Why Did Katt Williams’s Special Include a Viral Video from 2006?

If you love airhorn sound effects, PowerPoints, and tiny legs dangling from giant stools, Netflix just put out Katt Williams’s new stand-up special, Woke Foke, which aired live on the streamer on Saturday, May 4. From a technical standpoint, the production seemed to go off without a hitch. From a content standpoint, Williams riffed on hot topics like Nick Cannon’s children, Trump’s shoe line, and the topic that only Williams is brave enough to talk about — Ozempic (“it’s too strong!”). But most perplexingly, he kicked off the special by playing a viral video so old that you probably remember it from the earliest days of YouTube. “It’s a new day and age. You can do anything. You can something even if it’s a bad idea…like playing blind football,” he said, before throwing to a nearly 20-year-old video to serve as an example of this “new day and age.” The video, dating back to 2006, is a news story on a blind child playing football — which a couple of years later was edited with an audio singing, “What the fuck is going on?” under the footage of the boy — Dillon Collier, who has since passed away — playing. “I hope none of my blind fans see this,” Williams said after the clip, “I mean, can you play blind football? You’re goddamn right you can. But should you play blind football? Fuck no.” Topical humor is clearly out, and humor about decades-old YouTube videos is so in. You better watch out, Scarlet Takes a Tumble.

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