The Four Levels of Comedy: Make your friends laugh, Make strangers laugh, Get paid to make strangers laugh, and Make people talk like you because it's so much fun. ↗
For this reason, strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type: the element of distance is no less general in regard to them than the element of nearness. ↗
That's a central part of philosophy, of ethics. What do I owe to strangers? What do I owe to my family? What is it to live a good life? Those are questions which we face as individuals. ↗
Suddenly you're surrounded by strangers who want something from you. The thing is, they don't know what they want, and you don't know what they want, unless it's an autograph, and you just sort of stand there grinning at one another. ↗