Comedy is a booming industry in Southern California with comedy clubs, late-night TV and movie writers all over the city. But it’s also an industry that finds itself in a precarious position thanks to what it commonly referred to as "cancel culture."

One comedian, Deon Cole, whose stand-up special Cole Hearted is on Netflix now, found himself in comedy after a friend dared him to do a stand-up set for $50 dollars. His made jokes about Sunny Delight, dating a girl from the projects and other things he observed around him. He wanted to convey these things in a way that he hoped would get laughs from the audience.

“I knew my life changed that first night,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep that night. I was like ‘OK, this is why I’m here.’”

He said it was an instant love and doing stand-up consumed his thoughts.

In his Netflix special, he says comedy is now under threat.

“What I think people need to do is allow people to grow with the times, as well. You need to allow that,” he said. “The things that we did back in the day we can’t do now. And what we’re doing now won’t be tolerated in the future.”

Despite the so-called “cancel culture,” he doesn’t shy away too much from poking fun at all kinds of people: black people, white people, gay people and so on. But, he said, he does research to find out what’s appropriate.

When crafting a joke about a lesbian, he talked to friends and got the opinions of others before taking it to the stage. His friend told him it would be OK to use the particular word to describe a lesbian, saying it was a good example and wouldn’t hurt anyone.

“And then you ask other people to see if it would hurt their feelings and make them feel bad and if they say ‘no,’ then you can run with it,” he said.

He said he uses these words to make people uncomfortable so he can then explain why he said it.

“I want them to feel that and then I want to break it down,” he said. “It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. And that goes with everything. It’s the dialogue that you choose to use in order to express what you’re trying to say,” he said. “The way that you talk to your kids isn’t the way that you talk to your husband. The way that you talk to your husband isn’t the way you talk to your mother. So, you have to be able to define what goes with what and to who.”

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