Comedian and Ex-Engineer Ginny Hogan Talks Regression

You may know comedian Ginny Hogan from one of her pieces in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Cut, McSweeney’s, or another top-tier publication. Maybe you spotted her on Paste Comedy’s list of the best humorists writing today. Perhaps one of her viral Instagram reels or TikToks has graced your feed.

And if your entry point to knowing the comedy of Ginny Hogan is right here, right now—welcome. You’re in for a treat. The prolific multi-hyphenate just finished a month-long run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and is gearing up to tape her first stand-up special, Regression, directed by fellow comedian Hanna Dickinson, at West Side Comedy Club on October 13th.

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Hogan carved out time in her jam-packed schedule (she also preparing for the release of her latest book, Sex for Lazy People: 50 Effortless Positions So You Can Do It Without Overdoing It) to chat with us about all of her projects—and the dangers of being too open on social media.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Paste Magazine: So, to start: you’re everywhere—you’ve done an Audible Original, you’ve done podcasts, you do stand-up, you’re a consistent contributor to The New Yorker [Shouts and Murmurs], you have your own satire site, Little Old Lady Comedy, the list goes on—and you’re so good at all of it.

Ginny Hogan: That’s nice of you to say, thank you. [laughs]

Paste: And I wanted to ask—since you’re so young and accomplished—how did you get into comedy originally? I know you previously worked as an engineer.

Hogan: Totally, yes. I was working in Silicon Valley, I was living in San Francisco, and I had a lull at work because startups—I feel like startups have a reputation for being a ton of work, but if you’re a lower-level employee, the disorganization really works to your advantage, and there’s just nothing for you to do. And I had, like, a month where I had nothing to do so I started taking a stand-up comedy class.

I wrote jokes at work and got addicted right away—I have an addictive personality and, actually, my stand-up hour is about addiction, a little bit. Then I quit my tech job, and I moved back in with my parents in New York City. I kind of intended to go back into the tech industry, but I just never really did. Living with my parents, my expenses were low and I started freelance writing and built from there. I wouldn’t say I fell into it by accident, but it wasn’t super deliberate either.

Paste: Many of your bits—and your book Toxic Femininity in the Workplace—are very informed by your career in tech. I feel like all of your experiences have kind of culminated in your month at Edinburgh Fringe—how was being there and working on your set for it?

Hogan: Yeah, it really did feel like a culmination—hopefully filming this special will be the culmination. I’ve been doing stand-up for a while, I have a lot of material, and about two years ago, I thought maybe I wanted to do an hour. Stand-up is tough. There are traditional avenues that people go down, like trying to get a late-night set, and then a Comedy Central set, and then a Netflix hour. When I first started stand-up, I’d imagined I would do that, but it felt like those options kept vanishing. Now all the late night shows are currently off the air and Comedy Central is producing a lot less content. It became clear if I wanted to do an hour I should just do it myself. I shouldn’t just wait for some sort of industry invitation.

So I booked a time slot at Westside—where I’m actually doing my special, as well—and I just did an hour of my jokes, basically arranged in chronological order. And it was really just an hour of stand-up, there was no narrative, and I kept going and a narrative began to form. I look back now at the narrative I had a year and a half ago, and I’m like, “Oh, it was so disorganized.” But I guess that’s kind of good? You always want to look back on your past work and be like, “Oh my god. That made no sense.”

Fringe, I figured, is a boot camp-type experience, and it seemed like the only place where you could do your hour every single day. Last year, I would drive to Atlanta to do the hour, I would drive to Boston, anywhere that would have me, I would do it. But it would be one show and days of driving. So I figured, like, “Where’s a place I can go where I can do the hour to people every single day.” And then I did have an audience every day—I was very grateful for that. And if I compare the hour at the end of the month to the beginning, it does feel like one of the most productive months of my life.

Paste: I like how you equate it to a “boot camp” because it reminds me of all of the “tech boot camps” and “sprints.”

Hogan: Yeah, yeah, it was super like that—it was so many highs and lows just like a tech boot camp. I would do the hour, and by the middle of it, I would immediately have five things that I wanted to change. And I was so excited to go back the next day and do it again. It is really amazing to get to do it every day, and it’s truly the most tiring—I was drinking so much Red Bull. It was not a good lifestyle, but it was really competitive.

