The Stavros Halkias Method for Saving ‘Young Male Losers’

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In late August, in response to the red-carpet photos from the Venice Film Festival premiere of Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, one person on X commented, “Can’t believe stav shitposted and crowd worked his way into a movie with Emma stone.” It was a common reaction across social media and understandably so: When Stone’s creative partnership with Lanthimos kicked off with The Favourite in 2018, comedian Stavros Halkias was the co-host of Cum Town, a popular but niche podcast where fans would come to expect ironic racism, young male vulgarity, and the possibility of a host shitting himself. Since he left Cum Town in 2022, Halkias’s fan base has only continued to grow: He’s mastered the art of crowdwork clips and has more than 800,000 YouTube subscribers, who tune in for his stand-up performances and fitness web series, Stavvy Gets Ripped; meanwhile, his advice podcast, Stavvy’s World, has another 300,000 subs. Through all this work, Halkias has distinguished himself by being shockingly open about his flaws, faults, fuck-ups, and appealing brand of inclusive horniness.

Halkias doesn’t know why he, of all people, was cast in Bugonia, but he’s aware that his presence offers some semiotic weight to the film’s exploration of lost men who fall down the rabbit hole of dark online subcultures and conspiracy. In the film, Jesse Plemons plays Teddy, a young man whose life was ruined by capitalism and the pharmaceutical industry and who turns to YouTube with his questions; in real life, Halkias makes his living trying to offer such guys answers. The comedian remembers being an angry “young male loser” and knows how susceptible he would’ve been to predatory influencers pitching a combination of misogyny and bigotry, so he now embraces his role as an incel counterprogrammer. Instead of that dangerous path, Halkias pitches an alternative on his podcast and in his stand-up: If you believe in yourself and be good to others, you’ll get laid. And in an era of so much political polarization, isn’t that a unifying message? Just don’t call him “the Joe Rogan of the left.”

How did you get cast in Bugonia?
It’s been the coolest, most surreal experience of my life at every turn. My agent was like, “Hey, we think Yorgos wants to do a Zoom with you.” And I was like, “What the fuck are you talking about? This is one of the best, most visionary directors of a generation.” It’s compulsory as a Greek person to be a fan of his, even if he was bad, but I happen to love his stuff. We had this cool conversation, but I was just waiting for them to email me to say they’re going another way. The reason I made an indie movie was to show people, Hey, I can not embarrass myself onscreen. So if you need a guy who looks like this — if you need a diner owner, if you need a disgraced member of the community who’s being shunned for sexual-harassment allegations, if you need a landlord — maybe think of me. This was exactly what I had dreamed, and it just got handed to me.

What was it like for you on set?
Yorgos was cool as shit. I mean, he’s weird — you’ve seen his fucking movies. But he’s normal and gregarious. Really what I was nervous about was I don’t know Jesse Plemons; I don’t know Emma Stone. And they were so nice. I was like, Is this a Dinner for Schmucks situation? Why is Jesse Plemons acting like he knows who I am and is happy to see me? Emma Stone and I are just having lunch together.

The moment that was the most nerve-racking was the fact that they were using VistaVision cameras, and you could hear them whirring — the sound of, If you fuck this up, it costs this amount of film. Who gives a fuck about wasting a gigabyte, but this is rare film stock that they shot Indiana Jones on. I kept thinking, Don’t flub a line, because that’s probably ten grand in film stock. That’s more than what they are paying you.

Considering the film’s depiction of the internet and masculinity, do you think Yorgos cast you because of Cum Town and what you represent culturally?
We didn’t talk about it, but it’s fun to think about. As a movie nerd, I like thinking about the subtext of casting, and Cum Town definitely represented, in the mid 2010s, something edgelord-y, troll-y. We would never consider ourselves anti-woke guys. It was never a political distinction for us, but we did hate fucking tattletale losers. We did think that was annoying. Some of us more than others, but even I — whose role was to rein us in, as a straight man — philosophically agreed that Shane Gillis should have not gotten fired from SNL.

I didn’t think about that going into the movie, of course. I just thought it’s a funny wrinkle to take a guy from the podcast sewers and elevate him to be in this movie. [Plemons’s character] Teddy definitely listened to Cum Town. Maybe it wasn’t his favorite thing, but it’s on his rotation.

