Get a Load of These Unbelievable Losers

Far from being remorseful about his controversial SNL monologue last month, as one recent account suggested, Shane Gillis wants to know exactly which comedians criticized it—and luckily for him, his friends are keeping track. 

Appearing on Joe Rogan's podcast today with Mark Normand and Ari Shaffir, Gillis said that he's been off social media since before the episode, so he doesn't know who's been talking shit. Rogan said that the doormen at the Comedy Mothership, his club in Austin, have been keeping a list called "Fellas Against Gillis, or FAGs." Shaffir and Normand said they've also been monitoring which comedians spoke out against the monologue. Gillis joked that he wants to go on tour and bump his critics from whatever venues they're booked at, but he won't, because none of them are successful enough to tour. 

Transcript below, discussion to follow:

Gillis: I woke up, it was probably like three days after I deleted social media, and this is me waking up every day just going, wake up, look at your phone, you go, "oh fuck." 

Normand: Of course, of course. 

Shaffir: Even if it's not about you, the anxiety that hits you first thing in the morning about the world. 

Gillis: It was all about me. Literally I'm waking up to people like... I'm getting a text from a publicist. It's like, "We're gonna take care of this." That's what you wake up to. 

Rogan: The most disappointing thing was comics. 

Shaffir: The most disappointing was comics. 

Rogan: The most disappointing thing was comics. And at the Mothership, the doormen, they all came up with a list of these guys. They called them Fellas Against Gillis, or FAGs. 

Gillis: I gotta get ahold of that. 

Normand: That's fun.

"I'm gonna find out whoever was talking shit and whatever venue they're playing, I will bump them."

Gillis: You know what the hard part about this— 

Rogan: Bro, everyone's making a list and checking it twice. Everyone knows. 

Gillis: Well, the hard one about this one was like, SNL, the first time I got fired, I kept social media and in my head I was like, that guy talked shit. This one I just deleted everything immediately. So I don't really know. 

Normand: I'll tell you off air if you want to know. 

Gillis: I'm excited to hear about what it is. 

Rogan: Yeah, there's a lot. 

Shaffir: It's so disappointing. 

Gillis: I was thinking about bumping all of them. I'm gonna go on tour. I'm gonna find out whoever was talking shit and whatever venue they're playing, I will bump them. But I'm not gonna do that. My agent was joking around suggesting that, and I was like, "I don't think anyone touring talks shit." 

Rogan: No.

Gillis: So what am I gonna take?

Rogan: No, not that I saw. It was all struggling, middling comedians. When I say middling, I don't mean like middle acts. One of the comics said something to me about, there's nothing wrong with being a middle act. I go, that's not really what I mean. What I mean is you're—

Shaffir: Career middle.

Rogan: You're just, you're a dud. Nobody comes to see you. You never generated excitement. Now you're in your 40s. 

"I was like, 'Fellas, I'm giving you a solid C-minus of a monologue, but I promise there's no controversy.'"

Shaffir: Playing rooms. 

Rogan: And now you're talking shit.

Shaffir: Still a good life, but—

Rogan: It's not a bad life, but you could have had a better life. You just didn't fucking put the effort in. For whatever reason, you never figured it out. I don't know what it is. 

Shaffir: But I wonder how many—there's definitely some headliners who were talking shit. 

Gillis: I didn't see any. 

Normand: I saw some—

Shaffir: [Cross-talk] Didn't see it. 

Normand: I'll tell you later.

Rogan: We'll talk.

Gillis: Tell me right now. 

Shaffir: Tripoli used to have a "smoke 'em" list, just people he thought were doing too well. He was like, "I want to go on in front of them and bury them." He had an actual list of people he's trying to bury. 

Normand: Well, the funny thing, I saw you do that set at the Cellar a week before. It killed. Nobody had a problem with it. SNL approves it. The audience in the room laughs. What we doing here? 

"It is quite interesting that women wear these skin-tight, very thin shorts." 

Gillis: Not to defend SNL—they don't approve it. 

Normand: Oh, is that right? 

Gillis: They could shut it down. They could, but you don't write your set and give it to them unless you're not a comedian. I'm sure non-comics, they write the set for them. They write the monologue for—they have writers that write the monologue for them. 

Normand: Like you're an athlete or something. 

Gillis: Or an actor or whatever. 

Shaffir: Or anyone but a comic.

Gillis: But no, dude, the funniest part was I was going in going, they were like, "What's going on with the monologue?" And I was like, "It's not great, but I don't say anything bad." I was like, "Fellas, I'm giving you a solid C-minus of a monologue, but I promise there's no controversy. I'm calling myself fat for fucking 10 minutes. That's it." 

Normand: It's all on me.

Rogan: It is quite interesting that women wear these skin-tight, very thin shorts. 

