I (28f) made jokes about my hometown in my standup comedy routine, it's causing problems for my family back home

I am 28f and I got into standup as a hobby this year. Trying to cure myself off my public speaking fear, trial by fire style. It's been challenging but also a lot of fun, and there's a great community around it.

You've probably heard a lot of comedy comes from a place of sadness, having to be able to laugh about or mock bad shit that's gone on in your life.

When I started with stand up I had trouble using stuff that was personal to me in my material, I was scared to open up that much. But over time I found that the personal honest stuff landed best.

And I've got plenty of personal shit to poke fun at; I grew up in an ass-backwards small town, turned out to be gay as hell, heard all the bullshit that came with that. Got into college to escape all that, and somehow landed a job as an engineer for what might be the world's most corrupt company. Like, wreck three luxury cars in the customer's dime and keep your job, kind of corrupt. Then somehow end up on the other side of the country, running from my problems, again, only stopping to stand in front of a group of drunk strangers to seek validation for a few minutes.

So I play up the absurdities of my life. Like the shit people said to me in my old town about my sexuality that's so cruel and misinformed it's funny.

Or the absolute characters I worked with in my first job.

Anyway, once I added a bunch of material about my own life, like the crazy "you can't make this shit up" kind of stuff, way more of my jokes were landing.

Then, sometime recently, one of my sets ended up on YouTube. It was one where I just tore into my hometown, all I had to do was say a lot of shit people actually said to me and I was getting laughs.

And then I found out that some people from my town saw it, saw that I was 1000% playing up the homophobic, ass-backwards, hick, etc... Aspects of my town. Then someone posted it on the community Facebook group (or so I've heard, I'm not on it) with some disapproving comments.

And that got back to my parents, people are looking unkindly at them for having a daughter who would say all that shit so publicly, make the town look like an absolute trash heap when it's a place they love.And I feel bad, my parents are great people.

One of my old friends from high school, who I'd kind of lost touch with since, messaged me to say it was really low of me to exaggerate every bad thing about the town. She knew I'd had rough times, but If also had a lot of good times, and some really good friends. And dissing the whole town like it's got nothing good about it at all is disrespectful of where we came from.

I felt kind of bad about that, and also kind of bad about the lack of nuance I'd used. Like some of the people who've said really awful stuff as kids have grown an me changed since. Some of the older people who've said awful stuff are dead now and maybe that should be off limits.

TLDR - Can I have some advice on how to handle it after my standup annoyed and pissed off some people from my hometown?

Submitted December 05, 2019 at 08:32AM by throwsawsyhvvgh https://ift.tt/34V5Skq