Canceled Comedian Now Packing Shows and Followers

Adriana Stone 0 1 min read

Canceled Comedian Now Packing Shows and Followers

Ben Bankas is a stand-up comedian with a sharp, conservative edge. A Minneapolis club pulled six of his shows after online backlash. The reaction didn’t shrink his audience. It did the opposite.

Bankas says the cancel story turned into free publicity. “The cancellation was one venue where we were going to do six shows, no one else canceled in America.” He also noted stronger pushback where he’s from. “They are extremely sensitive to anything that’s offensive.”

Instead of disappearing, his profile spiked. “We added hundreds of thousands of new followers. People who already knew who I was but they were like, ‘Now I really want to follow this guy.’ We actually added way more shows than those six shows that were canceled, and they were added in way more markets.”

Bankas shared numbers to back the claim up. “In January 2026 I had, I think, 121 million views on Facebook and on Instagram there were somewhere between 30 and 50 million. So obviously, people like my comedy.”

He framed the episode as a familiar culture fight. “The Democrat-liberal thing on all this is, whenever someone is doing well with something they don’t agree with, they make it into this whole thing that it’s evil, it’s bad, when at the end of the day it’s art,” Bankas said.

Comedians often trade punches with the audience. Sometimes the crowd pushes back. Sometimes social media amplifies that pushback. In this case, the net result was more attention, more shows, and more followers for Bankas.

Fans posted clips and praises online. Those posts helped spread his material beyond the canceled dates. Where a venue tried to stop him, thousands of new viewers found him instead.

Here are the original social embeds showing fan reactions and clips:

Whatever you think of his material, the episode is a reminder: cancelling someone can sometimes boost their reach. In this case, the attempt to silence him made more people listen.

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