John Mulaney's Salesforce Roast: When Comedy Meets Corporate America

'Can AI sit there in a fleece vest?': John Mulaney's Salesforce roast was a masterclass in corporate comedy

The stand-up comedian ripped into the AI cloud-based company's employees - and got praised for it online Last week, John Mulaney looked out on a crowd of corporate Salesforce employees and told them they were "imminently replaceable. "You look like a group who looked at the self-checkout counters at CVS and thought, 'This is the future,'" the comedian said. "If AI is truly smarter than us and tells us that [humans] should die, then I think we should die. So many of you feel imminently replaceable." Between its eccentric CEO, militant-sounding name, and the fact that most people struggle to understand what, exactly, the tech company actually does, Salesforce is something of an easy target. (It's a cloud-based AI customer relations platform.) Whoever booked Mulaney to perform at Dreamforce, the company's annual convention in San Francisco, probably didn't think the former Saturday Night Live writer would say it to their faces though. But roast employees is exactly what Mulaney did, in a set that made his audience "groan", as the San Francisco Standard reported. Mulaney poked fun at corporate-speak - "the fact that there are 45,000 'trailblazers' here couldn't devalue the title any more" - and tech bro stereotypes: "Can AI sit there in a fleece vest? Can AI not go to events and spend all day at a bar?" He also referenced his son, who is almost three, saying: "We're just two guys hitting wiffle balls badly and yelling 'good job' at each other. It's sort of the same energy here at Dreamforce." The comedian's appearance quickly made the rounds on social media, with users praising his brutal honesty. "We should bully tech nerds much more often," one X user wrote. The software developer and tech commentator Dare Obasanjo tweeted: "John Mulaney at Dreamforce is how I feel every time I log into LinkedIn." Last year, the comedian Seth Meyers spoke at Dreamforce, similarly making fun of the company's use of words like "trailblazers", "roadmaps" and "architect. "I saw 'architect' used as a verb. I don't even think architects use 'architect' as a verb," Meyers quipped. "If you were at a party and you said, 'What do you do?' and someone said, 'I architect,' you would think, 'No you don't!'" Working comedians are often hired by companies to entertain employees at corporate events. These gigs tend to pay better than comedy clubs, where raunchy material is the norm - "ten to twenty times more", said Jason Douglas, founder of Comedian Company, a booking agency for corporate events. (Salesforce is a client, along with Facebook, Google and General Motors.) "Real, significant tax bracket differences." But working comedians have to play it safer with the jokes than their celebrity peers if they don't want to alienate the revenue stream. "A comedian who's very rich can do what he wants," said Douglas. "When you book a celebrity, you have to take what they're going to give you. But a comedian who does corporate events all the time really knows how to read the room and what their parameters are." Douglas's advice to performers, so as not to ruffle feathers: "I tell them, pretend you actually work for the company. Think about the jokes you're doing. Would they get you fired if you work there?" When Douglas speaks at Salesforce events, he usually starts with a tried-and-true joke that references a company quirk without going for the jugular. "The Salesforce building in San Francisco is the tallest building in the city, but it keeps sinking into the ground a few inches every year," he said. "I always lead with something about that, and it gets a laugh, breaks the ice, like, 'Oh, this guy knows about us.'" Simon Mandel, a magician and comedian who has appeared at events thrown by Google, Harvard and Goldman Sachs, said that he always tries to communicate with bookers ahead of time to make sure he knows what "tone" they're going for, and whether he should avoid certain awkward topics. "I performed at a holiday party once where the audience knew that half of them were going to be fired after the show," he said. "Nobody told me." Mandel said his work tends to be "wholesome", more PG. That plays better with bosses. "[When I perform], I constantly hear that the comedian last year upset half of the crowd," he said. Gianna Gaudini, a San Francisco-based event planner who used to run events for Google, AirTable and Amazon Web Services, said that it's important to brief comedians on event specifications and to include rules in legal contracts. "Improvised jokes might touch on sensitive company or industry issues, so build clauses into your contract outlining any topics that are off-limits and could be offensive to certain groups," she said. After 25 years of experience in corporate comedy, Greg Schwem believes audiences want to laugh at themselves - to a point. "I think they find it therapeutic," he said. "A lot of times when comedians get onstage, they say things that the audience wishes they could say." Over a decade ago, Schwem performed for a McDonalds corporate gathering. The fast food chain had just spent millions of dollars in advertising rolling out a new breakfast sandwich that bombed. "[The bookers] told me that a couple of jokes about the sandwich was fine, but not to push it," Schwem recalled. "They didn't want me to do 10 minutes on it. I think it was their way of saying, 'We prefer you talked about something else.' I ended up not doing anything on the sandwich." Schwem doesn't believe that Mulaney "crossed a line" with his set. Still, he said he's learned that there's a difference between "having fun with an audience and belittling them". "I have to remember that no matter how silly I think a company is privately, or how much I don't understand what they do, this is people's livelihoods and how they support their families," Schwem said. "So it's not my job to go onstage and say, 'What the hell is this and why do you spend so much time on it?' I want the audience to leave the event saying, 'This is a really cool place to work because they hired that guy.'" Mulaney commented on his Dreamforce set a few days later, during a set at San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre. "They gave me so much money," Mulaney, who just welcomed his second child with actor Olivia Munn, said. "The whole time I was up there, I was thinking about all the money they were giving me, and it made me so happy." He did not specify how much money. While Douglas can't speak for Salesforce, he said the higher-ups probably don't care about some light roasting. (Representatives for Salesforce did not return a request for comment.) "When any company hires a celebrity, they really just want those pictures after the show to post on Instagram," he said. "They love the stand-up, but it's really just about getting to meet a celebrity."

