A new kind of Berlin edgelord just dropped, and it’s worse than you thought. You’ve seen him all over your feed – “owning” hecklers at dimly lit Friedrichshain open-mics, subtly flaunting his abs in the self-cropped band tee he’s convinced makes him a walking manifestation of the female gaze.
The slippery little cousin of the misogynist crowd-worker, this comedic bottom-feeder thrives in the murky waters of plausible deniability, constantly jumping around between performative self-awareness (though getting to call himself a fuckboi clearly gets his ego going) and painfully-on-the-nose observations about life as a thirtysomething transplant who’s still deciding whether Berlin isn’t just a temporary stint en route to digital nomadism.
For the clout-chasing comedian, though, poor is only sexy as long as you get to watch from the comfort of your furnished sublet.
Not conventionally attractive enough to get away with outright sexism, too uninspired to add anything of substance to the city’s – thankfully thriving! – stand-up scene.
This guy’s favourite topic? All the “effed-up” things he’s allegedly witnessed on Berlin subways. “I swear to God, the hobos on the U8 are getting greedy,” I recently heard one of those edgy jesters say at Süß War Gestern, setting up a joke about a homeless man’s dietary preferences at an 8pm backroom show. I’m not usually quick to judge (which I know this column makes hard to believe), but even I fled the scene once he started going off about a “stinker in a wheelchair”. Subways are dirty? Homeless people smell? Groundbreaking stuff, Brandon.
I’m not saying you can’t joke about uncomfortable truths, nor is dunking on your chosen hometown a cancellable offence, per se. Comedy shouldn’t have limits – do your thing. That being said, your five-minute bit mocking a disabled man’s body odour just makes it glaringly obvious that you’ve been too busy gaslighting Humboldt undergrads into paying for your drinks at Mein Haus am See to learn how to write a decent punchline.
The truth is, all this endless fuss about the U8 being “sooo nasty” is, at the end of the day, just an excuse to tell lazy, classist – and sometimes outwardly racist – jokes without getting dragged by the woke mob. Perhaps the most offensive thing about these half-baked stand-up routines, however, is the blatant unoriginality. Complaining to a room full of Berliners about their chronically unreliable and – admittedly, somewhat grimy – public transport is like telling a born New Yorker about the unspeakable horrors of Times Square and people from Staten Island.
And honestly? The U8 isn’t even that bad. Sure, we’ve all had the occasional run-in with a friendly crackhead relieving themselves onto the tracks at Kotti – but if you think that’s questionable human behaviour, you clearly haven’t been to a WG casting for a Mitte flat full of business majors funded by daddy’s Amex. And most of the time, the ride is perfectly fine. Have the U8 haters ever considered that the ride might suck more for the homeless people who have to watch all the Kreuzköllners coming home from the club at 5am?
There’s also something deeply dishonest about moving to Berlin – home to Christiane F. and the €1 Spätibier – and then constantly going on about how filthy it is. Don’t pretend this isn’t exactly what you’re here for. Guess what: you can’t live out your bohemian squattercore fantasies and expect not to get at least a little pee on your designer loafers. For the clout-chasing comedian, though, poor is only sexy as long as you get to watch from the comfort of your furnished sublet.
Ultimately, what really stings is that these human Dior Sauvage samplers are right. This city does have a huge problem with poverty and homelessness – issues so normalised by now that it’s hard for anyone to truly empathise anymore.
The Berliner Stadtmission estimates that over 5,000 Berliners live on the streets, while about 50,000 more rely on temporary housing. Emergency shelters are full, chronically understaffed and underfunded. There’s no individual blame here, nor is there an easy fix. It’s the result of years of political mismanagement, of failed housing policies and attacks on welfare programmes in the name of precious shareholder value.
And sure, I get it. It’s much harder to write a sultry, light-hearted joke about institutionalised neglect than shit-stains on public transport. But maybe next time a “stinker in a wheelchair” gets on at Hermannplatz, maybe try looking them in the eye instead of mentally mapping out where they’re gonna fit into your next five-minute set.