What did you learn about internet fandoms and subcultures from the experience of hosting Cum Town?
It’s not like other art forms where there is a separation of self and art. It’s dangerous. Extreme niche internet fandom was almost like a vaccine for getting ready for fame. I never thought I’d be famous in this way. My Cum Town experience helped me realize it doesn’t matter what other people think of you, as corny as that sounds. You can say that intellectually, but when you spend the first two years of your career just having people tell you who you are when that’s not you at all, it starts naturally rolling off your back.

You’ve said you couldn’t be 40 and still hosting Cum Town. Why is that?
I’m not going to sit here and tell you that when we started the show, we had some grand theory to be like, “Oh, we’re going to get back at these people who are trying to get people fired for old tweets.” No, we were in our mid-20s, broke as fuck. We didn’t like those people, and we were mean-spirited comedians who had a bad life. I thought there were going to be ten episodes of the show. I didn’t care if we were offensive; I had nothing to lose. Then once the show started making me money, I bought my family a house. I would’ve done actually awful stuff for 30 grand. I would’ve done a minor crime for that.

But I do think, when you see where we were at the time … It was when Trump was first coming up. We weren’t fans of that. We did have left politics, but we never really made that a focal point, because I don’t think that’s what comedians should do. But I do think it’s a natural thing — you get these people who don’t like what is going on culturally, who had trained in open mics for a decade, who also have a chip on their shoulders. Then you put that all in a blender, and you naturally get this knee-jerk rebellion, which I think is important. Young people should be able to make fucked-up jokes and it not ruin their lives and not be cast out as a specific thing forever. We were kind of rebelling against that — Shane being the obvious example.

But it’s a young person’s game. It’s kind of being like, “Fuck you, Dad.” You could argue 28 was too late. We were just emotionally and mentally stunted guys. Even if people our age keep doing that style of comedy, it should exist, but it also changes with the times. Honestly, I think for some 20-year-old, the equivalent would be making Charlie Kirk jokes at this point, as it is what the dominant culture says you’re not allowed to do. Instead of making fun of people who want to get you canceled, it would be making fun of this weird culture where people are taking their cues from the president, which is pathetic. That would be transgressive in the way that ironic racism and making fun of “I’m With Her” during Hillary’s campaign was.

You often describe Stavvy’s World as an “anti-incel” podcast. What does that mean to you?
There’s a weird mean-spiritedness amongst young male losers that is harming them. I only say that because I was a young male loser. It took me until pretty late in life, well into college, to even have a little confidence and start dating. I think about what would’ve happened to me at 17 if there was somebody being like, “If you’re mean to girls and you’re racist, they’ll have to fuck.” I would’ve been like, “Nice. I guess I’m racist now. That seems so much easier than believing in myself and becoming a good person.”

Now, everyone’s like, “There’s a young masculinity crisis.” I know what a 15-year-old boy cares about, and I just want to say, “Here’s the actual path to getting girls to like you. You don’t have to go down that road. This is poisonous. This is not good for you. I promise you, you will just feel better by being a good hang. The bar is actually really fucking low for straight dudes now. Just don’t go down the dark side, brother, and you’ll be fine.”

After the last presidential election, people were discussing the possibility — or even necessity — of a “Joe Rogan of the left.” What does it mean to you that your name was and still is often thrown around in such conversations?
What it means to me is that, man, we’re fucked. If they’re coming to me, if they’re even sniffing around over here, it means we need some more cultural figures on the left. Or what it really means is journalism is broken down in a way in this country that’s pathetic. Everything is for profit, and there’s now more and more powerful people buying our newspapers, like Bezos buying the Washington Post. I also think part of it is because comedians have boosted some right-wing voices, it’s unimaginative thinking to be like, Well, we need our own comedians to do that.

Look, do I feel a little pressure to be a little more clear about where I stand on things? I do, but philosophically I just can’t lead with that. I can say, “Get the ruling class’s dick out of your mouth and just admit it’s not immigrants and trans people that are the reason your life’s bad. It’s because there’s tax cuts going to the 0.001 percent. It’s because of inequality.” I did go to school for public policy but when I was 20, I decided I was going to stop learning about that and I was going to learn how to talk about my little dick for a living. I do think, at some point in my life, I’ll sort of return to that. I want to do it on a community level first. I grew up in Baltimore, and we didn’t have a lot. I do want to help kids in Baltimore. I was in some art programs that really helped me growing up, so I’ve been thinking about that.