Salesforce Paid John Mulaney To Speak At Its Event -- Then He Roasted The Entire Company And Audience - Salesforce (NYSE:CRM)

Mulaney at one point told the crowd 'so many of you seem imminently replaceable" Salesforce Inc CRM hired comedian John Mulaney to speak at its Dreamforce AI conference. But, instead of light-hearted jokes and funny stories, Mulaney took the opportunity to roast the entire conference, AI as a whole and the 'trailblazers' attending the event. The Dreamforce event, held in San Francisco, reportedly had more than 40,000 attendees. The lineup of speakers included Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, Olympian Simone Biles and more. But Mulaney, who spoke during the last day of the conference, seemed unimpressed by what he saw while attending. At one point, Mulaney told the crowd, "So many of you feel imminently replaceable," according to the San Francisco Standard. Read Also: NVIDIA, Salesforce Announce Strategic AI Collaboration: What To Know Mulaney took the opportunity to point out the irony of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs focusing on AI and the future in a city where thousands of humans struggle to live and maintain basic living conditions. "Let me get this straight," Mulaney said. "You're hosting a 'future of AI' event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably?" In addition to roasting the entire AI industry, Mulaney also poked fun at the vague corporate lingo often used at events like Dreamforce. "Some of the vaguest language ever devised has been used here in the last three days," he said. "The fact that there are 45,000 'trailblazers' here couldn't devalue the title anymore." Mulaney even compared the event attendees to himself and his son playing wiffle ball. "We're just two guys hitting wiffle balls badly and yelling 'good job' at each other," Mulaney said. "It's sort of the same energy here at Dreamforce." Keep Reading: Meta's AI Chatbot To Mimic Voices Of Celebrities Like Judi Dench And John Cena: Here's What Mark Zuckerberg-Led Company Has Learned From OpenAI-Scarlett Johansson Fiasco Photo: Kathy Hutchins/Shutterstock.com Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

