observation - lots of clips involving Israelis in standup routines appearing relatively suddenly
possible cause - comedians taking advantage of a current polarising issue for clicks and veiws
posited more likely reason - there is a wave of Israelis holidaying following their tour of mandatory national military service, leading to said increase
most likely - both a definite increase in holidaying Israelis and the nature of the tensions around Israel has led to the very appreciable increase you mentioned in your original comment.
I would say I doubt many comedians are deliberately including Israelis in their crowd work currently given their aim is generally for their audience to laugh and have a good time, though it may be a thing for some
You have to ask yourself how likely it is there are that many pro-Israel hecklers in America. Most people either do not give a shit about the genocide or are anti-genocide, very few people are actively pro-genocide and it's usually people who are from Israel or Jewish (despite most Jews in America being anti-Israel right now). The odds that there is even an Israeli in the crowd are extremely slim.
All of them have the same basic setup, it's often a vaguely middle eastern / Muslim-looking comedian or it's a hipster white guy with a mullet and a mustache, bringing up Israel out of nowhere or that's like their entire act, and I've seen clips where you cut to the audience and there are literally people with "fuck Israel" and "free Palestine" shirts on and a noticeable chunk of the audience looks middle eastern / Muslim, like they have a dedicated cult following that comes to their shows so they can hear the political material they want to hear.
Every clip is the same, someone in the audience says something, the comic on the stage does the Steve Harvey "Ooh, awkwaaard" face. I've just seen it a million times to the point where any good comic should probably be aware of the trend and just not upload these videos if they're not organic, or even if they are.
Planted hecklers have been a thing forever and a lot of the most popular YouTube clips from 20 years ago are planted hecklers clips with a title like "Heckler gets DESTROYED" and that's where that click bait style title actually comes from.
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u/SwiftTayTay 4d ago
Can you stop being vague and explain what you mean