Amy Schumer has been accused of stealing jokes, beginning with three comedians—Wendy Liebman, Tammy Pescatelli, and Kathleen Madigan—expressing frustration on Twitter at similarities between their own jokes and Amy Schumer material from Inside Amy Schumer, Trainwreck, and Schumer’s HBO comedy special, Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo.

Liebman tweeted (since deleted), “Between Amy Schumer doing 1 of my best jokes on her HBO special and this meme of my joke, I’m done with social media.”

But the most vocal was Tammy Pescatelli, who said, “I want Amy to do well. Comedy is tough, being a female comic is even tougher. I just—I say this and I’ve said it before—I just want it to be on her own material. And I get it, she’s saying it’s parallel thinking now.”

Writing at length about alleged joke theft by Amy Schumer, Pescatelli tweeted (since deleted), “At least Cosby knocked his victims out b4 he raped them.”

All three accusing comedians have since retracted or partially retracted their accusations, though it’s possible, even probable, they did so in response to pressure and derision from other comics and the Internet at large.

Amy Schumer Denies Joke Theft

Amy Schumer denies any joke stealing , either by her or by her writing team on Inside Amy Schumer .

But while accusations of joke theft from other comedians has been substantially retracted, the Internet at large still seems convinced of Schumer’s guilt.

Two of the top videos on subreddit r/Videos are accusations of joke theft, with comparisons presented between Schumer’s material and the allegedly stolen joke. This video, sarcastically titled Amy Schumer’s “Parallel Thinking” Compilation is the most comprehensive:

Amy Schumer Joke Theft: The Accusations

Comments on the YouTube videos and their Reddit postings are almost universally against Schumer. The majority are loaded with additional baggage beyond joke theft, including all of the usual hallmarks of impotent Internet rage: misogyny, accusations of “PC” collusion, and plenty of fat jokes.

“Not only did she steal them, she somehow made them all worse with her terrible delivery,” said YouTuber aceflashheart.

William Smith said, “Shes just a lard ass, thieving whore.”

Supreet Sahu said, “To the people supporting Amy Schumer: If 12 women say Bill Cosby raped them without any proof, you believe he must have raped them. If 12 individuals say Amy steals jokes with documented proof, you can’t believe them. What the fuck?”

“I’m guessing Amy being a female plays a huge role in all of this… I don’t think any male comic will touch this. Got to keep it PC,” Redditor Ki-Low said.

Redditor cbanks420lol said, “Imagine if this was any other comic, they would get torn apart. She’s the biggest comic in the country right now. People are just riding her dick.”

But even if their anger at Schumer’s alleged joke stealing is based in the premise that Schumer is largely a product of PC culture plumping deeply unfunny women, do they have a point? Let’s a take a look at the allegedly stolen jokes outline in Amy Schumer’s “Parallel Thinking” Compilation, one by one.

Did Amy Schumer Steal These Jokes?

'Inside Amy Schumer' copied a 'MadTV' sketch

Both sketches are about a white person struggling to point out which clerk helped them with their in-store purchase, especially since they’re both afraid to point out the clerk’s skin color. Both Schumer and the MadTV sketch allude to U.S. presidents associated with African-Americans ( MadTV uses Lincoln, Schumer uses Obama).

Both the MadTV sketch and the Inside Amy Schumer sketch rely on a fairly common premise: a white person being uncomfortable in an interaction with a black person. But beyond the similarities in setting (a store) and relationship (customer to clerk), Inside Amy Schumer ’s sketch is about Schumer unable to differentiate between black people (she even looks right at the guy who helped her out), whereas MadTV is entirely premised on a white woman’s discomfort at describing ethnicity (the clerks she can see are all white).

How convincing is the case for theft? There are substantial similarities, but a generic set-up with a related, but ultimately different premise, would suggest otherwise.

