By Will Erskine 
Josh Szeps #youtoo was a fascinating insight into the dark world of social media. He focused on how social media aims to addict us and turns us all against each other. Some of his content is controversial, as it seems is his social media presence, setting down a challenge to not dismiss anyone who disagrees with you as “wrong” or an “idiot”. He is quite compelling in his reasoning. In the past we were forced to confront our differences with other people and discuss our disagreements, in the world of social media there is a tendency to ignore anyone who’s opinion is even slightly different from yours and then block them so they don’t have to see the opinion again.
Josh paints a very bleak picture of the modern world, and the current habit of social media “archaeologists” to unearth dirt on anyone in the public life and shame anyone who disagrees with the current accepted status quo. He points out how ridiculous this is with a glance to the future and the potential views on how we live today.
While the show was genuinely interesting, it felt like it took maybe one too many steps into the seminar rather than comedy show direction. I appreciate that stand-up comedy doesn’t have to be constant laughs, particularly when dealing with dark subjects, but one or two additional moments of levity amid the bleakness wouldn’t go amiss. There were some technical glitches when I saw it which may have contributed to this challenge, and Josh handled this admirably. I suspect the show will become more slick through its run and this will likely increase the laughs and the smiles in a bleak view on the world.
It’s a show that without doubt everyone would benefit from seeing, as addictive technology and the toxicity of social media are topics that need to be discussed more, but see it with an open enough mind to learn something along with the laughs.
Josh Szeps in #youtoo is on at the Victoria Hotel until April 21st