Nobody Knows Real Americans Better Than Tim Dillon

Leading up to what we’re told will be the most contentious presidential election of our lifetimes, what are the hot topics that matter the most to actual, average Americans? Immigration? OnlyFans? Cryptocurrency? Processed foods? OnlyFans?

Netflix asked Tim Dillon to tackle the 2024 election in his newest comedy special, Tim Dillon: This Is Your Country. Most comics would have taken that prompt and pushed out a stand-up set filled with punchlines and pot shots directed toward the frontrunners from either party. After all, most of the politically-minded comedy content that Netflix produces pulls from the talking points and policy goals of the politicians themselves — not until This Is Your Country has Netflix Comedy turned political in the sense that Jerry Springer was the mayor of Cincinnati before he paid for a sex worker’s services with a check.

In This Is Your Country, Dillon takes us back to the Golden Age of trashy daytime TV with a one-off, Springer-style talk show that gives a voice to real Americans living in a post-dignity era whose problems aren’t properly represented in either party’s platform. The show is organized by segments in which guests speak on their firsthand experience with popular subjects — some participants make their living on OnlyFans, one lost a small fortune on cryptocurrency. And, as Dillon talks through the real issues with those most affected by them while ruthlessly roasting his live in-studio audience, he reveals a bizarre, compelling and completely American cross-section of the voting population that will determine the future of our country on November 5th.

I recently spoke to Dillon about This Is Your Country and how he gave the electorate the Springer treatment; here’s what he had to say…

“So much focus is on the politicians on shows like The Daily Show and John Oliver. There seems to be a lack of focus on real people, and those people are really funny. At a CNN town hall, you don’t really learn about these people and who they are. These things are inaccurate about who the voters are. In (This is Your Country), these are real people who we broaden into an environment where they’re talking about NFTs and OnlyFans, all of the stuff that ends up being, I think, the cultural landscape. And politics is downstream from culture, so this is more important than me going to talk to some candidate.”

“We wanted to talk about cryptocurrency. We wanted to talk about people making money on OnlyFans. We wanted to talk about health and food. We wanted to talk about immigration. We wanted to talk about things that we felt were affecting people, the people we’re talking about. When I would go to a party, go to a bar, go to a restaurant, the things that were coming up in conversation were these types of things. People were curious about cryptocurrency, they were curious about immigration, they were curious about the food system and whether people were fully knowledgeable about the things that were going into food. They were curious about sex and what role it’s playing in the economy. These things would come up, these were the issues.”

“We didn’t know exactly who we could get, you basically put feelers out there — we used a great company, ITV, they do The Bachelor, Love Island, all these things. And they’d go out and ask, “Do you have a story about crypto?” And then you get a bunch of people, and one guy who goes, “Well, I lost a lot of money on crypto, and I haven’t even told my wife.” And you’d get somebody who goes, “I want to tell my girlfriend I do porn. I make a living massaging Brazilian butt lifts on OnlyFans.” And these are obviously great stories, and there’s more of them out there than you think.”

“I was surprised that all these people wanted to come on the show, but then I realized that’s because it’s America. It’s a casino, and everybody wants clout, and everybody wants attention, and the only currency in our country now is attention and followers on Instagram and followers on TikTok. People get famous now for myriad reasons. Some people seemingly deservedly so, and then some people it’s a very big mystery why they're famous. And some people wanted to come on and spin the wheel and say, ‘Hey, maybe I can come on this show and someone thinks I’m funny or attractive and I get something out of it. I think it’s probably a fun experience.’”

“I don’t think dignity has any value in our culture anymore. Certainly not economically, and I don’t think it has an emotional value. Ten or twenty years ago, you’d be able to sit at a bar and say, ‘Hey, some producer asked me to exploit my family on television, but we said no.’ And I think someone at the bar would tell them, ‘Good for you.’ Now, they’d go, ‘Maybe call them back.’ Things are so crazy now that people are willing now to divulge details of their private lives that they wouldn’t have a long time ago.”

“All attention is kind of created equal on the internet. Even if you behave in a really bad or cringey way, people know who you are. I remember in the beginning of reality TV, we were so surprised and shocked that people would go on these shows. But now, we’ve evolved into a time when it’s a fun thing for them to do, people in their lives probably think it’s cool.”

“Look at any of these people. That Hawk Tuah girl said, ‘I spit on dicks.’ That was what she said, she walked out of a bar and said, ‘I spit on a penis’ and now she’s famous. Now, the fatal flaw to the entire thing is that you can’t plan to be her, but it’s a casino, and it’s like rolling the dice. That’s why people do anything. That’s why they upload cooking videos on YouTube, because they wanna be Rachel Ray.”

“(This Is Your Country) is coming out in October, it’s a satire of the American electorate, so even the people in the audience, I believe, are a part of that. We wanted to showcase who the people in the country really are, and that’s really it. These are just the people in the country. The country isn’t me going to the Republican or Democratic convention and meeting these ideologues who are deeply committed to electing one of the two candidates. The country is just people who will come to a soundstage in Van Nuys and have opinions on OnlyFans. I mean, these are the voters.”

“I actually respect the tenacity of Americans in what they do, they’re people who survive. These are all survivors. What it’s shown me, doing this show, is that our culture has ascended — and this is something I kind of already believed, but now I believe more strongly — into a series of scams where people are looking at everything now as a way to make a quick buck, whether it’s on OnlyFans yelling at men, or it’s massaging BBLs, or it’s crypto, or whatever. It feels to me like, now more than ever, we’re kind of embracing this nihilistic casino that we’ve built where people aren’t planning for the future, they’re trying to maximize whatever opportunities they have in the moment.”