Failosophy 101: Lessons from MTV host Hasan Minhaj

Hasan Minhaj hosts the new MTV weekly series, Failosophy, premiering Thursday night and shining the harsh spotlight of reality on our everyday failures online — via text message, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and elsewhere else mistakes are made.

Minhaj chatted exclusively with The Comic’s Comic to provide some real-life advice from his own real life. Consider this your Failosophy 101.

What do you do (and what do you recommend doing) when someone tags you in an unflattering photo on Facebook?

Here’s the thing, you can go ahead and untag yourself because said photo makes you look bad. And yes, I’ve done this before, but as a person who openly admits to Facebook stalking, you’re kinda taking the whole fun out of the whole Facebook game. I have a policy of ‘stalk the way you’d want to be stalked’ so whatever people tag of me (assuming it is in fact me) I keep up because that’s what makes social media great right? Yay for self-consciousness!

What are your favorite auto-corrects that try to trick you into sending a misleading text? Have you ever let an autocorrect slide just because it made your text funnier?

Some of the best auto correct fails I’ve seen have been on the show. I loved the one where the mom texted her daughter ‘Hey how is our pregnant daughter?’ and the daughter responded ‘OMG Mom, how’d you know?’ and the mom responded ‘What? I meant precious, NOT pregnant!’. That was pretty great.

I’ve never actually had an auto correct fail before on my phone. I guess my iPhone knows me so well now it types out everything I want to say perfectly. I’ve never had a ‘I’m going to kick your bass mother trucker!’ moment before.

Have you ever posted a sketch or stand-up video on YouTube that bombed? How does that feel compared to bombing onstage in live stand-up? 

Oh yeah, I post stuff all the time and the people who post negative comments are some of the most hate filled people I’ve ever met on the planet. When you bomb onstage people just politely stare at you. They don’t yell hateful or racist things to your face, they have the decency to keep that stuff in their brains. Believe it or not, I prefer hecklers to people who post YouTube comments because you have the opportunity to defend yourself and for the most part, the audience is on your side.

Related: Do you ever reply to YouTube comments? Should anyone ever reply to a YouTube comment?

Yeah I have. One thing I’ve noticed, and I’ve only really been able to do this because of Twitter, is that if you actually take the time to look at the Twitter feed of a person who writes hateful stuff online, they hate everything. So sometimes I really laugh at it. There was this guy on Twitter who just wrote ‘Haven’t seen the show, but I already hate the host of Failosophy’. I looked at his Twitter feed and the dude was shitting on everything including Nutella! Look, you can hate on me all you want, but the second you hate on Nutella you lose all credibility; that sweet hazelnut spread is absolute perfection.

What are your favorite and least favorite filters for photos on Instagram and Twitter pictures?

I actually like all the filters on Instagram, I just don’t like it when people up the saturation on their photos to the point that they look like they’re on an episode of ‘Ghost Hunter’. I’m all for making yourself look better in your pictures, but sometimes you gotta lay off the Casper filter on the photos.

If you have someone’s email and/or phone number, why would you ever send them a DM on Twitter, never mind forgetting that your DM actually got sent as a regular Tweet?

Ohhhhhh, I’ve done that before. I was by myself at a party and I ended up tweeting ‘Where is everyone?’ on my timeline instead of to my friend, so it just looked like I was having some sort of existential crisis online.

That said, do you ever DM people on Twitter who don’t follow you and therefore can’t DM you back?

I’ve actually never done that. I usually check to see if they’re following me too before I send a message and if they’re not following me back I sadly realize I value our friendship more than they do.

Here is an extended teaser of MTV’s Failosophy:

Previously: The Comic’s Comic also spoke with Hasan Minhaj last fall during filming of Failosophy. Roll the clip.

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

View all posts by Sean L. McCarthy →