Comedian Sabrina Jalees tells Business Insider she’s been peeing her whole life. Recently, she wondered if that could be an economic opportunity.
“I feel like within my soul is a long lineage of people that belong on ‘Shark Tank,’ whether they’re securing the deal or not,” she said. After hearing that data centers were draining some freshwater reserves, she found her pitch to the sharks: “Why can’t we use our piss?”
Her “why-don’t-we-pee-on-data-centers” business proposal never reached Barbara Corcoran or Kevin O’Leary. Instead, after trying the joke in her stand-up sets, Jalees pitched it to an ad agency.
Liquid Death and Garage Beer turned her gag into a viral ad campaign, featuring a chorus of people, including former NFLer Jason Kelce, proudly singing as they brought jars of urine, addressed to a data center, to a post office. The companies also sold an $18 pee jar.
It’s part of a larger trend in comedy: As AI and data centers create tension, audiences are looking for comic relief. Business Insider spoke with five stand-up comedians, including Jalees, about how audiences respond to jokes about the technology.
They agreed on one rule: In a joke about AI, AI has to be the butt.
“I’ve seen it for myself,” Ohio-based comedian and act-booker Barack from the Block told Business Insider. “Any comments that are positive to AI get a boo. If you make fun of AI, it gets a great reaction.”
A bit that consistently works, he said, is to pick out a well-dressed person in the crowd and tell the audience: “They look like they own a data center. Hey, you’re the reason my electric bill is so high!”
It’s funny because it’s everywhere
Comedy usually works best when it comments on a shared experience, the stand-ups said. And AI’s weirdness — its chatbot hallucinations, online slop, weird machine movements, and a creeping sense that the technology is showing up everywhere — is a familiar absurdity of modern life.
“For topical, relatable humor, the setup is the shared experience that people already go into the room having,” Austin Nasso, a New York-based standup and former Microsoft employee, said.
He added that jokes will have to adapt as AI seeps deeper into our lives. “I think it’ll always still be funny, I just think it’ll be funny in different ways.”
His favorite onstage bit: when techies can’t answer what their AI-based companies even do.
Still, a good AI-based stand-up set isn’t synonymous with an anti-AI sermon, the comedians said.
Barack, for example, says he uses AI a lot, especially when he’s designing marketing campaigns for the Columbus comedy venue he manages.
There is one line he will not cross: letting AI write his jokes. “I don’t advocate using AI to just come up with jokes for you,” he said. “I think you should come up with your own material.” He said he may still use the tool as a sounding board to sharpen a bit.
Jalees has a similar faith in the human advantage. AI may be giving comedians fresh material, but people will still want someone on a stage to make sense of the strange new world alongside them.
“Humans will always long for something that feels authentic when it comes to storytelling,” Jalees said. “And that includes stand-up comedy.”
