John Mulaney Performed at a Salesforce Conference and Ripped the Company and Everyone There the Whole Time
SF Standard — “Let me get this straight,” John Mulaney said. “You’re hosting a ‘future of AI’ event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably?”
Everyone inside the auditorium at the Moscone Center groaned. Any notion that the award-winning comedian would play the corporate gig safe (and clean) were thrown out the window Thursday, when Mulaney, closing the Dreamforce festivities, started roasting his host, Salesforce, and the audience sitting right in front of him.
“You look like a group who looked at the self-checkout counters at CVS and thought, ‘This is the future,’” Mulaney said.
“If AI is truly smarter than us and tells us that [humans] should die, then I think we should die,” he said, looking out to the crowd from center stage. “So many of you feel imminently replaceable.”
He added, “Can AI sit there in a fleece vest? Can AI not go to events and spend all day at a bar?”
“You’re a VP of customer success?” he asked another attendee. “Congratulations on your position that did not exist five years ago!”
Between anecdotes about his aging parents, his stint in rehab, and fatherhood, Mulaney worked the crowd, poking fun at tech workers and their buzzwords.
“What’s important here is that we’re looking for solutions,” he said sarcastically. “And in looking for solutions, what we’re really after is insights, which then lead to success. Now, start prepping the humans for robots.
“Some of the vaguest language ever devised has been used here in the last three days,” he continued. “The fact that there are 45,000 ‘trailblazers’ here couldn’t devalue the title any more.”
This rocks so much. I can't even imagine what a company would have to pay John Mulaney to do a private gig and he just got up on stage and tore these tech cucks limb from limb.
The very fact he was there at all, though, is pretty much validation of everything he was saying. Why do a bunch of computer engineers need a private set from Mulaney other than to sit there in their Salesforce Columbia fleece vests and feel important and cool? Now, I understand that my job is also slightly ridiculous, which is precisely why if someone from Barstool said, "We're hiring a comedian to come in and make observations about us in a small room," I would be sick that day.
I hope the Salesforce employees had a great time, though. Sure, they had to listen to one of the most famous comedians in the country taunt them for an hour, but I'd be willing to bet there was a sick swag bag on the way out the door before heading to the "Crossroads of AI and Social Justice" seminar later that day.