise.”

Virality is the brand new marker of success

Sharing skits on social media will increase the potential for reaching thousands and thousands of individuals in minutes. The virality that social media platforms may give is at present’s new marker of success. One skit maker who understands the idea of unplanned virality is Peter Tauna, also called Mma Kasham, a comic identified for his hilarious depictions of middle-aged moms in Northern Nigeria. Tauna wasn’t ready for recognition when it got here, and in contrast to different acts that had to wait months or years to go viral, he achieved it on his first try. 

On Valentine’s Day of 2019, he was about to take a bathe when he noticed his mom’s wrapper on her mattress. He tied the wrapper and recorded a video mimicking the Zumuntan Mata (ladies’s fellowship) church group’s efficiency, and posted it to Facebook to make his associates snicker. When he got here out of the lavatory, his cellphone was vibrating continuous from a mixture of notifications and calls. The video went past his Facebook because it was shared broadly throughout different platforms, finally touchdown on large Instagram accounts like Tunde Ednut and Audu Maikori. Since then, he has constantly put out movies on his social media platforms and has gained hundreds of followers and thousands and thousands of impressions. His songs and quips have gone past social media, and even individuals who have by no means seen the video know his variations of the songs.

The position of the online viewers 

Social media skits have turn into so vital that they can’t be ignored by the old-timers who made their title on stage. Comedians like Basketmouth, Bovi and Chigurl, who had gained fame earlier than the emergence of social media, edit their outdated jokes into skit codecs or create new ones to strengthen their viewers base. It’s an indication that they’re shifting with the occasions, nevertheless it’s additionally a nod to the financial alternatives that being online offers.

While stand-up comedy abilities receives a commission for bodily reveals, skit makers make their cash from model partnerships, advertisements, and in some instances, invites to host dwell performances. These are large offers for creators, as they’ll cost as a lot as one million naira per sponsored put up. The quantity paid for advertisements to a creator with 500K Instagram followers is rather more than the quantity paid to a creator with lower than 50K followers. This takes the viewers from mere customers or receivers to stakeholders. 

Having recognized the ability of the online viewers within the journey to being a profitable skit maker, these artists strive to fulfill the viewers as there may be steep competitors for the fan base. This isn’t the simplest factor to navigate, as with each artistic subject, there’s all the time a cross-section of the viewers who’re troublesome to please.

Tauna isn’t any stranger to this, as he has nearly had his church membership revoked due to his skits. “One day, the reverend called me to church and asked that I quit using the church’s wrapper in my videos or risk being excommunicated. Some viewers recognised the fabric from the video and claimed that I was making a mockery of God and the church,” he shared with TechCabal. “I have had fans in the comment section sometimes drop hurtful or mean comments as well in the name of feedback.”

Is comedy now extra skits than stand -up?

Social media has arguably reshaped the idea of leisure—the place and the way the viewers will get entertained, in addition to the final expertise. Most of the consumption of comedy is now on social media, and an impact of that is that the youthful technology affiliate comedy with skits greater than they do with comedy reveals. 

Helen Paul, a preferred stand-up comic, believes that followers are already amused by watching skits and they also don’t see the worth in coming to watch stand-up comedy. “Comedy fans are already losing interest in and developing lethargy for stand-up comedy. The thrill of purchasing tickets and driving to a stand-up comedy event might be lost. Why would anyone want to lose sleep over a stand-up comedy show when he or she can just watch it in the comfort of his or her home on a mammoth-sized curved TV with surround stereo speakers?”

I Go Dye doesn’t utterly agree with that, and thinks that there’s nonetheless area for standup comedy. He believes that whereas curiosity in attending stand-up reveals has diminished, there may be nonetheless a loyal viewers for stand-up reveals. In 2015, he offered out the 02 Arena in London, and likewise offered out his present in 2022, themed I Go Dye Standing: More Than A Legend, which had music and comedy powerhouses like 2Baba, Okey Bakassi, Maleke and Tiwa Savage carry out.

According to him, “One thing social media skits cannot replace is the energy from standup comedy. When you perform at a comedy show, watching people laugh in real-time and seeing the effects of your jokes in person, feeling how the energy in the room rises and crashes, you know that can never be replaced by skits. I still have people asking me to perform or organize shows, so there’s still an audience for that.”   

Tauna, who has been in comedy for less than 4 years, admits that he’s not prepared for stage performances. “My online skits are just for about three minutes and I don’t even write scripts. You can’t put me in front of a crowd to perform for 15 minutes at this point in my career, because what would I tell them after the first three minutes?,” he stated with a chuckle.  

Standup comedy requires some pores and skin within the sport and the next degree of experience, however comedy skits additionally require severe work. To navigate a profession in comedy content material creation, you want to have a complete suite of expertise starting from performing expertise, video expertise, modifying expertise, in addition to social media expertise. These are issues standup comedians don’t have to fear about,” he shared.

While it’s clear that stand-up comedy will all the time be thought to be the high level of the comedian artwork type, online skitmakers have proven that generally artwork kinds evolve. And that evolution could appear to be the skit that’s about to pop up in your Instagram reel.