The comedy that broke me

And all the nonsense we were forced to endure over October

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There is a moment in the comedy/ sadistic social experiment Total Forgiveness where I watched a man get completely broken after being forced to take a shit in an art gallery in front of a crowd. Why does he do this? In order to begin paying off his crippling, exploitative and frankly dystopian American student debts. A tale as old as time I guess. It really asks the question “what would you do for enough money to change your life”, and for me, public defecation is my strong line - and I used to work in youth media, so I thought I was pretty shameless with how I got my coin.

This is the premise of Dropout/ College Humour’s weird show, where comedians Ally Beardsley and Grant O’Brien essentially challenge each other to do horrible things, all in order to win a large sum of money that would go a long way to paying off their student debts. From the mildly wacky - getting hair dyed green and spray tanned orange to look like an Oompa Loompa, or doing a deliberately bad standup show to a packed theatre - to some truly cringeworthy and uncomfortable ordeals. There are snakes and leeches. There is some truly hard stuff to watch. But it is funny! It wasn’t an easy watch, but it was super worthwhile and at times very funny.

While the show, like all Dropout comedies, is designed to entertain first and foremost, it’s also a wildly illustrative and surprisingly informative show, that I literally haven’t been able to stop thinking about for the last few weeks. The show is importantly purely as a PSA on how absolutely deranged the US student debt system is - I literally gasped out loud when I heard how much their individual debts were, and as someone who cannot do maths in the slightest, shocked at how that translated into eye-watering monthly INTEREST payments. Also I found out about credit scores too, which is equally broken. America is a capitalistic hellscape, a feudal serf situation all the more crueller because it creates the illusion of choice, the fantasy of a way out.

There’s definitely some big flaws in the HECs system in Australia (especially recently), but after watching this show, I am dramatically grateful for it. I’m also grateful that I am stupid and wasn’t eligible to do a degree that cost a lot of money as a consequence.

@totalforgiveness“Crushing debt that you can never escape from” is the new national slogan #totalforgiveness #grantobrien #studentloans #studentloanforgiveness #studentloandebt

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But the arc of the show is something of a surprise and a revelation, and it made me wonder if hidden in the hijinks and trauma is a blueprint for how to enact friendship under capitalism - because capitalism works best when you are lonely and spending all your money on wonderful products. Who needs human connection when you’ve spent all your hard-earned fees from the dicksucking factory to buy an absolute fleet of roombas to clean your floor and harass your enemies?

I’ve been thinking a lot about money lately, because I’ve been doing about 700 jobs at once, and I still don’t… have much. There has to be a better way!

In order to keep talking about this, I have to spoil the end of Total Forgiveness, so I suggest either watching the show (it’s pretty short) or making your peace with this new spoiled chapter of your life.