I Hate Myself

Joe List is an anxious man who has built a career out of explaining exactly how his brain betrays him. His first hour-long special relies on this hyper-focused, self-deprecating neurosis, zeroing in on the dread of mundane interactions. The peak of this anxiety is the airplane, where he spends a significant portion of the set explaining that his fear of flying isn’t about dying in a crash—it’s the horrifying prospect of having to talk to the stranger sitting next to him.

The set was recorded on March 2, 2020, at the Village Underground in New York City, just ten days before the pandemic shutdown. Because of that timing, the heavy focus on travel instantly turned the show into a strange time capsule. List, a veteran road comic who spent most of the year touring, released the hour directly to Comedy Central’s YouTube channel that August. Beyond the flying anxiety, he targets the dental industry, the casual use of the term OCD, and the impossibility of sleeping in a middle seat. Audiences praised the hour for its high joke density and smooth transitions, cementing List’s reputation as one of the club circuit’s most reliable writers.