(click on a video title to access it)
This
article is about Youtube videos. Yes, this introduction of the topic
is not very elaborated. In fact, at first, it was planned that I
begin with key-dates. Like February 2005, the creation of Youtube,
October 2006, the purchase of the website by Google for 1,65 billions
US-dollars or December 2012, Gagnam Style video clip reaching 1
billion of views. But I am not really sure that these are the
most interesting facts I could set out to you.
I
could also have begun with a common catch phrase like ''Youtube
changed the way people watch videos on the Internet. Today, some
Youtube stars are far more popular than Hollywood stars with the
American young.'' Again, that is a nice fact, but it does not really
fit the topic that interests me.
Another
possible introduction would have been to give you figures, like
Youtube has more than 1 billion users, 300 hours of videos are
uploaded to Youtube every minute, or hundreds of millions of hours of
videos are watched every day on the website. Unfortunately, it is
still not what I want to talk about.
Because
what I really want to talk about is Youtube videos, and not Youtube
itself. I have watched a lot of them, and Youtube has now become the
media on which I spend the most time. That is why I want to submit to
you today five of my favourite English-speaking Youtube videos. There
are of course other videos that I love and that won't be on this
list. .
On
three separates occasions, and especially from April 2007 until
September 2008, Smosh reached the first position of the list of
the most subscribed Youtube channel. They are still now the Youtube
channel that has spent the most days at the first
position.
Smosh
is a duo of two men, Ian Andrew Hecox and Anthony Padilla. They
record funny videos where they play different characters that live
absurd adventures. These characters are often a parody of themselves,
are very childish and think rarely coherently.
In
the video “POKEMON IN REAL LIFE!” they parody the game
pokemon, simulating how it would be if real persons acted like in the
pokemon video games in real life. For example, the main hero is
forced to fight with a « metro sexual hipster » pokemon
trainer when he makes eye contact with him. Then follows an
absurd pokemon fight where the enemy trainer cannot do anything but
still wants to have his turn to fight.
The
concept of the Epic Rap Battle of History is to imagine a rap contest
between two historic or fictional characters. Among all the epic rap
battles that they invented, you can fin Hitler vs Darth Vader, Steve
Jobs vs Bill Gates, Moses vs Santa Claus, Rasputin vs Stalin (vs
Lenin vs Gorbatchev vs Putin) or Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney.
In
Mozart vs Skrillex, they reuse all the criticism that are levelled
against dubstep music through the mouth of Mozart : it is not real
music, it is for drug addicts, it is too simple, … while the fake
Skrillex affirms that classical music is boring and for old people.
Besides
the video itself, I like the comments on it. Some people take it far
too seriously and try to debate to know which music is the best
between dubstep and classical music, when there is no possible
comparison. Uninteresting posts or infinite debates in which people
end up insulting each other often spoil the Youtube comment section,
which can be fun to read sometimes.
”Game
of thrones, it's kind of like a History test, but with dragons and
boobs!” In their Honest trailers, the screen junkies create fake
trailers for series or movies, parodying it and saying out loud what
everybody really thinks about the original content. They did it with
movies like Forrest Gump, Gravity or the Hunger Games, and series
like Breaking Bad, Walking Dead or Game of thrones.
In
fact, not only honest trailers are uploaded on the Screen Junkie
channel. There are a lot of different funny videos about series and
cinema, even if the honest trailers are the most famous of them. Go
watch it if you are a screen junkie too.
Asdf
movies are cartoons very simply drawn and very funny. Now there are 8
of them. Each video is composed of a few short sequences that
tell very concise stories. For example, two characters stand in front
of each other. The first one says « There is something on your face
», punches the other one in the face and continues « It was
pain! ».
Taken
separately, each of these short sketches are not really interesting,
but the video manages to make us laugh thanks to three key elements
of the new type of internet humor: absurdity, timing and recurrence.
Let me clarify myself.
Absurdity
first. Each time a little sketch begins, you have no idea how it will
end, or, more precisely, if you try to predict the end you will
probably fail. Dialogues and actions are highly unexpected and always
totally absurd. For example, a little jingle sings « Desmond, the
moon bear! », we see a bear on the moon who asks « how did I get
here?», the voiceover says « the end. » and that's it : totally
absurd and unexpectable.
Secondly
timing. Our society is faster than ever and short jokes, short
videos, short information are really the Internet favored contents.
Here, it's not only the shortness of the sketches, but also the
rhythm of them. You never have any moments of blank, you can not feel
bored, because everything is quick and placed at a perfect timing.
And
recurrence. What I mean by recurrence is that some characters from
old sketches are coming back in new ones, like Desmond the moon bear
(the second time, it is the same sketch but Desmond is a skeleton).
There are also the flop guy, the manly cow, the trains fan boy,
mister muffin or the dying potato. I think that this is the heart of
Internet humor. For examples, the “memes” phenomenon is only
based on references. I cannot really explain why this is funny. Maybe
because reusing the same thing over and over generates an expectation
from the recipient and breaking this expectation or twisting it
creates a comic effect.
I
do really believe that these three points are the pillars of a new
type of humor, which includes asdf movies.
Do
you know who Jan Egeland is? He is a Norwegian politician who
was the United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian
Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator from June 2003 to December
2006. So why is his name the title of a song?
Ylvis
is a Norwegian duo of TV anchor men who hosts a funny TV show in
Norway. To promote their show they also sing funny songs. You might
have heard of their biggest hit : « What does the fox say ? », a
song asking the exact same question as its title, and answering it
strangely.
In
the case of « Jan Egeland », it is a tribute rock song to Jan
Egeland, a parody of an apology by him and describing him as « the
United Nations super-hero man » or « the peacekeeping machine ».
They treat him like a super hero that you call against « mad
dictators with a gun ». The song is of course a crescendo of
absurdity, like when « He stares in the mirror, flexing muscle in
the night. And he says ''Boy I think you’re ready to protect some
human right!'' ». At the end, he is even described as a «
macho musclepumping crying god. »
The
reaction of Jan Egeland was very positive. He has even accepted to
come to Ylvis' show to be interviewed.
Ylvis
made a lot of hilarious songs, like « Someone like me », dealing
with the problem dubstep fans are facing searching love.
The
Scandinavian countries are very active on Youtube. Another crew of
funny singers called Kollektivet, who live in Norway too, made also
ridiculous songs, like « ÆØÅ » in which they affirm that even if
the Americans have everything bigger than Norway, they have a bigger
alphabet, with 29 letters.
The
youtuber who has the most subscribers is actually Swedish. His name
is PewDiePie, and the concept of his video is to film himself playing
video games. The videos of people playing video games are more and
more popular on Youtube. I would explain that trend by the fact that
it gives an overview of a game to the watcher and it is also funny to
see someone failing and raging about it.
Of
course there are tons of videos I love I did not talk about, but
these five are already a good start to discover the Youtube universe.
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