Comedic Algorithms: Washington Post Shines a Light on Botnik Live!

Comedy—cult-comedy, queasy-comedy, powerpoint-comedy, pancake-comedy—has become a staple in the Hideout’s monthly programming. From HELLTRAP NIGHTMARE and Wham City Comedy to Clickhole, Monkey Wrench and Late Late Breakfast, you can count on something coming to the Hideout stage (almost) every week that’ll indulge every comedic appetite.
Botnike Live! the brain child of Jamie Brew, a former editor at Clickhole, and Bob Mankoff, a former editor of cartoons at The New Yorker, lands at the Hideout once a month. The show, or performance, there’s no moniker that truly encapsulates what it is exactly, pushes seemingly mundane content through computer algorithms that in its technologically arbitrary nature spits out outrageously funny content. Last month’s show caught the attention of Scott Tobias and The Washington Post, who did their very best to capture the essence of Botnik Live!