Shaffir: More than interesting. It's lovely. 

Rogan: Men don't. Could you imagine if guys had their hogs pressed against their leg? 

Shaffir: [Cross-talk] Matteo Lane where he works out. 

Gillis: Men go shirtless and now short shorts are in style. 

"It is a weird look though, the little tiny little outfits. It's very sexualized. That's why people got upset."

Rogan: Yeah, but they don't have tight, tidy shorts that show their cock and balls. That's what I'm saying. That's a very specific thing. Girls just have short shorts and a t-shirt. 

Normand: Steam room. 

Rogan: What do you mean? 

Gillis: Dude, anytime I drive to the club while I'm driving in, you see at least 10 shirtless jacked dudes in compression shorts jogging. 

Rogan: Really? 

Gillis: Right down the fucking streets on the river. You go, "goddamn, guy's got a huge dick." And I'm sitting there with headphones looking out the window, like, fucking piece of shit. 

Normand: Jogging—my dick goes in when I jog. 

Gillis: Can you imagine working out and still having a thickie? 

Normand: Goggins. 

Gillis: Not me. 

Normand: Yeah. 

"It's just a fun thing to say and it's funny. That's it."

Rogan: It is a weird look though, the little tiny little outfits. It's very sexualized. That's why people got upset, because it is—I don't have a problem with it. 

Normand: It's real.

Rogan: I mean, it's very—and it looks hot. Very sexualized. 

Gillis: For the record. Don't have a problem with it. 

Normand: We all love it. It's wonderful. 

Rogan: It's just a fun thing to say and it's funny. That's it. And this is a weird time where everyone's just looking to get upset. 

Normand: Well, it's just what's clicking. This is the thing now. We'll go that way. No one actually gives a shit. 

Gillis: I think it obviously had a lot to do with the climate. 

Normand: Cornell.

Gillis: Yeah yeah yeah.

A few observations:

-Neither Gillis nor SNL expected that his joke would be controversial. Good to know.

-Gillis says his agent was joking about bumping other comedians, but I wouldn't dismiss the possibility that it was a serious suggestion—partly because Gillis clearly reasoned through the idea, and partly because he shares an agency, CAA, with Andrew Schulz, who very recently bumped other comics from their venues. 

-"Not to defend SNL"—an interesting slip about the show that hired him three times as host, and which he has previously defended: "They got caught up in it," he said in 2024 about the 2019 uproar. "And so I don't have any problem with that."

Window Shifts

On the success of the Austin project.

HumorismSeth Simons

-Rogan's comments here echo a March episode with Normand where he said he keeps "a mental list" of comics who criticize other comics: "I'll never fuck with you again. I don't want to ever talk to you." In that instance he also claimed it's only ever failing comedians who go after more successful ones, because they're afraid of their betters' talent. "It's not like Chris Rock's trying to take people's gigs away. You know what I mean? It's only losers. It's only people that don't have anything going on."

-Rogan appears to have learned this talking point from Tim Dillon, as he relayed in a 2021 episode of his podcast, featuring Gillis, during a discussion of the SNL firing:

Rogan: I became friends with Tim after he wrote something really insightful about comics that were coming out against Louis [CK]. He said one thing that they have in common is they're all really mediocre, and they love the fact that this brilliant guy is being taken out, so it moves them up the ladder, and they're trying to gain social clout by attacking him. It's 100% true.

Gillis: And the Louis thing was, everybody knew that. Everybody knew that story about Louis. In comedy. Before it dropped, before the news broke. 

Rogan: Oh yeah, I knew about it.

Gillis: I knew about it, I was an open mic-er in Philly.

Rogan: Well, I knew that he used to ask Sarah Silverman and he would jerk off and she would say yes. He would jerk off and they would laugh about it.

Gillis: So everybody knew it. Again, I knew it, I was a open mic-er in Philly. I'd heard about it, I didn't know it. And then as soon as it becomes in the news, now every comedian wants to speak out against it? It's like, where were you when you heard about it? I heard about it! 

Rogan: Well, they were scared when Louis was on top, that if they came after him, then everybody else would take them out, to try to make Louis happy if Louis didn't get taken out. But once it was clear that Louis was hit, and wounded—you know, you ever see what happens with buffalos when they get attacked by a lion? It's really interesting. There's a video of these water buffalos get attacked by a lion, one water buffalo gets attacked and finally manages to get free of these lions, they're fighting off these lions, finally manages to get free, and as he's moving around another water buffalo comes along and slams into him and knocks him over, and then the lions get him. And I'm like, that is comedy. That's nature. That's humans, that's just biology. When someone senses weakness, the really shitty people amongst them, those people attack.

