Another popular forum for internet comedy is through twitter accounts and blogs, as written by individuals. These have created public outlets for people who would not have otherwise been able or driven to express their senses of humor. Because it is free to publish oneself, millions do. With the subtraction of a distributor or middle-man, there is no censorship or external guidance in these cases, and so a great breadth of material is being produced. From Shaquille O'Neal's infamous Shaq Twitter, through which the basketball star makes quips from the bench during a game, to the musings of a Canadian housewife, anyone can express their thoughts. Perhaps the most important thing to evolve out of this direct writer-to-reader connection, is a demand by the audience for a sense of intimacy.
In our culture, there has grown an unusual longing to feel like we personally understand celebrities and, in turn, feel that we ourselves are known and seen by a greater public. One woman videotaped herself sitting on the toilet and singing about it and, upon posting it to YouTube, found instant celebrity, with over 26 million views and countless re-mixes. What draws a modern day audience to a video or a post seems to be a feeling that there is no separation between us as the viewer/reader and the performer/writer. We might as well be sitting in the same room with this woman, as she repeatedly exalts, "I'm sittin' on the toilet. Sittin' on the toilet! I'm sittin' on the toilet. I'm sittin' on the toilet!" When the video ends, I am at a loss as to why I just wasted two minutes watching this bizarre show, but much more at a loss in trying to understand why so many millions of people had watched it before me.
Because of the internet, the line between private and public is more blurred than perhaps it has ever been. As a result, comedy seems less about a story and more about a moment. Twitter restricts the author to 140 characters and, while YouTube allows the subscriber to post a video of any length, the shorter the video is, the more hits it is likely to get.
Superdeluxe type of humor- dialogue based; testing ground for tv (adult swim)
Monday, June 27, 2011
Monday, April 11, 2011
Final Essay
Thomas Hobbes' vision of the nature of comedy, that being one of Sudden Glory (to observe a deformation in another and applaud the self for being better by comparison), has transformed in the age of the internet into the vision of an Epic Fail. The internet is crowded with moments that are glimpses of other people's misfortunate, whether by a table suddenly collapsing beneath them as they dance or by their failure to deliver a news report without swearing or misspeaking in an embarrassing way. Fail Blog is universally recognized as a major source of internet comedy and the term "Epic Fail" has been introduced to the teen through twenties vernacular in North America. Hobbes' theory of comedy, at least in the world of the internet, seems to reign supreme in 2011.
Comedy has become largely about easy, fast access. This narrows down the types of programming and animation that people use-- it all has to be fast downloading and jump right into a moment of comedy, so as to catch the viewers interest. The shorter the clip, the more views it tends to get. This has effected comedy largely by making almost everything a punch-line. Of course, full episodes of shows such as is the case with Workaholics and 30 Rock or full-length albums by comedic actor/musicians such as The Lonely Boys, follow a story and have evolving plots. In the world of clips and photographs, however, it is all about being terse and easy to understand in an immediate way.
Moving from length to content, it is rather oddly cats and dogs that come to mind first (while babies, too, hold their own special place in the comedic hierarchy). LOL Cats and Dogs are simply the repeated anthropomorphizing of cats and dogs by caption and/or costume. In Simon Critchley's book On Humor, he devotes an entire section to such anthropomorphizing and why it is a cause for laughter. In opposition, Critchley notes that when this happens in reverse-- where man imitates animal-- we are struck with a feeling of disgust rather than amusement. Because we see animals as without the capacity to feel in the way we do as humans, it is amusing to see them feel self-conscious, morally superior to another animal, etc. because we link that to our own experience and feel it's absurd to witness such complexities in a cat or a dog. To see a pig act like a man amuses us while seeing a man 'act like a pig', on the other hand, is something quite frowned upon and even repulsive.
We are amused by LOL Cats and Dogs because it is funny to see their thoughts or what they would say if given the power of speech. In the case of dogs, the lines frequently revolve around a lust for hotdogs and repulsion to baths, while the cats are frequently acting superior and aloof. What we anticipate is confirmed and we are pleased.