Paste: Yeah, so typical tech sprint. Going back to what you were talking about before—the route of a stand-up comedian. The trajectory has changed—I’ve noticed that as well. Comedian Shane Torres just posted a video where he was all, “Yeah, I just recorded an hour and Netflix rejected it. That’s how you know, it’s bad—because they literally have no content right now.” But it is different from how it used to be. Also, gossiping a little bit, did you see the Rolling Stone article about Jimmy Fallon?

Hogan: I did—but I haven’t read it yet. But I’m not surprised because I’ve heard those kinds of things about him. I don’t know what it will mean for his show and his career, but it sounded really bad. It’s so depressing how there are so many people whose absolute dream job is working at Fallon and then you find out it’s horrible. Generally, I think media over focuses on these careers that seem really glamorous and that there are a lot of places with really bad working conditions, but I also think it’s very important to recognize that so many people are kind of getting a raw deal, even if they have what seems like a dream job.

Paste: Again, you’re everywhere—you have a comedy podcast, Raising Questions, and it’s really interesting listening to you talk with people about their children and why they had them—it’s not discussed a lot. What was the reason that you wanted to start a podcast exploring those ideas

Hogan: In my mind, I had a really narrow idea of what it should be, but I ended up not really actualizing on that extreme, narrow premise. But what I wanted to know is, for people who were undecided about having kids in their 30s, how did that indecision affect their lives? Sometimes I feel like I’m living a dual life—I see the future both with kids and without, and they seem so radically different. I was saying to my boyfriend the other day, “I do think I want to have kids, which means I’ll have to go on a long backpacking trip this year because I’ve always wanted to do a month-long backpacking trip, and I don’t think I can do it with kids. Okay, now I actually have to plan even though I don’t have kids yet.”

So, I wanted to ask people about that—but I think, in general, people were a little bit chiller than I am. It was so interesting, because no matter whether or not somebody has kids, the question of whether or not to have kids [loomed] large in their mind. It feels like such a universal thing.

Paste: Plus, you have all that to draw from for jokes. Did any of that play into your hour at Edinburgh Fringe?

Hogan: Yeah, I have some jokes toward the end about my indecision about whether or not to have kids, which I don’t think I would have come up with unless I had been thinking about the topic so much because I wouldn’t actually say I very often sit down to write jokes. It’s more like I’m mulling things over and then the kernel of a joke forms, and then I tweet it, I tweak it, and then I try it on stage. So, my jokes are really whatever I’m thinking about at the time. I think it’s probably pretty obvious from my Twitter, but I’m often tweeting out variations on the same joke because I’m working on the wording again.

Paste: So I have to ask about the Twitter/X thing. Have you found yourself putting less effort into Twitter/X/whatever-it-is now?

Hogan: At first, I was so bummed because Twitter is the most useful platform for me and where I had the biggest following. When I sell tickets to my stand-up shows, I get information on what platform they bought tickets from and Twitter was always the number one. So, I was really nervous, but I feel like I’ve pivoted now to Instagram and TikTok—it is really frustrating, though. I’d rather type out a joke than say a joke out loud, but I have just kind of gotten used to it. I still put everything on Twitter, but if anything, it feels like a little bit lower stakes now.

I feel much freer on TikTok, which isn’t good. I mean, I got in trouble. I got called out on Fox News for a TikTok about the submersible.

Paste: I have to ask—are you willing to tell me what the submersible joke was?

Hogan: Yes, but I’m gonna defend it before I tell it. I didn’t know at the time that I put it up that they had all died—it was when we were still unsure and my whole feed was everybody making fun of the submersible. Then, I went on The New York Times and they said they had about 30 hours of air. So I posted, “Guys, we only have 30 hours left to make fun of the submersible”—okay, to be honest, it was “We only have 30 hours left to make fun of the people on the submersible,” which I wish I had just said “the submersible.” Anyway, people got very upset and it was listed in a Fox News article entitled, “Numerous Watch in Disgust at This Garbage Dump of Online Mockery” or something.

Paste: I’m on your side with that—it was a valid point. It’s like, “We can make fun of it until it’s a confirmed tragedy.”

Hogan: Also, in my head, I was making fun of how everyone was making fun of it. I’m so cynical; I was like, “That’s actually really funny that people are so delighted by this disaster.” I stayed quiet on Burning Man because I didn’t want to repeat the situation.

Be sure to catch Ginny Hogan’s taping on October 13th at West Side Comedy Club in New York City.

Brooke Knisley is a freelance journalist and comedy writer. She has balance issues. Let her harass you on Twitter @BrookeKnisley.