OPINION: How does Bill Maher still have a show? 

Late Night television is a hit-or-miss entertainment, depending on the writers, the content and most importantly, who’s behind the desk. One of the worst late-night shows is “Real Time with Bill Maher.” This show feels like the embodiment of the ‘old man yells at cloud’ meme. He really likes to complain about millennials and Gen Z in the most hypocritical way, and it feels like the embodiment of an old person on Facebook complaining. 

The first instance that I want to talk about is him talking about Twitch, the streaming website. Maher says, “Maybe I get Twitch, but I just think people watching other people play video games is a waste of f—— time.” I don’t really watch a lot of Twitch anymore as the content doesn’t really appeal to me, but I still understand that Twitch isn’t just watching other people play video games. A lot of people watch for the personality of the streamer, they like the person playing the game, so they choose to watch that person play the game rather than caring about the game itself.  

Twitch is also not just video games. There are people like Hasan Piker who talks about politics, and pretty much does a live talk show for hours every day where he talks about things going on in the world of politics, so saying Twitch is just people watching other people play video games is a very naive take. 

This next segment is much more recent and has to do with the Gabby Petito murder. If you don’t know, Gabby Petito was murdered by her fiancé, while traveling across the country in a van. Rather than talking about how terrible it is that Petito was murdered, and how sad the situation was, Maher decides to use this to try to bash the younger generations for not working and doing things they are passionate about, like traveling the country.  

In this clip Maher also says, “How extensive is this movement of young hipsters rejecting the dreary working life of us normies to instead explore the country in a van.” There are so many things wrong with this statement. The first is that the cultural movement of young people not making work their number one priority, is actually a good thing. The second, is that he says “us normies” trying to relate to the working class. Maher is a multi-millionaire, who partially owns the New York Mets. Nothing about Bill Maher is “normie.” 

Maher also talks more about how young people don’t want to be doctors or teachers and says, “you figured out a way to monetize f—— off.” This is exactly what Bill Maher is doing. He doesn’t see the irony of bashing kids for wanting to become internet celebrities, while being a celebrity himself. Coming back to the Twitch clip, it’s clear Maher doesn’t understand the internet, and sees that this the new entertainment industry. He doesn’t realize that kids becoming famous on YouTube or Tik Tok is the same thing he did in the 80s, it’s just a different platform. 

Bill Maher likes to talk about things he doesn’t know anything about and has a lot of clips that don’t age well, and that is bound to happen when you are in the public eye for a long time like Maher has been. However, the segment about young people being lazy was from just under two months ago. Also, I think it is important to reiterate how Maher took a tragic story of someone’s murder, and complained about how lazy this generation was, and practically made fun of someone who was murdered. I don’t know why people still watch Bill Maher, and I really don’t know how he still has a show.