Being a comedian kind of seems like an extended exercise in self-flagellation driven by masochistic tendencies, which is why it’s wild that so many people continue to attempt to establish themselves in the field. A couple of Australian pranksters made matters even worse when they filled an entire audience at a stand-up show with actors who had been paid specifically not to laugh at any of the comedian’s jokes.

The prank took place during a Lewis Spears set at a Kings of Comedy night with the cooperation of the organizers. As the pranksters explain in their video, their initial idea was to get everyone to laugh at different points, but that evolved into them being instructed not to laugh at all. Kings of Comedy presenter Simon Hughes was hesitant about this at first. He explains that, as a comedian, he knows “what it’s like to die” when nobody laughs at your jokes, but eventually came on board, and the prank went ahead.

After some further deliberation at the venue, it was decided that the audience would laugh when Spears said his name and then never again. Spears started his set by launching into a joke about his 6-foot-8 height almost constitutes a disability, but the crowd just stared at him awkwardly, barely reacting. After people continued to refuse to laugh at his jokes about his height, Spears commented, “This is very strange. I feel like we should all be taking ecstasy and hooking up with each other and we’ll get on Simon’s level.” But again, crickets.

Spears adjusted his material to respond to the audience’s failure to laugh at his jokes, explaining that he’s not altogether surprised considering the last time he performed he was protested for making jokes about the Dalai Lama. Throughout it all, the pranksters were backstage trying not to die of laughter while admitting, “This hurts my soul.”

Spears came incredibly close to solving the mystery when he joked, “I got up here, and I feel like everyone agreed, ‘Alright, let’s just sit in silence,’ fuck’s going on?” before abandoning his Dalai Lama bit and returning to the height jokes. Those didn’t help either obviously, leading Spears to exclaim, “Man you fucking hate me huh?! This is maybe the worst I’ve bombed ever.” I don’t doubt it.

Spears closed out his set with a joke about not wanting to accept payment for the gig, which was when Hughes returned to the stage and called Spears back, letting him in on the joke and prompting him to cuss out the audience as they cheered and clapped. In the end, though, Spears took it all in stride, laughing about it at the end of the video and even commenting, “I’m still recovering from this” on the YouTube clip.

Here’s hoping he’s fully recovered by now and never actually bombs this hard in his stand-up career ever again. He’s suffered enough.