There was an air of excitement Friday night as a horde of Philly’s Gen Z patrons awaited a comedy show they didn’t seem to think would be too funny.
Gen Z hallmarks — baggy jeans, scuffed white shoes, vapes and bad posture — were all present in the line waiting for the doors to open to The Performance Garage, where the show took place.
As the clock inched toward the show’s 9 p.m. start and crowds grew fervent, one attendee called out, “Who’s ready for the six-seven show?” in reference to the viral TikTok meme, as he found his spot in line.
The crowd broke out into cheers and laughter in response as he took his place towards the back of the line.
“The show can’t actually be that funny, bro,” said Casey Callahan, gesturing to the line that wrapped around the block where the show was set to begin.
Callahan stood near the front of the line with his friends Alex Bastian and Riley Helfric. Callahan shared he’d made a five-hour commute from Hartford, Conn., for the show. Bastian drove from Springfield, Mass., to join Callahan for the event.
“I dead-ass laughed when I bought the tickets,” Callahan said. “It was a comedy show, yeah, but comedy was in quotation marks, so I’m thinking, what’s this gonna be like? Is it actually comedy?”
About the TikTok “comedy” tour
The $25 ticket Callahan and roughly 50 others purchased granted them entry to what may have been one of the most off-the-wall events a venue usually reserved for dance performances had ever hosted.
Inside, three TikTokers tested their comedic chops on stage, winning over the crowd with an unconventional set that turned viral attention into live laughs.
The three microinfluencers, Jonas Gindin, Aaron Westberry and Daniel Rotter, all make skits and comedic videos online and have been touring the nation this summer, making stops in Seattle, San Diego and New York performing standup.
The trio has handled every aspect of the tour — booking hotels, flights and venues — without the support of agents, publicists or staff. Rotter said that the following day they would be traveling by bus to New York for their next appearance.
None of the three are wildly popular online. Combined, they have roughly 724,000 followers on TikTok, far fewer than some of the app’s biggest stars, like Charli D’Amelio, who alone has amassed 156 million followers.
Yet as the three performed, it would’ve been hard to tell just how popular these three are, as a crowd that came ready to laugh got their money’s worth Friday night.
“Figuring it out”
Jokes about serving in the “Storage Wars,” plants going to “treehab” and Squid Games all landed with the young audience.
Even when their inexperience showed and jokes received flat reactions, the audience didn’t seem to care, laughing at the comedians rather than their jokes to fill awkward silences.
Some of the comedians’ more poorly received jokes seemed intentional, as if it was part of the show itself. At one point during Rotter’s act, he joked about militaries ordering him to tell jokes whenever they needed a bomb.
Advertisements for the tour feature clips of the comics performing at open mics, where the stakes are low and the crowds are notoriously tough. Many of the jokes in the promotional videos fall to groans or awkward silence. Still, ticket sales have been strong throughout the tour, according to the comics; Friday’s show in Philly drew an almost full house.
“I think that’s part of the appeal,” Gindin said. “You’re getting to see three comedians figuring it out.”
“Homefield advantage” and new paths
If laughs had been counted, Gindin may have had the most successful night of the three.
A Germantown native and Central High School graduate, Gindin had what he called “homefield advantage,” with jokes catered to the local crowd that included some familiar faces.
“The first show, my mom was there. It felt very surreal. She was doing her best to try to make me cry. She kept telling me she was proud of me. I was like, ‘Yo, you gotta chill,’ ” laughed Gindin. “The second show, like 30 of my homies that I grew up with came, which is really cool.”
Gindin and his comedy companions are part of a growing trend of young influencers who got their start on TikTok, transitioning to other, less-online forms of entertainment.
The leap from comedian to actor or actor to musician is nothing new, but the jump from influencer to mainstream entertainer is becoming increasingly common.
Earlier this summer, Addison Rae, who has 88.4 million followers on TikTok, released her debut album after being featured on Charli XCX’s “Brat” album, which charted No. 1 in 2024 in the UK. Rae’s album “Addison” has amassed almost 800 million streams on Spotify since its June release and earned an 8.0 in its Pitchfork review.
Down the line, Gindin wants to stay on the comedy course while getting into acting. He has a role in the upcoming film “Lurker.” Rotter plans to continue with comedy, and Westberry said he didn’t know what he’d be doing later that night.
“I was laughing, and I wasn’t on my phone”
At the show’s 11 p.m. conclusion, fans trickled out of the venue, some still laughing to each other, recalling moments from the show. Many stuck around outside to get pictures with or chat with the three comedians.
Already energized on his way into the venue, Callahan seemed enthused by what he’d seen.
“I would do this 100 times over,” he said. “We were front row. At the end of the show, I did stand up first. I started the standing ovation. Shout out, Casey Callahan.”
Callahan described the show as “riveting” and called the three comics “revolutionaries.”
“This is the first in-person comedy event ever. They invented standup,” deadpanned Callahan.
Though Callahan’s comment was ironic, another attendee and friend of Rotter, Kyle Christian, suggested that the trio’s growing popularity may mark something lasting.
“Less and less people will be going to see these older comedians; they just can’t keep up,” Christian said. “I think younger acts like this will bring a whole new group of comedians, and a whole new way to have shows.”
Whether Friday’s performance signaled a lasting shift or not, the enthusiasm in the room on this night was evident. For a generation accustomed to consuming humor online, seeing creators test their material in person may be less about polished punchlines and more about being part of the experiment itself.
“I was laughing, and I wasn’t on my phone. My screen time is going to go down because of this show,” Callahan said. “It just shows anything is possible.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
