Performing & Visual Arts
As career changes go, moving from tech to comedy is practically unheard of, but it’s a trail the crew at Socially Inept has blazed.
After jacking in their Silicon Valley jobs, they channeled their cynicism into the Tech Roast Show, a savage comedy tour that roasts big-name tech hubs in front of a live audience.
“It never ceases to amaze me how this is a job a person can have,” producer Lee Yang says of the niche they’ve carved out since comics Austin Nasso, Nikita Oster, and Jesse Warren played their first show in 2018.
Lee explains how the Tech Roast Show works: “In earlier iterations, we would pull up a browser and Google people's company/role/controversy and project that on the big screen. Then we added the capability to generate a custom website for our audience's ambitious (or stupid) startup ideas. Later, we added a segment where real audience members compete with AI on their ability to show empathy.”
Even though the folks at Socially Inept are now known for their satirical tech takedowns, racking up more than 2.5 million combined social media followers in the process, they are still techies at heart. They like to take “an engineer's approach” to the creative side of putting on a comedy show by constantly testing and experimenting.
Lee shares: “Last year we ran a string of experimental shows to an invite-only audience to test a few software-assisted show elements. One of those experiments eventually became ‘Mr. Red’ – Socially Inept’s very own AI.”
Now a regular fixture in Tech Roast Show, Lee teases: “Without spoiling too much, Mr. Red is always listening…”
