Elon Musk’s Saturday Night Live hosting gig has been, to say the least, widely discussed. Some have expressed frustration that one of the richest men in the world will be given a platform after spreading coronavirus misinformation or, perhaps, just generally never showing a capacity for comedy.
Some on the SNL staff reportedly expressed frustration about the host as well, which spurned an entirely different brand of outrage that rippled across the Internet. But others, however, are extremely excited about Musk hosting the NBC comedy show. Namely, people who are really into cryptocurrency and want Musk to mention things like Dogecoin on air.
According to a CNN report, many crypto investors are actually pinning their hopes on Musk taking part in a sketch that involves Dogecoin or some other cryptocurrency that could cause the value of the currency to soar. In fact, just the news that he would host SNL has already made prices rise to near-record levels.
“Musk will undoubtedly have a sketch on cryptocurrencies that will probably go viral for days and further motivate his army of followers to try to send Dogecoin to the moon,” wrote Ed Moya, a senior market analyst with online trading firm Oanda.
Last week, Musk dubbed himself the “dogefather” in a brief tweet promoting his SNL appearance. The coin shot up more than 30%.
It’s certainly a dream for the cryptocurrency evangelicals who earnestly follow Musk’s tweets and the memes he steals from others to fuel the currency’s value. But actually weighing this a bit critically makes it far less of a sure thing.
Musk does get to play a role in what the show airs as far as sketches, if he has good ideas, but the only thing he has control over with any certainty is the show’s opening monologue and closing credits. The cold open rarely has the show’s host in it, for example, and hosts that don’t have the requisite juice to play parts in multiple sketches often get sidelined while the cast does the heavy lifting. It’s also important to note that SNL has already covered cryptocurrency and NFTs with an Eminem parody sketch, which makes it less likely they’d retread that ground after doing so just a few weeks ago.
And then there’s perhaps the biggest obstacle to making investors happy here: making cryptocurrency actually funny. While it is certainly in Musk’s best interest to joke about crypto — and he’s certainly been willing to bend rules for comedy’s sake in the past — sketches have to get past a fairly rigorous process of workshopping in the writer’s room and also making it past rehearsals and actually into the show’s 90 minutes.
Will a sketch cut for time and posted online later be enough to see Dogecoin actually cross the one dollar mark and make investors happy? That’s tough to say. But we definitely know what a big portion of the audience Musk will bring to the show wants to see. It just may be more for profit than comedy.
[via CNN]