I look at the arc of my life: I had some beliefs, I got educated, and I realized what I wanted to do had nothing to do with my education, but it still kind of clarified what I think about the world, what I want to happen, and how I want people to be treated on a base level. And now that I’m in the period of my life where I have a career and my goals are artistic, I’ve decided I don’t care about the world as much as I care about having a good time.

I believe you, and yet there is something about how you are denying it that makes me think, He’s sure sounding like the Joe Rogan of the left right now.
I do think people are self-aware too much and they think about their careers too much. And cynically, I think it would be really good for my career if I brushed up on a little fucking policy — if I got a couple statistics together and went on some news shows and debated people. I wouldn’t be nervous on fucking CNN, right? I am more entertaining and funnier than those people, and they’re not that fucking smart. If I studied for a month, I could do this thing, and it would be really good for my career. But I despise that careerist climbing bullshit.

On Caleb Hearon’s episode of Stavvy’s World, you said you were shocked and disappointed that Rogan endorsed Trump. Can you walk me through those feelings? 
What surprised me about Joe in particular is I do think we align on a lot. I don’t think he’s this far-right guy. It was just shocking, because he is an avatar for a regular dude. A lot of people do swing wildly. He liked Bernie; he liked Trump. There’s a lot more people in America that are like that. To me, it was more like, Whoa, what the fuck? How did Democrats allow this kind of thing to happen?

Because listen, I get being like, “I fucking hate both these candidates.” That was my position. I got not liking Kamala Harris, but I did not in any way, shape, or form understand being a free-speech guy and then being like, “Trump’s my guy.” That was really the crux of it. And it is worse than even I thought, obviously, with these fucking ICE pieces of shit with masks and no due process in America. And that’s your freedom-of-speech guy? He was suing journalists he didn’t like before this. I just thought it was a simplistic view of freedom of speech that’s like, essentially, “We should be able to say slurs.” They’re not that worth it. Take ’em back, bro. I would like due process and no slurs. I would like due process and bleeping out a couple fucking words.

You endorsed Zohran Mamdani in the New York mayoral race. Why?
I got not liking either candidate in the 2024 presidential election, because I do think the Democratic Party does not offer fucking anything right now. Mamdani represents something that is exciting to a lot of young people. Democratic leadership is like, “How do we get people excited after running the most bullshit consultant-driven campaigns possible?” Whereas Mamdani is a guy who’s fucking 33 and who just has excited people, but the Democrats don’t want that because they’re also bought and paid for.

This is what I mean where I have to be a little more explicit about my beliefs. I don’t think they needed me — his campaign is really well-run — but that’s where I’ll be like, “Hey, if I think I can make a difference in any way, even if it helps this much, I’ll help candidates I believe in or causes I believe in, or fundraise for things I believe in.” But I’m not going to have the politics hour every week on my podcast.

I saw you at a recent stand-up show, and when the host said something to the effect of you being the last line of defense in the world of bro podcasting, you essentially said that everyone has idiot friends, it’s just that your idiot friends have millions of listeners. Everyone does have idiot friends, but how do you process and consider the millions of listeners?
By the way, I am also an idiot. Me and my idiot friends have millions of listeners, and that’s fucked up. We really should just be dumbass comics who have specials, but that’s about it.

You can’t calcify into an idea of, We’re on opposite sides. I really, truly, in my heart, think you are falling for it if you cut off your friends who don’t share these same beliefs with you. What they want is to divide you and your friends to destroy communities along these fake culture-war lines. Ultimately, I don’t think these are hateful people. Especially when you talk about the entertainment industry, you get swept up in a lot of stuff, and especially depending on how into your career you are, you want to walk a specific line. But I do think it’s important to be friends with people who have completely different thought processes as you — as long as you think they’re redeemable.

As this so-called last line of defense in the world of bro podcasting, do you feel a level of responsibility? When I saw you live, you spent the majority of the set defending LGBTQ+ people.
Yeah, a lot of culture comes for them. When so much of stand-up comedy has this negative view, for whatever reason, of trans people, with my last special, I was like, I can’t have a trans joke. It’s hack to even have one. I’m still working on the material for the next special, but that’s what I meant where I hate that I have to do bits that almost feel like they’re in conversation with stuff that exists in the real world. It’s really pathetic that things are getting so bad that stand-up comedy actually might, a little bit, matter. I fucking despise that. I don’t want to be important at all.

