Arj Barker

Comedy Central Presents	Friday 10pm / 9c
Arj Barker - The Internet
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This video is of Arj Barker during his performance on Comedy Central Presents. This video was filmed at the Hudson Theater in New York City. Barker has appeared on Premium Blend, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, and The Glass House. He has also appeared twice on Comedy Central Presents. He was born on August 12, 1974 in San Anselmo, California to an engineer father and artist mother. He has toured in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. He signed up for his first open mic when he was 19, playing to a room full of sailors at Holy City Zoo in San Francisco and began touring nationally by the age of 22. Barker has not produced any of his own CDs, however he is a part of the compilation album entitled “Pot’s Greatest Hits: A Stash of Standup Comedy”. In an interview with Wickedinfo.com, he said that he was “inspired by some British comedy when [he] was a kid” such as Monty Python, and the Two Ronnies. However, he claims no to watch much standup these days so as not to be influenced too much by what other comedians are doing. Barker’s comedy covers topics such as technology, holidays, banks and the news. In this video, Barker talks about office technology and the tedium that comes with purchasing and ordering items such as fax machines and printers. Later, he goes on to talk about Myspce and how he goes to the zoo with his Myspace friends. The point of this piece is to make the audience aware of the realities of having Myspace “friends”. In the beginning of the bit, he talks about buying a printer and in the end says that he believes that the internet is going to change the way that we do business. These parts seem to function primarily as entertainment and nothing more. However, the part about Myspace seems to be much more of a social criticism than the rest of the joke. The audience that this bit is meant for is the generation of people who are growing up with websites such as Myspace and Facebook who suffer from bleak social lives caused by dependency on online relationships. The audience would most likely be slightly offended by this exaggeration of someone going to the zoo and typing on their laptop “Look at the Giraffe.” But later, they will likely take into consideration that it is ridiculous to call people who you only know on the internet actual friends