FringeReview Worldwide 2025
Putting the Joy in Joystick
Joy
Genre: Comedy, LGBTQIA+, Queer Comedy, Stand-Up
Venue: The Abyss
Festival: FringeReview Worldwide
Low Down
Joy explores the connection between pornographic video games and incel culture. Through bright, witty humor and plenty of dirty jokes, Joy had the audience in raucous laughter.
Review
As the old ancient internet saying goes: “If it exists, there is porn of it.” Sometimes even, that porn takes the form of a highly interactive video game. After an hour with Joy, a trans-fem comedian from Iceland, you will see only a small fraction of the extent of video game pornography. Putting the Joy in Joystick is a joyous affair, pun intended. Anyone with a penchant and appreciation for dirty humor will get off laughing at Joy’s routine.
Joy’s jokes are quick, well-timed, and humorous. Relying on the absurdity of the material, Joy finds much humor in explaining her own inability to perfect cam-girl management in HunieCam Studios or what the balls meter means in Cuckold Simulator. Porn video games are an inherently silly topic. After all, these games are designed to get people off. Yet, some of the fringes of porn video games, like the Doom clone where you hit anime girls with cucumbers, make it difficult to tell who, and if this is supposed to be erotic for.
That is where the secret second aspect of the show arises. Putting the Joy in Joystick is not just a Top 10 WatchMojo video of porn video games, but an exploration of Incel culture. Joy uses porn video games to contextualize and explain the community of men who claim to be involuntarily celibate. Joy hardly pulls back her punches here. Like the porn video games, Incel culture is riddled with stereotypes and sexism. Trans women, in the minds of incels, are accused of transitioning in order to get laid. Finding male life too difficult, Trans women choose to transition to play life on “tutorial mode” as a woman. (Because as we all know, women have it so easy…) In this same line of thinking, gay people only exist because they cannot get with women. Therefore, they turn to men as their only option.
Joy is fearless in tearing apart this overtly sexist and homophobic line of thinking. Joy’s most profound lesson comes in the realization that only through self-love can someone then find external affection. By improving oneself and being authentic to who someone is, only then can someone else love and appreciate you. It is easy to blame others. Self-awareness is harder but ultimately rewarding.
Despite the profoundness of this message, this is the point at which the show struggled somewhat. The connection between porn games, incels, and self-actualization felt disjointed. Furthermore, Joy’s “deep dark secret” (which I will not spoil here) comes with little set-up. While honest and important in contextualizing this show, it felt underexplored. Often, my issue with “Explainer” type of shows like Putting the Joy in Joystick is that the performers do not reveal themselves to the audience in full. The work is often surface-level- a Wikipedia article with jokes. Joy’s work does risk this at times. That is a shame because Joy’s own personal stories are where the “joy” of the show is found. There is nothing inherently wrong with the material or how Joy presented it. Yet, it is a missed opportunity not to explore further Joy’s connection to the incel community and porn video games. After all, the “point” of the show is not to explain porn video games, but to explore how one escapes incel culture and self-hatred. There is real heart in this material. Joy would be well-served in bringing the themes of self-love further to the surface and imbuing them throughout the piece.
All that said, Putting the Joy in Joystick was my favorite piece of the day at Gothenburg Fringe. It’s downright funny and heartfelt. It is the perfect kind of show to go with friends, have a drink, and take note of some porn games to jerk off to when you get home. Joy is an important voice to have on the fringe scene whose humor, heart, and wit shine brightly on this downright gross material. If you’re looking for a laugh, look no further than Joy and her adventure through gaming pornography.
