Emotional Manipulation
One of the clearest times in Hilarious where Louis is purposefully manipulating the audience for the flow of the joke, is when he’s talking about how he recently was divorced. He was previously riffing on how bad he was at being single. The plot of the joke goes: Louis says he was divorced, audience gets sad, Louis tells them they’re stupid and divorce is great, and then talks about why. The part where the audience gets sad is crucial, because then when Louis tells them how good divorce is, it seems like a really smart thing to say (because his logic is strong, and he proved all of the audience wrong, and disrupted social norms). He manufactures this sad reaction from the audience by a very intentional phrasing of the beginning of his joke. It’s built in such a way that the audience feels like it would be socially unacceptable not to feel sad for Louis. “I’m divorced so I’m single again... after ten years of marriage...” He’s asking for an “awwww,” and he got one, which was great, because then he could retort “cut the shit,” at the audience, “don’t even start with that noise, like a puppy died,” followed by, “This is important, because some day, one of your friends is going to get divorced. And they’re going to tell you don’t go ‘aww I’m sorry’. First of all, you’re making them feel bad for being really happy, which isn’t fair.” None of those jokes would’ve worked if Louis had just said “I got divorced last year,” in his usual, calloused, Louis-like tone.