Dane Cook Wastes No Time Declaring Himself the King of Threads

Dane Cook just crowned himself king of the newest trend in social media — we can’t wait for the coronation at the BK Lounge.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta launched its latest social media platform yesterday, a text-based companion app to Instagram and a so-called “Twitter killer” by the name of “Threads.” The ongoing proverbial (and disappointingly un-literal) cage match between Zuckerberg and his biggest billionaire competitor Elon Musk spilled out into the online streets following the launch as the Twitter CEO announced his decision to delete his Instagram account, tweeting, “It is infinitely preferable to be attacked by strangers on Twitter, than indulge in the false happiness of hide-the-pain Instagram.” Musk also spent the last 24 hours liking numerous tweets that mocked Zuckerberg’s attempt to Oreo Musk's Hydrox.

While millions of online fence-sitters watch the much-publicized rollout of Threads with eager anticipation, one perennial social media pioneer is seizing the opportunity to establish himself as the loudest and proudest voice on the platform. Cook just smashed through Threads’ wall like the Kool-Aid Man — though the irony is not lost on me that he announced it on Twitter.

“Well here we go… first comedian on Threads. Where do we begin?” Cook wrote in his inaugural Threads post yesterday evening. “Funniest stand-up comedy memory? Best stand-up in a film? Worst stand-up special from a great comic? Is Elon Musk funny? Who makes you laugh the most?”

In the past 19 hours, Cook posted a whopping 41 threads (or Threads threads? How are we supposed to say it?), discussing topics that range from the potential of the platform, the state of the entertainment industry and stories from the old days. In one such post, Cook recalled, “Bill Burr drove me to NYC in the early 1990s in his red Toyota pick-up truck, helped me unpack. He went back to Boston; I went to the Comedy Cellar. Life is wild.”

Back in 2002, an up-and-coming Cook spent $25,000 on building his interactive website, DaneCook.com, making him one of the first comics to invest in the marketing potential of the internet. The website and Cook’s accompanying Myspace page would become ground zero for Cook’s unprecedented, massive and meteoric rise to the top of the comedy industry as he proved that a comic could organically grow a grassroots following online. 

Today, the social media practices pioneered by Cook are the industry standard. Every stand-up comic, from open-micers to headliners, uses their various social media accounts as cornerstones of their brand in an attempt to build an online presence that puts butts in seats on a fraction of the scale of Cook’s arena tours. 

Cook is now 51 years old, and the lessons he learned in his early career led him to the internet’s freshest frontier where he’ll again try to prove that he is comedy’s terminally online Nostradamus. Or, as Cook threaded, “I don’t wanna overshare but Threads getting me hard af over here.”