Doomscroll by Blake Ung: A Creative, Comedic Exploration of Pain & Torture (Review)
Article • 539 Words • Humor, Philosophy, 2026 • 07/01/2026 • View in graph
A review of a comedy/performance art livestream I watched.
There are 547 words in this article, and it will probably take you less than 3 minutes to read it.
This article was published 2026-07-01 00:00:00 -0400, which makes this post and me old when I published it.
What if your explore page was just one guy trying his best?
In Blake Ung’s Doomscroll, “Blake must do whatever the projector says, and the audience has the clicker. Just like on Reels or TikTok, the audience can skip past jokes they don’t like or they can go back to previous slides and make him do it again. Some of it is stand-up, sketch, music, or if you really don’t like any of that, you can make him do pushups for 30 minutes.”
This is one of the most original performances that I’ve ever seen, and I was lucky enough to pay for one of the livestream/recordings of it. There are so many good stand-up bits, comedy songs, and impressions in the show, but what I found most interesting to me was how the show played with the idea of pain. There are, of course, obvious connections to the violence of social media and consumption of it, but I wanted to go beyond just that.
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The show’s slapstick bits’ varied and nuanced portrayals of both feigned pain and actually experienced pain were what immediately stood out most to me. Some varieties included, but were not limited to:
- Flavor/texture (Taste-based)
- Cringe (Humiliation-based)
- Endurance (Fatigue-based)
The longer it goes on, the more painful and potentially funny it is. Callbacks are accumulations of more pain, salt in the wound that make the pain even more pronounced and realized.
However, he’s not even the only person for whom pain is possible. The audience members during the show have the opportunity to be targets of it as well. There is a tension built into a lot of his bits/setups that creates a kind of anticipatory fear and anxiety in the audience, as well as the literal potential for switching targets.
This performance really made me reflect on how commonplace schadenfreude is in our daily lives. America’s Funniest Home Videos, prank shows, and other sites of humiliation are the delight of many. I think this kind of laughter can be fairly morally neutral or even good sometimes ( à la Shoemaker, who introduced me to that idea), but certainly walks the knife’s edge into mockery.
Why do we enjoy seeing people in pain, why do we laugh when we see it? Is it because it causes discomfort in us and we need laughter to bring back up our spirits? Or are we laughing in delight while reveling in the sight and experience of someone else experiencing pain? During this show, it might be both.
There is an implicit contract of consent in Ung’s piece, that he created this system and willingly participates in it, so that the audience members are given moral license to play in that space and torture him. This is an immense exercise in trust and vulnerability, in totally surrendering himself to the audience for their own entertainment.
I don’t know how you’ll be able to see any more of these performances (as I think the show is done and there aren’t any recordings available for on-demand streaming), but I would highly recommend trying to consume it any way that is possible, and as soon as possible!