The only story worth telling is: "I was going for the laugh and the laughs didn't come."
Blaming yourself is a waste of time. Making yourself feel like shit doesn't make you funnier. Be honest about what you need to work on but don't be a dick about it.
Blaming the audience is old hat and textbook projection. Can it sometimes be the audience? Sure? Does it matter? Let's dissect the frog...
2-2-2: There's two players: the Comedian & the Audience. The Comedian is faced with two opposing forces: Circumstance & Identity. The Audience is also faced with two opposing forces: Expectations & Experience.
If the Comedian's circumstance is that they tried to make people laugh and flopped; the flip side of that coin is what that means for their identity. Are you only a good comedian when you make them laugh? When you a bad comedian if you don't? The reality is that super funny people sometimes bomb and really hacky comedians sometimes get big laughs. The Circumstances are separate from the Identity but both play shadow-tricks on one another.
The audience on the other hand has the luxury of separating the present circumstance from their identity because they are simply a witness attending an experience with a certain set of expectations on what that experience will look like. But no one can predict the factors that determine the ultimate verdict and much of that is outside of the comedian's control: personal comfort levels, external stressors, individual circumstances. All in which the comedian has no control over and can simply do their best to adapt.
Comedians are storytellers, even the one-liner folks. Every joke, anecdote, old-ball-of-yarn is a story with a beginning, middle and end. So if you're not getting laughs — you have to do the hardest obvious thing: Don't make it a story. Let it be what it is: The successful discovery of something that didn't work. And leave it at that. Don't overthink. Don't take it personal. Don't emotionally react to something you have very little context on in the grand scope of things.
Your only job is to get back up there and try again.
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