The answer has to do with the peculiar nature of stand-up, an art form in which the elephant in the room does not lurk in the background. It stands right in front of the microphone raising its trunk to the ceiling.

To illustrate why, a quick tangent: The only time I met Louis C.K. was backstage at a comedy theater while I was working on an unrelated story several years ago. Louis C.K. made a surprise drop-in and told a joke about something funny his daughter told him, and since like him, I have two daughters, the older one around the same age as his younger one, this sparked my curiosity. When he walked backstage, I asked him which of his kids was he referring to? His response: “I just made that up.”

I cover standup for a living and am well aware of its contrivances, and yet, I confess I was surprised, which is a testament to his skill, but also, I believe, to the conventions of standup. If the stories about Bill Cosby and Louis C.K. have taught us anything, it’s that we can’t trust the veracity of the personas comedians put forth for consumption, let alone the details of their jokes. But when gifted artists walk onstage presenting as themselves and tell the audience something about their lives, our first instinct is to believe it. Maybe we’re gullible or naïve, but that’s why standup personas make such good springboards for memoirs or sitcoms. It also helps explain the success of stand-up, the resilient allure of authenticity, the most overrated of virtues, and the challenge of comics who have lost trust with their audience.

The persona of Aziz Ansari rested on the construction that he was a progressive guy sensitive to dating mores. (He even wrote a book called “Modern Romance.”) Louis C.K.’s persona was more complex. He persistently talked about sexual perversion and immorality but also led fans to believe that he was ultimately a good guy. He initially ignored his misconduct when he returned to performing but has reportedly started to talk about it onstage, and we’ll have to wait to see how his approach works. One major downside when someone as prominent as Louis C.K. brings up these stories is that the victims have no say in the matter and are dragged back into the experience.

For swaths of their audience, the news about these men was not just disappointing. It was a betrayal of their work. That’s why the earlier versions of these comics are essentially dead. They can’t use some of their tools as they once did, and to flourish, they might have to find new ones. To some degree, Ansari already has. He’s a different comic: crankier, older, the kind of guy who says he doesn’t understand the younger generation.