If one key aspect of cringe humor is ambivalence between the humorous and the embarrassing, refraction—as it is discussed in Bennett (2022)—posits a similar contrast and ambivalence between performance and vulnerability. In refractive comedy, ambivalent comedians are thus no longer simply performers, but leave the viewers wondering to what degree they need to perceive the comedy special as separate from reality or as part of serious sociocultural discourses about shared experiences and the role of themselves and the comedian. Based on two exemplary streamed stand-up comedy specials—Look At Her by Taylor Tomlinson, and Douglas by Hannah Gadsby—this study explores the discursive construction of participant identities and most importantly the comedian’s person by means of humorous incongruities, serious monologues, and the multimodal presentation of the program. Their oscillation between humorous and serious aspects of their life on- and off-screen appear to be part of a larger tendency toward a performed uncertainty of where humor starts and ends, and whether audiences should understand the performance as observational comedy or comedic observation.