Comedy has become largely about easy, fast access. This narrows down the types of programming and animation that people use-- it all has to be fast downloading and jump right into a moment of comedy, so as to catch the viewers interest. The shorter the clip, the more views it tends to get. This has effected comedy largely by making almost everything a punch-line. Of course, full episodes of shows such as is the case with Workaholics and 30 Rock or full-length albums by comedic actor/musicians such as The Lonely Boys, follow a story and have evolving plots. In the world of clips and photographs, however, it is all about being terse and easy to understand in an immediate way.
Moving from length to content, it is rather oddly cats and dogs that come to mind first (while babies, too, hold their own special place in the comedic hierarchy). LOL Cats and Dogs are simply the repeated anthropomorphizing of cats and dogs by caption and/or costume. In Simon Critchley's book On Humor, he devotes an entire section to such anthropomorphizing and why it is a cause for laughter. In opposition, Critchley notes that when this happens in reverse-- where man imitates animal-- we are struck with a feeling of disgust rather than amusement. Because we see animals as without the capacity to feel in the way we do as humans, it is amusing to see them feel self-conscious, morally superior to another animal, etc. because we link that to our own experience and feel it's absurd to witness such complexities in a cat or a dog. To see a pig act like a man amuses us while seeing a man 'act like a pig', on the other hand, is something quite frowned upon and even repulsive.
We are amused by LOL Cats and Dogs because it is funny to see their thoughts or what they would say if given the power of speech. In the case of dogs, the lines frequently revolve around a lust for hotdogs and repulsion to baths, while the cats are frequently acting superior and aloof. What we anticipate is confirmed and we are pleased.
The Most Viewed Comedic YouTube Video
303, 090, 409 views.
Charlie bit my finger-- again!
Most popular subjects on YouTube in comedy:
1. Babies
2. Parodies/ The Lonely Island Boys
3. "Absurd" humor... that I find really difficult to watch (i.e. Charlie the Unicorn and The Annoying Orange)
4. Cats
5. Other: embarrassing moments, the Evolution of Dance guy,
Expanding on Babies: babies saying swear words, breakdancing, laughing in an unusual/cute way,
Then there are the skit videos that are posted on YouTube and become astronomically famous, such as the directorial works of Liam Kyle Sullivan. The video "Shoes" jump-started Sullivan's journey as "Kelly," with a distinct voice, interest-set, vocabulary and look that would become immediately associated with these videos. I don't think there was a single girl in my middle school who wasn't singing "these shoes rule. these shoes suck," under the impression that the joke would get funnier the more she said it.
Sullivan went on to make, Muffins, Let Me Borrow that Top, among many others. All these videos amassed over ten million views each.
Charlie bit my finger-- again!
Most popular subjects on YouTube in comedy:
1. Babies
2. Parodies/ The Lonely Island Boys
3. "Absurd" humor... that I find really difficult to watch (i.e. Charlie the Unicorn and The Annoying Orange)
4. Cats
5. Other: embarrassing moments, the Evolution of Dance guy,
Expanding on Babies: babies saying swear words, breakdancing, laughing in an unusual/cute way,
Then there are the skit videos that are posted on YouTube and become astronomically famous, such as the directorial works of Liam Kyle Sullivan. The video "Shoes" jump-started Sullivan's journey as "Kelly," with a distinct voice, interest-set, vocabulary and look that would become immediately associated with these videos. I don't think there was a single girl in my middle school who wasn't singing "these shoes rule. these shoes suck," under the impression that the joke would get funnier the more she said it.
Sullivan went on to make, Muffins, Let Me Borrow that Top, among many others. All these videos amassed over ten million views each.
