Daniel Sloss On Knitting, Netflix & The Power Of Words

We interrupt 28-year-old Scottish comic Daniel Sloss “mid-pat” when we call him at about 4pm in “fuckin’ Baltic” New York where he’s currently touring X, which he brings to Australia this month. Sloss has recently taken up knitting – even if it’s mostly to prove he’s better at it than his mate and fellow comic Kai Humphries – and is currently trying to make a hat.

He says he’s “lovin’ it”, going on to say he’s spent the last two hours a little stoned, knitting and listening to ABC podcast Finding Drago. The podcast follows Sydney comics Alexei Toliopoulos and Cameron James as they try to find Todd Noy, the elusive Perth-born author of an entire book devoted to Rocky IV villain, Ivan Drago. 

“I'm laughing my fuckin' arse off I'll admit it, I love it so much. I'm just on episode six at the moment so I've had the fuckin' best day today: just a little bit of weed, fuckin' knitting a hat and listening to Finding Drago.”

Sloss uses “fuckin’” as part of the rhythm of his sentences, a form of punctuation. He’s recently risen to notoriety thanks to the release in September last year of two hour-long Netflix specials, Dark and Jigsaw, the first about the passing of his disabled sister when he was nine, and the second a self-described “love letter to single people”, which by Sloss’ reckoning has caused over 20,000 break-ups, 65 cancelled engagements and 78 divorces so far.

While Sloss says he’s finding the stories of relationship breakdowns after watching Jigsaw “fuckin’ hysterical”, as well as “flattering and funny and y’know terrifying to find out how much words do have an impact”, he insists they’re but one piece of the puzzle.

"I didn't realise how impactful words can be, especially not my fuckin' dumb ones.”

“The only [stories] I've been pushing forward are the breakups because that's what I find the funniest. I very rarely mention the fact that Jigsaw has definitely caused about a hundred proposals. 

“It's probably saved more marriages than it's ended them, and it's also strengthened more relationships that it's probably broken up. But those statistics aren't funny so I don't mention them. 

“Some of the impact is something I've never even expected in my life – I got a message from a woman who works in a shelter for abused women and she reached out to let me know that she'd made a bunch of the women there watch the show Jigsaw and that had kept them out of their abusive relationships… I didn't realise how impactful words can be, especially not my fuckin' dumb ones.”

With X, which he debuted at his 11th Edinburgh Fringe in August, Sloss again confronts a serious subject with his stand-up: toxic masculinity and sexual assault. He says that while he jokes that “there’s always one bit where I do a sad ten-minute TED talk at the end”, he’s never made a conscious choice to structure his show that way. It wasn’t even until July last year that he decided to include “the sexual assault stuff”.

“Before that it was just a show about toxic masculinity, but given the climate with everything it felt disingenuous – I've always prided myself on being a truthful sort of comedian and then to not talk about what was going on at the time, I just sort of said to myself, 'If you don't do this, you're full of shit.'” 

But Sloss, while he admits he’s not proud he “can get into a fuckin’ ranty, preachy mode”, doesn’t want the show to be an “attack on men”. He wants to “make people laugh first and foremost”, but also to “make fuckin’ blokes think about the stuff that I never thought about before… There was some stuff I was really, really ignorant to”.  

“I'm not there to fuckin' shit on men, I am one, and even though the show is about toxic masculinity and the dangers of it and whatnot, I am one of those people that believe most of us are good. I never really wanted it to feel like a fuckin' lecture at a rally. 

“I don't want to alienate the men in my room, right, I want them to be on side [because] I want them to think about this stuff... I'll defend parts of masculinity because I don't think it is all evil – I think a lot of it's stupid, but just because something's stupid doesn't necessarily mean it's bad. 

“I think the key is to not tell people what to think but I just sort of talk about it from my - well here's my experiences, and here's my conclusions, and if people disagree with me, that's fine, I'm never going to tell them what to think. [Instead] I'm being like, 'Hey, here's what happened, and here's how I dealt with things,' and they'll go, 'Oh fuck, I hadn't thought about that.' You let people relate to you, you don't tell them to relate to you.”