-Speaking of Louis CK and lists, today's exchange also calls to mind Gillis's description of the mental list he keeps of Louis CK's detractors. That was in an August 2025 episode, shortly after the release of Marc Maron's special Panicked, the one where he said Theo Von would have Hitler on his podcast. This joke—and the discourse it sparked about the Austin comedy scene during Maron's press tour—was very upsetting to Gillis and his friends LeMaire Lee and Nate Marshall:

Gillis: What else is going on, you guys? So he went and libbed out. I hate when you get libbed out, dude. 

Lee: I did get libbed out, but I was just mad. I was mad—[cross-talk]—talking shit about the Austin comedy scene. 

Gillis: Oh. You don't like that.

Lee: I don't like that.

Marshall: I don't like the hypocrisy of it. 

Lee: Yeah.

Gillis: Yeah, yeah. Let them eat cake, bro. All those comics and those other scenes talking shit. Let them eat cake. I think that's exactly what's happening. They see Versailles and they're like, we got to cut these fuckers. That's all. 

Marshall: They're having too much fun over there. People are paying attention. 

Gillis: If they only knew what we were up to. Free bird. Just guys dancing, bro. We're not harming nobody. What's that? Just dancing the night away, dude. Not putting any work. Fucking floundering. Yeah. Nah, yeah, that sucks, but whatever. Let 'em talk. 

Lee: I know. It just was bothering me. 

Gillis: Don't get me wrong, when the camera's off, we can say whatever we want. 

"When you do a little press run where your main talking point is shitting on another comic, it's like, why don't you sell some—"

Lee: But it is fucking weird that they're coming at fucking—it's just because they're at their top. Like, Rogan and Tony, it's weird that they're just like—and then like—dude, let Kill Tony come to their town—

Marshall: And let one of them get asked to be on panel. 

Gillis: He's literally doing the Garden tomorrow, so. But that's what pisses 'em off, yeah, obviously.

Lee: But also, I bet I was like this two years ago too. 

Gillis: You're still like this. You're still exactly like this. We cannot—they're doing exactly what every comedian on earth does. But when you do a little press run where your main talking point is shitting on another comic, it's like, why don't you sell some—

Marshall: And when they all [unintelligible], "Comedy shouldn't be this. Comedy should be this." Like saying it should all be weird dudes. 

Gillis: Yeah, and then you watch the special and you go—

Marshall: You didn't do one joke.

Gillis: —"Wait, that's what you're talking about? That's what comedy should be?"

Marshall: I will say this. One of my favorite sets I've ever seen live was that guy.

Gillis: Marc Maron?

Marshall: At Helium. Yeah. It was like 12 years ago, Helium, me and Andy went and sat up front like dorks.

"I got a nice little hit list. Anybody that trash Louis, I'm just like, not for me."

Gillis: That's exciting. Yeah.

Marshall: But he's just such a fucking dork now. He turned on his friend the second something happened. That's really when I stopped liking him.

Gillis: Of course. I got a nice little hit list. Anybody that trash Louis, I'm just like, not for me. 

Marshall: Especially his friends that went like—

Gillis: "I feel obligated to make a statement." It's like, dude—

Marshall: Come on. 

Gillis: No one. 

Marshall: Literally no one. 

Gillis: No one wants to hear your fucking statement. 

-A few weeks ago I told you about Joe DeRosa's bizarre vengeful rant about the comedians who came after Gillis over the SNL monologue. His reaction was strange to me because there just weren't that many comedians who said anything critical. There was Ego Nwodim, who posted an Instagram story of herself at the gym with the caption "whore reporting for duty"; Phoebe Robinson, who called him a misogynist hack on Instagram; Hannah Einbinder, who replied to a much-aggregated Instagram post by the actor Dan Levy; and… Kenan Thompson?, who politely said in an Axios panel that if Gillis returned to the show, they would have a conversation with him about how things went last time. Beyond that, the response within comedy was largely defensive; the backlash came from outside comedy, i.e. the rest of the modern world, where people still think hate speech is bad. And yet that small handful of comedians left such a great impression on Rogan and his peers. 

-You know where I'm going with this: nobody is more sensitive than comedy's free speech crowd, the guys constantly accusing their critics of being too sensitive. They absolutely cannot handle criticism. When it comes from the general public, they dismiss the general public as philistines who don't understand comedy. When it comes from comedians, they dismiss those comedians as failures. Still, criticism consumes them. They track every post, they make lists, they seethe about it off-camera and behind closed doors. Their sense of tribalism blinds them to any of the principles they claim; all that matters is that their lessers treat them with respect. 

-Rogan pulls the time-honored move of explaining that the joke everyone's mad about is true, actually, and an accurate reflection of what these guys believe: "It is a weird look though, the little tiny little outfits. It's very sexualized." Thank you, Joe Rogan.