We all know that one relative who thinks they are God’s gift to comedy. They are usually the ones at Thanksgiving dinner making jokes that make everyone else stare at their mashed potatoes in uncomfortable silence. But one 22-year-old woman on Reddit just discovered that her uncle took his unfunny, offensive shtick from the dinner table to an actual stage, and the fallout is absolutely nuclear.
The original poster (OP) was out at a bar with her girlfriend, minding her own business, when she heard her Uncle Robert announced for the open mic night. At first, she was excited. Who doesn’t want to see their family member crush it on stage? But her girlfriend, who apparently hangs out at this bar often, gave her a grim warning: “You might not like his bit.” That turned out to be the understatement of the century.
It turns out Uncle Robert’s idea of “comedy” is just publicly trash-talking his wife and family for cheap laughs from strangers. The OP said it started off kind of funny in a “boomer humor” sort of way, but then it took a nosedive into straight-up cruelty. By the time she left the bar, she was crying in the parking lot.
This wasn’t just light ribbing. This grown man, a 45-year-old father, decided it was appropriate to stand on a stage with a microphone and speculate about the s*x lives of his daughter and his niece. He questioned if they had “experimented” with each other because his own daughter, Lizzy, was a “gross freak” and the OP was apparently “too fat in high school to score anyone.” I need to pause here because I am physically gagging. The sheer audacity to say this about young women in your own family is disgusting.
If that wasn’t repulsive enough, he capped it off with a vulgar joke about how the OP’s recent weight loss was solely due to her diet of “muff.” It is absolutely vile trash masquerading as edgy humor. It is the kind of stuff that makes you want to burn the whole comedy club down.
Thankfully, the OP’s girlfriend is a ride-or-die partner. She managed to get her hands on a video recording of his performance from the bar staff. Now, the OP was faced with a choice: let Uncle Robert continue to spew this venom in secret, or burn his world to the ground with the truth. She chose violence, and honestly, I am here for it.
She anonymously sent the video to her cousin Lizzy (the “gross freak” daughter) and her Aunt Sharon (the wife he trashes constantly). It was a nuclear option, sure, but sometimes you have to fight fire with napalm. Uncle Robert wanted an audience, and his niece made sure he got the most important one.
Eventually, the guilt of anonymity got to the OP, and she confessed to Lizzy that she was the one behind the video leak. Lizzy didn’t exactly take it well. In fact, she got super upset and blamed the OP because apparently, her parents are now likely divorcing over the footage.
Lizzy felt the OP should have warned her instead of just dropping a bomb into their family dynamic. It is understandable that Lizzy is hurting; her dad just got exposed as a monster and her family unit is collapsing. But blaming the messenger seems a bit misplaced here. The OP’s response to this guilt trip was basically a shrug emoji come to life.
So, is she the ahole? Absolutely not. N-T-A. Uncle Robert is the one who decided to use his microphone to s*xually harass his daughter and niece and verbally abuse his wife for applause. He wrote the material; the OP just made sure the right people saw the show.
If your marriage can be ended by a video of you just being yourself on stage, then your marriage was already over. Aunt Sharon deserved to know what her husband really thinks of her and their daughter. As for Lizzy, it is tragic that she is caught in the middle, but her anger should be directed squarely at the man calling her a “gross freak” to strangers in a bar, not the cousin who defended them both.
Uncle Robert played a stupid game, and he won the ultimate stupid prize: a divorce and being disowned by his niece. Maybe he can work that into his next tight five minutes because frankly, his current material is trash.