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.