I Went to a Few Comedy Open Mics and This is What I Observed:

Image: Kritika Trehan on Behance

1. Putting the Dick in Dick Van Syke: You can’t get a rise out of an audience unless you throw in the casual dick joke. In your quiver of jokes, it is the one arrow that will hit its mark. Don’t waste your time calling it hackneyed, this joke was not meant to make you think, or see things in a different light. The dick joke is to comedy what Wanted is to film.
2. The Ism that will never go out of style — Sexism: For the low low price of Rupees 200 anyone can go up on stage and babble on about how feminism is a sux and people are getting too ‘sensitive’, of course women are all gold diggers and only want men who own BMWs. You’re right I should take that rape joke in the right spirit. My favourite kind of jokes is when they’re about to make a sexist joke and they preface it with ‘I’m not a sexist’ or when they say they see where the guy is coming from.
3. All Indians are my brothers and sisters, unless they aren’t: What I have observed is its never a hit and miss if someone does the slant eye Nepali joke. It seems to work most times, except if there is that one person going tch tch in the back (probably me). An open mic is where all stereotype sins come to roost. Of course that joke about how all Punjabis are loud, or Gujjus are stingy, Bengalis are lazy that have been done ad naseum still tickle the funny bone of many an audience. Its funny because its sort of slightly true about a very small percentage of the people being stereotyped, I think.
4. The Single-arity Hilarity: You’re single, no one loves you, you see how that is funny? No? Well understand this, schadenfreude is a very real thing and when harnessed well can be used to ensure maximum hilarity. That is what I learnt. So thats why every budding comedian makes self deprecatory jokes about how he/she is unloveable. Or they make jokes about how their family want them to get you married, but how they don’t want to get married right now while complaining that they’re single. Better yet they join Tinder, make fun of Tinder and then themselves for joining it. What’s more interesting than hearing how someone lucked out on something that requires a swipe.
5. They’re poor so its funny: Take a leaf out of the first comic there was Marie Antoinette, her ridiculously funny dig at poor people caused a laugh riot. It was so funny people couldn’t stand it, they had to guillotine her. She was just that good. So make fun of your bai, the beggars on the street, and downtrodden people in general and if the audience does not get the joke they’re probably poor too.
6. Mass Appeal: You cannot be overweight and not fat shame yourself on stage. Don’t overreach by trying to make a point about what being overweight really feels like, and sound smart with some new take on it, just go for the low hanging fruit. Make up names for yourself, pun it up, talk about how much you love to eat. Or make fun of other fat people, its not like they don’t already hear enough of it, it always sounds better on stage.The audience will lap that up.
7. The Enginjeer: Nothing says relatable like jokes about engineers, for engineers, against engineers. The jokes range from them being pathetic losers to them not having girlfriends to them being lonely losers. The endless variety of these types of jokes astound the senses at every turn, more nuanced than a Chetan Bhagat novel. Even if you’re not an engineer you may join the remaining 80 percent of the audience, who I’m guessing from their guffawing are engineers themselves, in laughing at themselves and their imagined sad state of affairs.

These are the observations made of an amateur comic open mics, please take them in the spirit they are meant to be taken.