Response to Kirsten's Blog

Throughout watching the numerous blog posts on ‘funny videos’ I have found out that I am actually extremely hard to please and I really don’t laugh at much. This is strange to discover as when I am around my friends, especially in a social environment people have told me “wow you laugh at everything”. This is true to an extent, I do laugh a lot, so why is t so hard for me to let go and laugh at YouTube videos?

I did not find this video remotely funny, I only smiled once at the beginning when the old man took off his shirt and wanted to start a fight. I fell this was linked to incongruity theory as I was not expecting an old man to become so rowdy. However I found it interesting to analyse why certain people laughed and certain people didn’t. I feel as if the little kid didn’t laugh because he didn’t fully understand what was going on and was more confused as to what they were doing, which didn’t allow him to let go and laugh. Furthermore, I felt that because the elder Women had reached a certain level of maturity and didn’t necessarily understand ‘today’s social media humour’ she was more annoyed at what they were doing because she was thinking about the people in the video as a person, such as “awh the poor baby”, rather than thinking “haha he got hit in the face”.

I think that the fact that at the beginning you are told not to laugh makes you more aware that something is going to be funny, so you pick up on ‘funny’ cues more easily and quickly because you are anticipating humour. The People that didn’t laugh, (such as myself), I felt looked down on the people in the video thinking “what is this crazy person doing?” This actually contradicts the superiority theory as I although I felt superior to them, I did not laugh, and instead I scoffed and cringed at the videos.