What Made Seinfeld Successful

The following chapter is from Limit Breaker: 101 Short Stories, Essays, and Insights to Improve Communication Skills

I want to talk about 2 things:

-Seinfeld, the show.

-Seinfeld, the person.

What made him successful?

The show Seinfeld is seen as the “show about nothing.”

A show about nothing??

No way is something like that going to be successful.

False.

A show about nothing has the recipe to be extremely successful.

Why?

I can’t say the exact reason why.

But I have a theory.

Normally, there is a certain segment in my day where I don’t like thinking at all.

And my disdain towards thinking (at that time) has me missing old-school media.

In old school TV programming, I had a channel called the TV guide.

That channel showed what was being played on TV at the time.

I saw what show/movie was being played on what channel & chose that.

If I was too lazy to go to the TV guide, then I would just aimlessly channel surf until I saw something that I liked.

This is different from new media.

Cable cutting is at an all-time high.

Nowadays, most people consume their shows through Netflix or YouTube.

Plenty of choices!

This can be a good thing or a bad thing.

Depending on the state of mind that you are in.

If I’m in the state of mind where I’m not trying to think, the last thing I want is plenty of choices.

I miss it when the traditional media was like:

‘Here’s what is showing. Take it or leave it.’

They took the power.

Well, this little psychological insight was what allowed Seinfeld to be successful.

You didn’t have to think too much.

You could just unwind & watch.

With our best friends, are we mindful or mindless?

‘I can be either. I like my friends a lot because I can be mindless around them without anyone taking offense.’

Exactly.

The show Seinfeld could serve as a friend.

That one friend who won’t get offended if you hypothetically were not paying attention to something they said, because they knew you had a long day.

A show about nothing can be highly appealing to a segment of the population.

The next question:

• What made Jerry Seinfeld, the person, successful?

I’m going to give an obvious answer & a not-so-obvious answer.

The obvious answer is that he was consistent.

He would write every day.

He took his field of comedy seriously & made it his life.

The not-so-obvious answer is that he was a little awkward.

Specifically, in social interactions.

‘What do you mean?’

He once said in an interview that he finds it difficult to relate to people in normal ways of communication.

Small talk, gossip, talking on the phone, that kind of stuff.

On the contrary, he finds it easy to talk to people while he is on stage.

Through comedy.

Something about a comedian feels highly personal.

It’s like we are letting them into our world.

Well, Jerry noticed that.

He said comedy was his vehicle to maintain relationships in an unorthodox manner.

I did notice this about highly creative people.

The more creative they are, the more one or plenty parts of their lives are very unorthodox.

They do things differently.

Different is good for some.

Different is bad for some.

Depends on which lens we view it from.

Overall, these were a few things that made Seinfeld successful.

The show & the person.

There’s no denying that Seinfeld showed that it’s normal to be weird & weird to be normal.

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– ArmaniTalks