Comedian brings new show to city

• Published date: 23 September 2021
• Author: Carly Gibbs
• Publication title: Guardian, The

And not just the good stuff, but the “terrible meals and the terrible days with their family”.

“It’s like this pandemic has kind of squeezed the private right out of us.”

Carlson will tackle the topic of oversharing on social media in her new show It’s Personal, touring nine New Zealand cities from October 2 including Palmerston North on October 17.

Part of the show’s blurb is: “Welcome to the days of minding your own business and don’t comment on others’ business. Not their gender, sexuality, body, hair, education or career.

“Also, welcome to the days of total oversharing on social media, but still, mind your own business.”

The idea came to Carlson during lockdowns and managed isolation in New Zealand, and Australia, where she’s been touring since 2020, with her previous show Token African. Despite others posting intimate life updates online, she’s never been tempted to “ever”.

“To me, social media is where you can connect, you can chat, but the personal stuff is what you talk to your family and your closest, personal friends about. Now, during the lockdown, I think people have gotten so sick of their people that they’ve started flopping out even more.”

Her own followers want to know everything and get offended if they can’t.

“People will go: ‘what’s your kids’ names?’ And I don’t tell them, and then they go ‘alright mate, I’m just asking’. I’m like ‘yeah, but it’s a weird question. These are people you’re never going to meet, probably’.

“I keep my private life private.”

When she returned to New Zealand from Sydney in August, followers requested she take photos of her meals in MIQ, and then post them on social media.

“And I said: ‘I can’t do that because I’m a Gen X, so my phone won’t let me do f***kwit things. I don’t feel comfortable taking photos of my food. How am I going to satisfy 147,000 people who follow me on Instagram? I’m telling you ‘it’s not bad’. I don’t know if you don’t eat onions’.”

This quest to know everything — and comment on everything — is rife.

I asked her for her age.

“I find it fascinating that they put it in the paper,” she says. Then, she humours me: “Can you put in there that I wear a Double D cup size? I’m 45, with Double Ds.”

Inquisitiveness she shrugs off, but some people she tells off, including a follower who told her she’s no longer going to follow her because she “bows down to the ridiculous demands of the Government” for staying in lockdown.

Another commented on a travel article she was tagged in about her move to Te...