With such a broad topic of ‘humor on the internet’, I have focused my project/blog on the exploration of how the medium of social media alters comedy in the new age, in relation to an audience. Comedy at the center will never change, there will always be a ‘set up’ then followed by an ‘ha ha’ by the audience, the thing that will change is the medium in which humor is used on. The medium of social media alters humor when comedy is text based and contantains constrictions. Language, tone, and intention are concepts that become heightened when inflection is out of the equation. “Old comedy” (stand-up, improv, and sketch) rely, for the most part, on a physical audience to interject their feelings towards a joke. “New Comedy” (any social media inspired humor) rely on an imaginary audience to interface their feelings of laughter, by favoriting, retweeting, reblogging, etc. Both “Old” and “New” Comedy are dependent on an audience interaction, audience participation in “New Comedy” specifically has become necessary as a relationship generates between comic and audience member; as the audience member approves of the joke immediately and publicly.
This blog will focus on how the medium of social media alters comedy in the new age, in relations to the audience; as I will explore how current comedians must adjust to a new medium to gain a larger audience. As they must take into consideration a new language, tone, and intention in each social medium. Furthermore I will be discussing social media’s creation of it’s own humor, like Twitter Parody accounts, GIF’s, and internet meme’s. I will (hopefully) answer the important questions of internet humor: Where did the Meme come from? What made these ideas funny? What was the first meme? What does the word Meme, mean? As well as researching how “twitter famous”, “vine famous”, “tumblr famous” people have gained internet popularity through humorous mediums- is there a formula to their humor? All of these concepts are all in relation to their social media audience.
To be quite honest this blog will mostly be about, ME... exploring the in’s-and-out’s of humor on social media sites, as I laugh out loud- excuse my formality, I mean ‘LOL’. To truly see how these comedic accounts gain success, I will also be tailoring my own social media sites to a structured humor account. Because comedy is about timing, I have restructured my Twitter by dedicating each day of the week (Monday through Friday) to a specific theme, that I must reference in a Tweet daily, giving myself a larger constriction (check my Twitter bio to see the themes, @iANDRESGOVEA.) I have also restructured my Instagram, in which every first Thursday of the month I will post a humorous picture on my account and every third Thursday of the month I will post a humorous video on my account to draw in more followers. I am reformatting , my already unstructured, social media sites to see first hand how social media humor sites must be manipulated to gain audience participation.
This hole notion of how the medium of social media alters comedy in the new age, in relations to the audience, I find quite interesting and I hope you do too. I also hope to include a lot more jokes in my future post about internet comedy, I didn't get to this time because I really wanted to flesh out my ideas for my blog- because of that reason I leave you with a joke I wrote on my Twitter for President's Day: Wow! Can you believe all the US Presidents had the exact same birthday? Happy President's Day, everyone.
You're Welcome World,
@iANDRESGOVEA