Sunday, April 24, 2011

humor and the internet

Everyone appreciates comedy, and everyone knows that comedy has evolved over the years with various new forms. But I think digital technology has completely changed the way we process and understand comedy, in various ways. I noticed this when texting my mom the other day, and of course surfing the internet at various times.

When my mom first started texting, her messages were like mini-emails and they were just really awkward to read because she wasnt really conforming to the text message form, basically. And she was using the text message as a meaningful form of communication.

Now, people still use text messages in meaningful ways, but I think our generation recognizes the irony of how trivial these messages are despite how ubiquitous they've become. But then eventually my mom sent me this message that was something like this:

"just had a long day at work. going home to mix myself a strong drink and try to find my happy place"

And I realized my mom finally "got" text messaging. That was funny because it was consise, the grammar was stripped down, etc. etc. But I wonder what kinds of social codes are operating here, as in how do people figure out how to be funny in a text message? Text message jokes wouldn't really work in normal conversation all the time, but somehow they work when printed.

The other area is with the meme. The self-reflexivity and the complete lack of originality of meme repetition doesn't take away from the comedy-- it actually adds to it. Some examples of this are LOLcats, and one of my favorite memes, the keyboard cat. For some reason, you can take any stupid video clip and put the keyboard cat after it and it becomes funny. Yet somehow this doesn't work in real life when you repeat the same jokes over and over.

Why is it that in a digital form, repetition and banality becomes sublime humor? Any thoughts on this? I'd like to understand it because I think there's something kind of deep at work here.

Ryan Aliapoulios

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