Bang bang!

Cute:



Contextualization:

I watch a lot of YouTube sketch comedy. Usually a group of high-school- or college-age kids (what we call Y/A in the book bizz), usually with a home video camera and basic editing software, usually making videos that heighten the drama of random, everyday experiences. Sometimes very funny.

Think Smosh, FND Films, and Derrick Comedy. Or, you might already know JacksFilms, the comedians behind tonight's recommendation, from their "WTF Blanket" Snuggie parody fame.

I think what makes comedy groups like this so popular, besides the obvious fact that they're humorous, is that they seem to be made by the kids next door except ten times cooler. The stars all have that gangly, geeky charm, and they make you think that these videos aren't the products of hours sitting around the writing table, but of a typically random afternoon with a video camera.

And now, it's like you're hanging out with them, holding the camera. You're in on the joke. It's a difficult aesthetic to fake with a higher budget and producers, though I might argue that Andy Samberg has made a career out of just that.

This particular recommendation isn't one of the funniest - or even one of the funnier - examples of this kind of video, but it's cute, and it captures that almost voyeuristic appeal I'm describing. Apart from having watched a few of JacksFilms' other videos a while ago, I have recently been watching some less polished attempts at this kind of humor, which is, I think, why this was recommended now.

Old News, New Trends

It should not come as a surprise to you to learn that Brittany Murphy died almost a month ago now. It was a bizarre turn of events for which we still do not quite have closure. Once the final autopsy reports are released, we'll either have the flash-in-the-pan scandal many have been expecting, or else we'll have the quiet reminder of our own fragile mortalities.

Anyway.

I loved Brittany Murphy. Between her endearing portrayal of Tai in Clueless and her downright wacky night on SNL, I saw her as an actress with charm and a slight counterculture edge, and it's easy to gloss over her string of rather nondescript roles now.

So, like many others, on the day that she died I went straight to YouTube to look up the famous "rolling with the homies" clip. Then I looked for but did not find her "Leather Store" skit on SNL. Ah, well.

Since then, I've had at least one recommendation every night in the vein of the following video:



Not much to say here. It takes this girl a whole minute just to say that Brittany Murphy died, but she is one of many vloggers just like her who recorded entire videos just to say that this had happened. As this girl notes in response to negative comments, she was just trying to report the breaking news.

This kind of hive-mind-journalism is an increasingly popular way of disseminating news. I, myself, learned of Brittany Murphy's death from the swarm of facebook status updates it caused. And just look at this video, which received over 16,000 views for a user whose other videos average in the five- to six-hundred range. We want to see what other people are saying, even if we have no idea who they are or what their authorities are. Unlike those boring newscasters on TV, we might even find someone just like us, putting into words what we were feeling but couldn't articulate about the breaking news in question.

On the other hand, we could find lots of false information. I can think of a few Twilight rumors that sent my sister into panic attacks because one false report led to torrents of personal postings on the internet, which made those rumors look like valid news stories. It's easy to assume there is truth in the numbers.

Anyway.

This was a bad recommendation. Personal reporting is dated instantly, especially the kind like this that offers no information or commentary worth listening to even once. But as a kind of lure into this girl's other videos, I'd say she was well served posting *something* about a popular piece of news. I wish her all the best in her future journalism career...

WTF?! Humor

"Happy Tree Friends," "Salad Fingers," "Charlie the Unicorn" - if you're familiar with any two of these three internet sensations, you can probably guess their connection. That is, they're all examples of deeply twisted humor, from fluffy animals meeting gruesome deaths to a deformed humanoid who "likes rusty spoons."

In my experience, the success of this trend seems to stem from the rampant popularity of the "WTF?!" reaction. Ever since we gave a cute acronym to this expression of utter confusion, we've seemed to attach an inherent humor value to it. "That's so random" is a phrase that now means, "I don't understand that, but it's funny, I guess." You're not quite sure if it's funny, though, or if it's actually just plain disturbing. Or maybe it's not even disturbing, it just doesn't make any sense. That's the inherent, unsettling nature of WTF?! humor.



I don't find this video funny. At all. I guessed all the beats before they happened, and I guessed that they wouldn't be funny when they did. YouTube recommended this because I mistakenly watched a past recommendation about a children's cartoon sun leaping from the TV and stabbing people ("Mr. Happy Face"), and I think that video was recommended because I was watching real children's TV shows which were unintentionally creepy (now THOSE, by the way, are funny).

Still, this video has a five star rating and nearly five million views. A lot of people love this, apparently. What I want to know is, how many people watch this and honestly think it is funny - original, clever, whatever - and how many people watch this and just think, "WTF?! Pretty disturbing, but that makes it funny, I guess."

I have to be honest, I was mesmerized by Salad Fingers the first time I saw it. There was something about its unapologetic creepiness that made it hard to ignore. But I'm so tired of WTF?! humor. I'd rather we progress (revert?) to humor that makes sense.