Netflix is looking to give an hour long special to the comedian who has invited the most people to their shows on Facebook.
“Honestly, I deserve this so much. I’ve been working on this lifelong goal of being a great stand up comedian for three months and this is totally my time,” said Michael Schirtzer, Moleskine notebook in one hand, iPhone 4 open to a Facebook event in the other.
He hopes to win this year’s hottest contest – a Netflix special. Over the past few months Michael has clicked ‘invite’ over 200,000 times to his shows around town and doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. “I just have to stay dedicated to my dreams. With hard work, hours and hours on Facebook direct messaging people, and photoshopping my headshot onto posters for my shows, I know I can make it.”
“What’s funny is subjective, so the measurable quality of a comedian is hard,” said Netflix CEO Reed Hastings as he was showing a graph of user preferences. “But, we can measure how many people comedians are inviting to their stand up shows, and we’re guessing that must be a good indicator of quality.” Adding, “It’s not like you’d invite a lot of people to a show that was unpolished, unprofessional, or downright bad.”
Michael’s Facebook friend Christine Medrano commented on the invites, “Oh no, I ignore them all. If you say you’re gonna go once you’ll get pummeled with invitations until you silently unfriend them on their birthday.”
Next year, Netflix says they plan to have a contest for the person who hits the most open mics in a night – regardless of them having new material or not.