Amy Schumer stole Patrice O’Neal’s Sex Act Bit

In 2008 Patrice O’Neal described a bunch of disgusting sex acts, including the “Gorilla Mask” and “The Poltergeist.” In her 2015 comedy special Amy Schumer: Live At The Apollo Schumer talks about similar sex acts. Her version of “The Poltergeist” is called “The Houdini.”

Of all the accusations of joke stealing leveled against Amy Schumer, this is the least convincing. Gross sex acts with funny names are a staple pretty much everywhere forever always. South Park does it. Middle school boys at sleepovers describe them.

O’Neal didn’t even invent “The Houdini.” It’s more like a pervasive street joke. Check out this Urban Dictionary entry from 2005 . Moreover, in her comedy special Schumer doesn’t even identify this joke as hers! Instead, the entire premise is about disgusting sex acts she’s heard about from other people.

The exact act described as “The Poltergeist” by O’Neal and “The Houdini” by Schumer is ubiquitous. At the end of “General Patton,” a song off Big Boi’s 2010 album Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty, music video director Dax Rudnak describes “The David Blaine":

How convincing is the case for theft? Utterly unconvincing, and our first, best hint that Brandon Farley’s popular YouTube video laying out the case for Amy Schumer’s joke theft is motivated by much more than the belief that Schumer is stealing jokes.

Amy Schumer Stole The “Slap Chef” From Kathleen Madigan

Here’s the Kathleen Madigan set:

And here’s the Inside Amy Schumer sketch:

Yes, Schumer’s “Slap Chef” and “Sleep Gym” are conceptually similar to Madigan’s bit. But Madigan’s joke is about Oprah’s wealth and power: that she could “hire a full-time food slapper” or pay someone to exercise her.

The Inside Amy Schumer sketch is more in line with an SNL commercial, with the jokes emerging from a society so lazy that this ludicrous product almost feels like a plausible business model.

How convincing is the case for theft? That Schumer’s sketch and Madigan’s jokes have completely different targets leaves the two with only “slapping food away from fat people” and “exercising would be easier if someone did it for you” in common. Were we to deploy time-travelling brain scanners it wouldn’t be shocking to learn that Schumer was unknowingly influenced or inspired by Madigan’s set, but the utterly different deployment argues against intentional theft.

Amy Schumer Stole Wendy Liebman’s Sex Joke

Liebman joked in the 90s, “Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I like it when the guy pays… for sex.”

In 2015 Amy Schumer said, “I’m very old-school, I think the guy should always pay on the first date for sex.”

How convincing is the case for theft? Maybe this was a unique joke when Wendy Liebman said it twenty years ago, but Amy Schumer’s explanation on The Jim Norton Advice Show says it all: “Kurt Metzger even said to me before I did my special ‘that, I’ve like heard jokes like that on the comic strip answering machine, I think that’s a little hack.’” More a generic throwaway and a warm-up joke, the evidence for theft is nonexistent.

Amy Schumer Stole A Tammy Pescatelli Joke About Women Dressing Their Men Poorly

Tammy Pescatelli had an extended bit from her 2006 special that said, in part, “women dress for other women, right, that’s why men, if we love you, we dress you for other women too. That’s why we dress you stupid.”

A vaguely similar job appears in the trailer for Amy Schumer’s movie, Trainwreck.

Did you catch it? “You dress him like that so nobody else wants to have sex with him, that’s cool,” Schumer’s character says to her sister.

How convincing is the case for theft? Unconvincing. Is there something proprietary in the common joke premise that women control their men? Or that ugly clothes can make you unfuckable? These aren’t blazingly unique ideas and beyond those basic concepts Pescatelli’s joke and Schumer’s line are completely unalike. This accumulation of evidence against Schumer is beginning to feel desperate.

Amy Schumer And Marc Maron Both Made A Cum Joke

Marc Maron: “We’re all people here. Everyone in here, everyone, has had cum on them.”

Amy Schumer: “We’re all disgusting. No one in here is better than anyone else. Like, you’ve all caught a hot load.”

Deceptive editing explains this one. Maron’s joke is broad and about the ubiquity of body fluids. Schumer’s joke isn’t about cum everywhere, but more specifically about cum on and in women.

