Navigating Privacy and Setting Boundaries: Best Practices and Handy tips for Comedians

Comedians constantly balance the public's interest with their own privacy. Social media is essential for reaching out to fans and professional networks, as well as fellow performers, booker, promoters and industry stakeholders on varying levels, but it comes with challenges that need careful handling. Here's a guide to help comedians protect their personal information and stay safe without losing that vital connection with their audience.

Protect your Personal information

Your personal information is as valuable as your jokes. To protect it, keep your private contact details separate from your professional ones. Set up distinct social media profiles and email addresses for your comedy career. It keeps things professional and stops any accidental oversharing.

The Double-Edged Sword of Social Media

Social media is crucial for building your audience and engaging with fans, but it’s also a place where privacy can be easily compromised. Be mindful of what you post and set clear boundaries to ensure you don't share too much. Some people might not get the hint, so be consistent and clear.

Personal Safety and Harassment in Comedy

The comedy industry isn’t immune to harassment, whether it’s inappropriate comments online or unwanted physical contact. Newcomers, in particular, can be vulnerable. Raising awareness about these issues and encouraging open conversations about standardised behaviours, can help create a safer environment for everyone.

Setting Boundaries for Physical and Digital Interactions

Boundaries are crucial for safety. Make sure you have clear limits for both face-to-face and digital interactions. When you establish these limits, it helps manage expectations and ensures interactions stay respectful. Seek help and support of your colleagues, room runners, and industry stakeholders if necessary.

Balancing Being Personable and Staying Safe

Engaging with your audience is part of what makes comedy so rewarding, but it doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your safety. Be smart about what you share; reveal parts of your personality that connect with your audience without sharing too much personal information.

Simple Safety Tips

Common sense goes a long way in keeping you safe. Check out venues before you perform, share your location with trusted friends when out late, and be cautious about sharing personal information with people you meet in the comedy scene. Take advice

Have warnings and responses ready or kept forward in mind

Make sure you have a plan for dealing with inappropriate behaviour. This could mean setting up alerts for unwanted comments on social media or letting comedy venue staff. Our team will take action and support performers if someone crosses the line. Quick action can prevent repeat problems and send a strong message.

Focus on Learning, Not Judging

Finally, while it’s important to be vigilant about privacy and safety, it’s equally important not to use these concerns to unfairly judge or isolate individuals. Social shaming for the sake of self promotion is an unfortunate side effect of the opportunists in the industry. Healthy comedy scenes thrive on mutual respect and learning. Appropriate offerings of mediation, written agreements, setting of boundaries, lead to more informed and considerate interactions among all participants in the comedy community. All in all, Perth's comedy scene has lots of promise, but comedians need to be responsible about their privacy and safety. By keeping these concepts in the back of your mind, and developing your own tools, templates and utilising the privacy features on social media apps, we can grow the scene in the right way, and perform and collectively exist with both success and security.

Practical Solutions

The following are some Do's and Don'ts. This is based on real things that have happened in the past, and without including specifics, this will come in handy in terms of some baseline things to do. This list will be updated over time.

• Develop a plan about how you want to have a public and private ringfenced with your social media accounts - this means possibly setting up private posts, share to friends, or setting up a whole separate social media account to engage. Look at whether to post something on IG Stories vs Posts. What location information would you disclose, what personal family information would you post?

  • Real Scenario: A very friendly female performer posts a lot of her personal life regularly, including pictures of her kids, or targeted posts inviting prospective audiences to interact with her. Unfortunately, a new performer in the scene scraped enough data to identify personal location information, and took it upon himself to visit her at work to engage face to face. Since then, she's removed sensitive and personal information and identifiers, and produced a plan around communication to room runners as well as developed more suitable privacy techniques to continue her welcoming persona, as well as maintain safety protocols.

• Identify your targets - are you marketing to comedians, are you marketing to followers and prospective customers? What kinds of information are you willing to share. Now that you're looking at building a career, a MASSIVE % of your career lives in the digital construct, whether you like it or not. It is important to maintain a strict approach about what you disclose online and how you wish to be perceived.

• Use the Facebook Locked Profile feature

• Create a separate email for comedy, and never disclose your mobile number to anyone except Room Runners and anyone requiring to contact you professionally based on your work you do with them.

• Only give out information if you have to.

• Unless you trust the person, assume your messages are being screenshotted and shared.

  • Real Scenario: There are some sociopathic-like tendencies from certain people in any entertainment scene, and unfortunately defamatory behaviour is an encouraged source of currency for showmanship, clout, and social climbing. This is a systemic problem which will only get worse. Be extremely careful about personal information shared, as things can be put out there with zero context, solely to pin them to a wall.

  • How can I tell if someone is disingenuous? Takes time, but identify their behaviours and interaction towards others, how far they'll go, whether or not they opt for following due process as a first pass, or if they go straight to the "last resort options". There's a saying of "How you do anything is how you do everything", and there's always a pattern of behaviour with people. Be patient and cautious, it only takes time before they're exposed.
    

• Re-direct people to this page - there's a hugh source of information here - as we're the biggest comedy network in Western Australia, our goal is to ensure growth and sustainability and mental health in the scene for the hundreds of people who perform in our rooms and our ecosystem.

This list will continue to grow over time, and progressively evolve to shape around reported scenarios as they come through. But we hope these basic principles can support your protocols and keep you mentally and physically safely enjoying your journey!