John Mulaney Brutally Roasts Audience at Corporate Tech Event

Comedian John Mulaney was hired to perform standup at a tech event in San Francisco last week that the event's organizers would likely rather soon forget. However, his audience-jabbing jokes have subsequently made their way to the internet, where fans are rallying around Mulney's brashness. According to The San Francisco Standard, Mulaney had been performing a 45-minute set at the Salesforce 2024 Dreamforce AI conference. But in between jokes about fatherhood, his parents, and stint in rehab a few years back, the 42-year-old worked the audience and roasted attendees. "Let me get this straight. You're hosting a 'future of AI' event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably?" Mulaney said early into his set, amid apparent "groaning" from the crowd. "You look like a group who looked at the self-checkout counters at CVS and thought, 'This is the future,'" he continued. "If AI is truly smarter than us and tells us that [humans] should die, then I think we should die. So many of you feel imminently replaceable." In another couple of jabs, the Big Mouth star asked "Can AI sit there in a fleece vest?" and "Can AI not go to events and spend all day at a bar?" Mulaney also took the conference attendees to task for their over-inflated job titles and sense of purpose. "You know in your goddamn bones that a bunch of you are working on products that are just OK, but you have to vamp and make up terms to make it sound more awesome than it is," he said to an employee of the data visualization company Tableau. When another attendee mentioned that their title was "VP of customer success," he fired back: "Congratulations on your position that did not exist five years ago!" "Some of the vaguest language ever devised has been used here in the last three days," Mulaney continued. "The fact that there are 45,000 'trailblazers' here couldn't devalue the title any more." Near the end of his performance, Mulnaey thanked the room for "the world you're creating for my son ... where he will never talk to an actual human again. Instead, a little cartoon Einstein will pop up and give him a sort of good answer and probably refer him to another chatbot." "We're just two guys hitting Wiffle balls badly and yelling 'Good job' at each other," he noted of his three-year-old son Malcolm, savagely adding. "It's sort of the same energy here at Dreamforce." By Sunday, snippets of the article had made their way to social media, where people couldn't get enough of the backfired stand up set. "We should bully tech nerds much more often. They should get cop treatment at this point," wrote one user, while another called it "one of the funniest things I've ever read," among other observations. In addition to the corporate gig, Mulaney will also be headlining a show at the San Francisco's Golden Gate Theatre on Thursday evening. Whether or not those attendees will be safe from his barbs remains to be seen.

An AI Event Hired John Mulaney to Do a Comedy Set and He Brutally Roasted Them Onstage

Standup comedian John Mulaney was invited to do a set at an AI event in San Francisco last week that organizer Salesforce billed as the "largest AI event in the world," with roughly 45,000 people expected to be in attendance. But little did they know Mulaney was about to eviscerate the company and the AI industry as a whole, delivering a lethal reality check to all those audience members at the Dreamforce event. During his 45-minute set, Mulaney skewered the AI industry for its willingness to give up human agency, with often fundamentally flawed chatbots feeding users purported info about current events, work advice, and even medical diagnoses. "If AI is truly smarter than us and tells us that [humans] should die, then I think we should die," a deadpan Mulaney told the crowd, as quoted by the San Francisco Standard. "So many of you feel imminently replaceable." "Can AI sit there in a fleece vest?" he added. "Can AI not go to events and spend all day at a bar?" Mulaney also pointed out the fatal irony of hosting the event in a city that has faced a devastating housing crisis, crime, and drug overdose deaths. "Let me get this straight," he said. "You're hosting a 'future of AI' event in a city that has failed humanity so miserably?" Mulaney also tapped into the industry's ongoing efforts to replace human workers with AI, a heated debate that has gained considerable traction over the last couple of years. Mulaney took the opportunity to roast attendees and their navel-gazing and self-congratulating. "Some of the vaguest language ever devised has been used here in the last three days," he said. "The fact that there are 45,000 'trailblazers' here couldn't devalue the title anymore." He also thanked the crowd for fundamentally changing the world for his almost three-year-old son, ensuring that he "will never talk to an actual human again." "Instead, a little cartoon Einstein will pop up and give him a sort of good answer and probably refer him to another chatbot," Mulaney told audiences, referring to the fact that chatbots still have a strong tendency to "hallucinate" facts. Mulaney even used an anecdote about himself and his son to send the message home. "We're just two guys hitting Wiffle balls badly and yelling 'Good job' at each other," he said. "It's sort of the same energy here at Dreamforce."