Videos arguing that Amy Schumer stole this joke edit out the vast contextual difference: Schumer is mocking the squeamish reaction some women have to her comedy.

The “Parallel Thinking” Compilation arguing Amy Schumer is a joke thief even edits Marc Maron’s words deceptively, using a clip from WTF With Marc Maron to suggest Maron agrees that Schumer stole his joke.

Maron responded directly on Episode 675 of WTF, saying. “this fucking onslaught of accusations, this momentum, this fucking mob attack on Amy Schumer, it’s fucking ridiculous. It’s just fucking ridiculous. So where does it come from? What is it really about? What is the real pattern here. Right? What is it? What is the real pattern?”

Maron has an explanation for the specific joke. “If you work dirty, talking about cum is going to be part of your repertoire,” Maron says. “The conversation I had was edited by some fucking monkey to sound like I accused Amy of stealing… the point is that some fucking monkey, to serve an agenda, edited my words to support his agenda.”

Maron described the agenda he sees as motivating the accusations against Schumer. “I had an open comment section that I had to shut down,” Maron says.”Without fucking fail, if we had a woman guest—it doesn’t matter who it was or what she did—if there was a woman guest on this show, the comment section would blow up with fucking douchebags attacking that woman, with just fucking garbage, slander, violence, just nasty shit. Just a fucking string of anonymous fucking monsters slinging garbage at any woman guest.”

“It’s got nothing to do with justice. This is about annihilating a woman, annihilating a comedian,” Maron says. Listen to the full episode to hear more from Maron about Schumer’s integrity and talent (“she’s the real fucking deal, she’s a real fucking comic, no question”) as a stand-up comic.

Amy Schumer Is Not A Joke Thief

There are several more accusations leveled against Amy Schumer, all of them subject to the same dissection we’ve already done.

John Mulaney compared blacking out to your “brain” going to sleep, but your body “getting all Eye of the Tiger,” while Schumer compared blacking out to your “mind” going to sleep and your body singing “tonight is my night!” Who wouldn’t describe blacking out in substantially the same terms? The “joke” is in the specifics and the delivery.

Kyle Cease, in 2006, made a joke about Jesus getting a paternity test on Maury Povich to determine the legitimacy of the virgin birth. Amy Schumer told a similar story in 2010.

This may be the “stolen” Schumer joke with the most similarity to the original source. Still, the subject seems generic enough that “parallel thinking” is a legitimate explanation. In the context of several other ripped off jokes, this could probably be submitted as additional evidence. But with the weakness of the other accusations against Schumer, this one seems most likely to be coincidence: a generic premise performed with some similarity.

In Obvious Child Jenny Slate talks about how vaginas ruin panties, using cream cheese as a point of comparison. Amy Schumer, during her HBO special Amy Schumer: Live at the Apollo, said her worn panties looked like “I blew my nose in it.”

Is it really so hard to imagine that two different female comics would make a joke about dirty panties?

An episode of The Joseph Tran Show , a YouTube webseries with only 680 subscribers, had a joke about a magician turning condoms into balloon animals and pulled a long, rope of knotted silks from his girlfriend’s vagina. Schumer beds a magician in a 2014 episode of Inside Amy Schumer who pulls the same stunts.

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. How can we be sure Amy Schumer stole a balloon animal condom joke from Joseph Tran and not, say, Durex:

Or maybe any one of these Twitter jokesters, who somehow came up with the exact same joke in the days before Joseph Tran posted his video:

So is Amy Schumer a joke thief? The preponderance of evidence suggests not. And numerous comics have joined Marc Maron in siding with Schumer, including Jim Norton and Colin Quinn.

After the initial accusations from Liebman, Pescatelli, and Madigan, the “Amy Schumer’s a joke thief” accusations began to take on a life of their own. But while there’s a whole lot of anger across social media sites, the evidence against Schumer relies largely on people with little understanding of comedy, targeting Schumer for reasons that have nothing to do with joke theft.