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Found Comedy: The Rulers of the Cheezburger Empire and their World Wide Web Relatives
It makes sense that the King and Queen (CEO and Founder Ben Huh and his wife, Emily) of internet comedy have named for themselves an empire, within which they house all of their monumental innovations of online humor. These include FAIL Blog, The Daily What, I Can Has Cheezburger?, and There, I Fixed It, among countless other sites the husband and wife duo have added to their Cheezburger family (such as two new additions: the Sketchy Bunnies site and the Go Cry Emo Kid site).
The comedy revolves around found photographs, which are either presented with a caption or a text inserted onto the photograph itself. This is essentially the basis of most internet humor: the manipulation or re-invention of previously existing photographs, films and ideas. Spoofs and parodies rack up views on Youtube (consider the success of The Lonely Boys*), while jokes about popular culture and current events reign supreme on Twitter and similar text-oriented sites
In the case of FAIL Blog and I Can Has Cheezburger?, these are sites that are now referenced and accepted into modern conversation (amongst the younger generation) as casually as the weather or traffic might be. Beyond that, terms like "Epic Fail" and references to LOLcats have materialized as a by-product of these sites, adding new phrases and ______ to the vocabulary of the North American youth culture.
I Can Has Cheezburger? is the combination of two incredibly simple things: a photograph or a dog or cat (or both) and the addition of text onto the picture in the misspelt LOLcat vernacular that the Huh's have developed. The spelling and phrasing they have created is now immediately recognizable as pertaining to Lolcats and dogs. To roughly translate that last sentence into said vernacular would sound something like: Da speelin dey created iz now instant recugnize by all teh lolkitttties end puppehs werld-wide.
For instance, the image below was accompanied by a separate caption "eberyfingz bettur in teh mudderland!'
FAIL Blog is even simpler. Anybody can submit an article, photograph or video of a "fail" to the Huh's, who will publish the best ones, along with their own findings in the realm of failure. Users will rate the fail, sometimes calling it a "win," if the circumstances are right. Here are three examples of congratulated fails that were recently posted on the site (with the title that accompanied them):
The Official Website of the Cheezburger Empire
*Being Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Their rise to fame will be the subject of the next post.
The comedy revolves around found photographs, which are either presented with a caption or a text inserted onto the photograph itself. This is essentially the basis of most internet humor: the manipulation or re-invention of previously existing photographs, films and ideas. Spoofs and parodies rack up views on Youtube (consider the success of The Lonely Boys*), while jokes about popular culture and current events reign supreme on Twitter and similar text-oriented sites
In the case of FAIL Blog and I Can Has Cheezburger?, these are sites that are now referenced and accepted into modern conversation (amongst the younger generation) as casually as the weather or traffic might be. Beyond that, terms like "Epic Fail" and references to LOLcats have materialized as a by-product of these sites, adding new phrases and ______ to the vocabulary of the North American youth culture.
I Can Has Cheezburger? is the combination of two incredibly simple things: a photograph or a dog or cat (or both) and the addition of text onto the picture in the misspelt LOLcat vernacular that the Huh's have developed. The spelling and phrasing they have created is now immediately recognizable as pertaining to Lolcats and dogs. To roughly translate that last sentence into said vernacular would sound something like: Da speelin dey created iz now instant recugnize by all teh lolkitttties end puppehs werld-wide.
For instance, the image below was accompanied by a separate caption "eberyfingz bettur in teh mudderland!'
The Huh's, in addition to their site, have books and countless novelty items for sale that give voice to hundreds of cats and dogs of the English speaking variety. I admit to having a copy of their small, coffee table book, I Has Hotdog, in my living room...
FAIL Blog is even simpler. Anybody can submit an article, photograph or video of a "fail" to the Huh's, who will publish the best ones, along with their own findings in the realm of failure. Users will rate the fail, sometimes calling it a "win," if the circumstances are right. Here are three examples of congratulated fails that were recently posted on the site (with the title that accompanied them):
Flags FAIL
Cheap Desk FAIL
CLASSIC: Spelling FAIL
The Official Website of the Cheezburger Empire
*Being Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone. Their rise to fame will be the subject of the next post.
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