I think the internet has radically changed what is seen as “funny”. Not just a little, but in ways I don’t think we can even understand. With rapid transfer of any information at all, we’ve been inundated with things like flamers, trolls, shock images and websites, internet memes, and every weird lifestyle under the sun. The internet is the Wild West, if the wild west had furries and tentacle porn.

I mean think about it. We’ve graduated from thinking horrific images are, well, horrible, to laughing at them; a reaction prompted (I think) sensory overload. You see goatse.cx, you see tubgirl, and suddenly most of the internet is tame in comparison. You see stuff like that a whole lot and your brain just closes it out: you laugh because you have to. It’s the same reason doctors and nurses and cops and firefighters seem so callous and cold. It’s a defense mechanism.

There’s one shift the in dynamic of funny. Another is in the area of metahumour. Let me illustrate. You’re chatting with a n00b, and he says something like this:

n00b: omg i just got halflife 2 runnig!!!!!1

You of course realise he’s simply forgotten to hit shift on the last key. But this is an opportunity for rich mockery, so you type:

you: didja really!!!11

You have made fun of the n00b, sure. Maybe this becomes a meme (the example above sure has). Of course, in order for people to be sure you’re not simply mis-typing and instead are engaging in a brand of humour that only the elite can emulate you type:

you: wtf is going on here i am so confused!!!111

Three ones. Suddenly you have meta-humour. Then someone else takes it one step further: meta-meta-humour that no one can mistake as a typo:

meta: wtf is going on here i am so confused!!!111oneone

The mockery is obvious. But not only is it mocking internet n00bs, it is mocking the original meme. However, some genius comes along and takes it one step further:

genius: wtf is going here i am so confused!!!!111oneoneoen

They have mispelled the last “one”! Now not only is this sentence mocking n00bs, it’s mocking the original meme, and it is mocking itself. This sort of humour simply did not exist before IRC (unless you count Oscar Wilde plays, in which case it did, a little).

Of course most of the stuff that gets passed around the internet these days is low-bandwidth content, meaning that its humour is very, very simple. Take for instance a YTMND page. Looping graphic, looping music, text. Simple. But some of them are so very funny. Hamsterdance was simple. It got old quick, but it was simple. Think of an internet meme or viral video: it’s all pretty simple isn’t it? The apropos humour of the Chuck Norris fad. The Engrish mistranslations of All Your Base.

The thing is, internet humour is hard to understand if you’re just landed amongst it: it will appear at the first glance both absurdist, disgusting, childish, and incomprehensible.

Take FYAD for instance (Wikipedia it if you don’t already know what FYAD is): its main joke is that there is nothing to get. People in FYAD don’t like n00bs for one reason, the being if they stay there long enough they might get that there’s nothing to get and join in on the not getting. But antithetically, if you get FYAD suddenly you understand that’s precisely why the forum is so funny. It’s all those things: absurdist, disgusting, childish, incomprehensible by turns, and so meta it hurts.

You see this sort of funny creeping into society, too. I won’t bore you with where I’ve seen it, but it’s out there. The internet is leaking, I think. And it’s changing what people see as funny, one broadband connection at a time.

Tags: geekery, opinions