"If someone onstage is talking about a trauma you've gone through, it might revive distressed feelings, he said. "If they trivialize it, you could take offense."

Tripp has had his fair share of negative reactions.

One night, during a routine on his grandmother dying in hospice care, an audience member stood up and insisted that he stop. On Facebook, someone who had only heard about his kind of comedy from others, told him that he was disgusting.

"I was more upset that he wasn't at the show," Tripp said.

Tripp hasn't had any problems with attracting fans. Last March, he started putting clips online from his act. In one of the first, he talked about how you need more than lemons to make lemonade.

"There are other ingredients necessary," he said from the stage at Comedy Corner Underground in Minneapolis. "Life hasn't given me sugar or water. I'm just sucking on the lemons all day."

The 15-second bit has more than 4.6 million views on TikTok.

Tripp, who co-hosts the Uproar Comedy Open Mic at Minneapolis' Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater on Monday nights, had modest aspirations. Right now, he's focused on booking enough gigs to cover the rent at his new pad — and feeling a little less alone.

"If they laugh, it feels great," he said. "If they don't laugh, at least they're as sad as me."

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