We recently connected with Meredith Dietz and have shared our conversation below.

Meredith, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

When it comes to comedy, I’m acutely aware that I’m still cookin’. I’m not famous, which feels like both a failure and a relief. It’s a failure in terms of fame being the most obvious metric of success in comedy; it’s a relief in terms of me being able to find and shape my voice without too many eyes on my many missteps.
One of the most reassuring pieces of wisdom I hear is that “it’s not how fast you get there; it’s how long you last.” I think the most essential skill to survive in comedy is a perspective. On an artistic level, your perspective is what makes your jokes your own. Your perspective is what turns a boring observation into a funny one. On a survival level, the ability to zoom out and give yourself perspective is how you can move on after bombing, push through plateaus, be the sort of performer people want to watch on stage, and be the kind of person people want to hang with off-stage.
I love being a student of comedy, and I tend to put thing in terms of school. (And as anyone who has been to a single Brooklyn open mic can tell you, the politics of *lunch tables* never goes away.) So, when I look around at the comics in my “grade,” the difference between those who are graduating versus getting, well, held back is a willingness to fail. If you can’t post online without drenching it in irony, you’re only going to get so far. Similarly, no one cares about your joke premises off stage—you have to be able to try new shit in front of real people. Those two examples are crimes I’m guilty of regularly, and I’m screaming at myself in the mirror to be a stronger, more vulnerable person. Clever people will last a few years in comedy, but I think it takes a painful amount of vulnerability and risk to graduate as an artist.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After college, I began pursuing comedy writing, e.g. securing gigs as a headline contributor at both The Onion and Reductress. While hitting open mics and shows at night, I had a day job in development at a small production company. Now, I’m the senior personal finance writer at Lifehacker, where I pitch, research, and write how-to service journalism. If you’ve ever looked up “is gas really cheaper at Costco” or “how to run a marathon with the least amount of training possible,” you may have read some of my work. Tl;dr I’ve always had a fun writing or writing-adjacent day job while I now pursue stand-up comedy each and every dang night.
My point of pride is my consistency. I’ve been running the same open mic and show since July 2021 (Black Cat café on the Lower East Side, Wednesndays, check it out). My improv team, Full of Bones, was one of the first to emerge in the post-pandemic indie scene and is still going strong. I’ve been relentlessly posting jokes on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram for around five years, slowly but surely gaining an audience of 80k followers. I’ve accepted that I’m not any sort of prodigy, and that fact no longer bothers me.
There’s a relevant quote about marathon running: Something about how marathon is actually hundreds of miles, and race day just happens to be the last 26.2 miles. The most freeing realization was that no one “win” is The Thing. The grind is The Thing. People don’t run because they love race day; they love being a runner. I don’t do comedy because I love selling out theaters—even though I do that effortlessly each and every night. (That’s a joke.) (I’m nobody.) (Yet!) I do comedy because I love being a comic every day. Also it’s my calling, I’m extremely gifted, and also a genius, but I’m quite shy about it, but trust me, I speak truth to power on the daily, whatever who cares fuck you pay me—

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Throw things at the wall and see what sticks. Sure, your digital footprint will haunt you forever. But when it comes to building an audience, you can’t afford to be too precious. Make sure you research tips for “hacking” the algorithm (the importance of posting consistently, shares being more valuable than likes, etc.), but don’t turn your work into some algorithmic equation. So many of my jokes that went “viral” now make me cringe—I want to go back and change the wording of that tweet, or I’d have let my hair dry better before posting that front-facing video, or what have you. If perfection and privacy are more important to you than followers, then you’re probably evolved enough to have stopped reading by now. Otherwise, just start posting now.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I used to think you had to prove to the audience that you deserve to be speaking into a microphone. In fact, the act of holding a microphone is proof enough. Now, from here, you do need to earn your laughs. Adapt to the feedback that you suck—because you will suck sometimes. Have the arrogance to grab a mic, and then have the humility to make it worth people’s time.
Then again, I suppose I’ve had to rewire my brain to accept that performance is not inherently selfish. Someone recently gave me the sweetest card, thanking my co-hosts and me for the DIY monthly café show and the community we’ve built around it. This really forced me to recognize that doing stand-up isn’t an act of pure narcissism—it’s joyful, and sometimes, even a gift. Yeah…this was fully a humblebrag. Merry Christmas to moi!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://meredithdietz.com
• Instagram: @dietz.m
• Twitter: @dietz_meredith
• Youtube: @meredithdietz

Image Credits

Arin Sang-urai, Marissa Moorhead, JT Anderson