The oft-paraphrased Groucho Marx line about not wanting to belong to any club that would accept him as a member speaks to a familiar dichotomy about comedy: Yes, we all like to laugh in groups, as part of audiences, but there's still something fundamentally lonely that runs through so many of the things each of us finds most hilarious.
There's also the inherent isolation of the stand-up spotlight, and comedy's frequent focus on outsiders and oddballs. The solitude of comedy was a theme that ran through Nathan Fielder's beloved Comedy Central series Nathan For You —especially that show's finale and peak, "Finding Frances" — and it's the spine of HBO's Fielder-produced new comedy-type-thing How To With John Wilson.
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