Joe Mande

Career

Mande has appeared on such TV shows as Comedy Central's The Half Hour, VH1's Best Week Ever and Conan. He is also the author of the book Look At This Fucking Hipster.

Mande was a writer for the final three seasons of the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation, also appearing in seven episodes as Pawnee resident Morris Lerpiss. He has also written for the Comedy Central sketch series Kroll Show, and the Adult Swim series Delocated. He was a producer for the 1st season of the Netflix series Master of None in 2015, as well as currently producing the NBC sitcom The Good Place.

Bitchface

Mande released his first comedy album, Bitchface on March 14, 2014. The album was done in the style of a mixtape with voicemail messages from Fabolous, Roy Hibbert, Jenny Slate, Nick Kroll, Aziz Ansari, The RZA and Amy Poehler.

Personal life

In his spare time, Mande claims that he has a list of corporations and celebrities who he tries to antagonize on Twitter. "That’s my favorite thing. It’s so much fun to do, but I don’t wake up in the morning and rub my hands together thinking about who I’m going to mess with today," he says. He continued calling himself a hypocrite in saying "Also it’s so funny that when people write mean things to me, I take it so personally. I have no right. I’m such a hypocrite."

After Mande previously called himself a hypocrite in 2011, Mande claimed that he uses Twitter to call out hypocrites in 2016 saying "some people need to be called out for being hypocrites or for being stupid." When asked about sharing a picture of someone he blocked on Twitter, Mande replied saying "Nothing is more pathetic than bragging about who has blocked you. I block people all the time but I don’t want people to get that joy [of being blocked]. I just want to get that same amount of joy. So I want to just showcase that... so they get punished."

Mande talked about his struggles with mental illness saying "It's definitely a sign of mental illness. I do need to get it in check. It's not helpful for anyone, really. It -- briefly, I get a laugh out of it -- but all troll behavior, people should figure themselves out. Me included."

In 2011, Mande monitored the Twitter account of former NBA player Gilbert Arenas over the course of many months, then saved and posted the pictures which he deemed offensive while also writing a critique of what he thought of Gilbert Arenas.

In April 2012, Mande was sent a cease and desist letter from LaCroix Water. 360i vice-president of strategy, Shankar Gupta, explained saying "When you’re sending one to someone who builds their personal brand by creating controversy on Twitter, you have to go in with the presumption that anything you send privately will be posted publicly. So, in this case, you really need your PR team and your legal team to collaborate to ensure that you get the message across in the right tone, or you risk sounding like a big, faceless corporation."

On July 14, 2014, Mande announced that he started a Kickstarter for "The Million Dollar Podcast", saying that if he raised one million dollars he would interview "comedians and musicians and shit like that." He was briefly held up by Kickstarter, who initially rejected the project, saying that it didn't "create something to share with others." Mande appealed and the Kickstarter was finally allowed to begin. It ran from July 16 - August 15, 2014, with Mande claiming that he would "mention your name on the podcast or something" if someone were to donate $1000.

On January 20, 2017, following President Donald Trump's inauguration, 33-year-old Mande tweeted about Trump's youngest son, 10-year-old Barron Trump, saying he "will be mutilating cats on the white house lawn in like two weeks." Comedian Stephen Spinola and SNL writer Katie Rich made similar tweets, both later apologized after NBC suspended Rich from the show.