When the comedian Jordan Jensen was on your podcast, she said a slur for transgender people in a convoluted point she was making, and you stopped her. I was curious how this situation is different than other times on your podcast where, say, someone has said the F-slur and you let it go.
I want to talk about that, because I feel bad for Jordan. To be clear, I would never cut out a thing on a podcast to make one of my guests look bad. But somebody took shit out of context and posted it. Jordan is a thoughtful person who has interesting ideas about gender and about her own representation and the spectrum of gender and sexuality. If I thought this was going to be a big deal, I probably would’ve engaged with it a little more. But my real thought process was like, Dude, we just started the fucking episode. If she had brought it up a half-hour in, maybe it would be different, but I was literally thinking, Dog, you’re promoting your special. Let’s start with some fun observations about your niece or whatever. 

When I said “Austin trans brain,” I wasn’t saying, “We shouldn’t be allowed to joke about this.” It’s just so hack, and no one has an interesting take. I am not even saying I wouldn’t ever laugh at a transphobic joke ever. My example of this is Patrice O’Neal. Elephant in the Room is one of the best specials of all time. He says legitimately misogynistic shit, but with his thought process and what it says about him as a human being, it paints this hilarious picture that surprises you. You’re like, Is he getting me to agree with him? How am I laughing at this? And that’s actually the hardest hurdle to clear. If you’re making me laugh at something that I fully disagree with, you’re really good.

The problem is I don’t think anything right now rises to that occasion. It’s become shorthand to show “I’m one of the fucking cool guys.” That’s like saying on your first day at boot camp in the Army that you should get nuclear weapons. Man, learn how to use a fucking slingshot; you’re not fucking good enough to do this. I think a lot of the Austin trans-brain shit was all these open micers thinking they have an interesting take on a very divisive, radioactive subject. And it’s like, You don’t have the skills for this yet, man.

Jordan is very funny. She didn’t really deserve the pile-on, and in hindsight, I wish we had maybe even cut it from the fucking episode, because I wanted people to see her fucking special. I just also hope people let go of the hack.

You made your career outside the Hollywood system, and now you are getting your feet into traditional Hollywood. Where do you want to live between the two going forward?
I’m incredibly fucking lucky. I have surpassed every wildest dream in every fucking way possible. My family doesn’t have to worry about money. So I’ll never get away from stand-up. When you’re starting, you’re like, Fuck being an actor, but then the road is hard. And then you do a movie, and it sucks. You go from being your own little king in the castle to being like, Oh, I guess I’ll wait here for 12 hours in case they need me in the background of a shot. And the money’s not as good. It’s like a guy who’s like, “Let’s have an open relationship, babe,” and then his hot wife just fucks a bunch of dudes and no one will talk to him. Acting is a lot harder than I realized, and I love my wife of stand-up comedy. Why did I think I could do better than her? And we’re sort of reconciling now. I am meant to tell dick jokes.

When someone starts getting heat, their team starts thinking of all the other directions they can take them. I am curious about your interest in any of the following: major-brand partnerships.
It depends. I won’t do gambling. I won’t do crypto. There are things that I was advertising and I was like, Why the fuck am I doing this? I hate this shit. But if it aligns, I’m open to it.

A book.
Before I even started doing stand-up, I actually really wanted to be a writer. I like the personal essay a lot. I would want to do it if it’s not a pure, cynical cash grab. I want to sit in a fucking cabin with a fucking typewriter and fucking cardigan. I want to do the whole thing, but it’s not on the top of my list.

Hosting SNL.
Yeah, for sure. Without question. It’s still, for so many people, your first entry to comedy.

A Marvel movie.
Nah. Well … Nah, I don’t think so.

A dramedy — either a movie or TV show. Possibly with A24.
Yeah, I’m open to that.

Hosting an awards show.
I actually have had that thought, and the stress I get in my chest means I should do it. The reason I’m so scared of this is because I would be good at it. And I’m like, Fuck, I don’t want to learn a new thing. I don’t want to do all that work. But yes, I definitely am interested in doing that.

A reboot of My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
Hell fucking yeah. Nia [Vardalos], let me get the fucking rights. I’m ready to shoot five right now. I got the idea in my head. I don’t even want to reboot. This would be the next one in the franchise.