Yeah, because you have to be good to even try..

In most scenarios, they'd probably have a bit of a test run per se, especially for an hour long gig. If this were open mic night, it would make more sense. Think from the company's perspective, if you have poor acts on stage, it'll deter the customers

Watching comedians bomb is still pretty entertaining. You should post on Youtube, Op.

I feel like this was extremely over exaggerated.

Or maybe he should treat his son like an adult and give him sound career advice based on realty that will help him succeed rather than massage his ego and lead him down a path of failure.

I don't think saying his sons act made him feel "vaguely suicidal" is sound career advice. Just cruel. :/

Perhaps not, 21, but neither is being "supportive of your soon no matter how bad his actions are."

*son. Ducking Swype.

#3 that's the worse thing to shoot your kid down and ruin their dreams of a job which is their passion. Life's to short and this is only the sons first time, he will need to learn from this and constructive feedback is key!

I don't see why telling him the truth and being supportive are mutually exclusive. It will require some effort on OP's part to be more tactful and constructive, but there's no reason someone can't say, "Congratulations on your first gig. I really liked blah, blah, and blah about it. Here are some things I noticed about your performance that I think you should work on if you really want to pursue this:..." In fact, not only is it completely possible to be both honest and supportive, it has been done by so many people so many times before that they gave it a name: parenting.

Stand up comedy is hard. Everyone sucks in the beginning. It's not that hard for the OP to be supportive, and tell his son to keep performing. He can only get better by continuing to perform.

You can be honest without being cruel. OP seriously needs to get a grip if it was the kid's first gig. Of course he sucked, he's still learning. Morons like OP make it hard for anyone in a creative job to progress cus if you're not better than a famous person making piles of money on your first day, they think you should just quit. You should be proud of your son for making that first jump. Not demanding he be better than a pro (even a pro you don't like).

I agree with #3. As OP said, it was his first. She shouldn't worry, things could only go uphill from here... hopefully :)

#5** ^^ My bad

No, he shouldn't. Being honest is better than letting someone crash and burn. If the OP tells his son he sucks (in a somewhat supportive manner), it might help him get better or quit to pursue something he's actually good at. Not everybody's meant to be good at what they like, they might suck at it. Enjoy watching comedy shows instead of bombing at your own.

Because the world so desperately needs more special snowflakes who can't possibly know they might not be good at something.

If and only if they can trace it back to themselves, I'm fairly certain that since even the date that this was written isn't displayed, that would be really hard to do. Unless only one person in the country has performed for the first time in the past week minimum if not longer, it's way too hard to pinpoint who exactly this is about

Idk where you're looking, but I clearly see that it was posted on 4/13/15 at 10:23 am. Post origin - Manchester, United Kingdom Lol

Date it was published on fml. Is that the day OP first submitted it online? Is that the day of the performance?

I fully agree with you. This dad is just being a jerk!

Probably drop faster than his comedy career

The date it was published isn't necessarily the day it was written and submitted, this could have been written days ago. Manchester's quite a big place and will have quite a few comedy acts, it'd still be hard to pinpoint.

You're not alone. He's great.

because Dane cook is a silly Lil bitch lol #awesome

You're certainly one of the very few.

Hour do you know he wasn't honest with his son?

I don't. But it kind of sounds like he's a turd who would rather talk bad about him and poke fun of him than support him. Just going by the tone of the Fml.

That was actually very clever, bravo :)

Thank you! Although I believe I could've done better with the execution haha.