Tag Archives: funniest

Online Video

10 Great Comedy & Humor Websites and Blogs

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HAHAHAHAHH

An apple a day make keep the doctor away, but good comedy websites are the best health remedy. Here are a few of my recently favorite websites, blogs and video collections. What are yours?

  1. The West Virginia Surfing Report: Jeff Kay has twice weekly posts that will have you giggling.
  2. Crap At My Parents House: terrific photos of odd nicknacks you might discover in your parents’ house.
  3. Reddit Video: a crowd-curated collection of funny new videos, as well as classics.
  4. The Onion: mandatory reading/watching. This parody of news has long been a favorite.
  5. BestWeekEver.tv is worth a scan – especially this collection of funny videos that “never get old”
  6. Failblog and icanhascheezburger popularizes some of the 4chan classics and guilty pleasures like Lolcats.
  7. QuickMeme has a collection of popular memes, and if you don’t understand them see KnowYourMeme.
  8. JustforlaughsTV YouTube channel has some nice, professionally produced pranks ala Candid Camera.
  9. MyLifeIsAverage invites readers to submit their humorous woes. Into Schadenfreude? It’s your site. You may also enjoy Awkward Family Photos.
  10. YouTube duo Smosh has a “Smosh Pit” with some frequently updated collections.

And here are a few sources for additional sites, if you wish to scavenge.

Let me know if you have some additional favorites to add to my morning coffee.

 

Online Video

Can a Search Engine Detect and Rank Comedy? Google Tries.

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The newest funny cat on YouTube says No No No No

Look out “I Are Cute Kitten.” There’s a new cat in town, and she says No No No No. And according to research it’s the funniest video out there.
Google is trying to create an algorithm that ranks a video in terms of humor/comedy. Here’s an article about the subject, and here’s a BBC World Service Radio interview I just did live on the topic. Humor is a difficult thing for a computer to detect, but I do think we can collect viewer reactions to draw conclusions.

I spoke last year at the International Society for Humor Studies (see presentation) and the academics and psychologists were having trouble agreeing on the constructs and classifications of humor. It’s a bit like sculpting fog to predict what makes us laugh.
Can Google do it? It is a company made up mostly of engineers. It won’t be an easy or precise task, but I won’t rule it out.
Naturally I DO think that humor can be researched based on human reactions. That’s why (as seen below) I always test my videos behind one-way glass with indepth interviews and focus groups.

book, Online Video

Crowdsourcing a Creator’s Best Videos

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I had trouble when putting together my “best of Nalts” DVD because it’s not easy to rank my videos on YouTube or other sites by rating. Also- the ratings aren’t necessarily fair. A popular video ALWAYS gets a lower rating than one that’s seen by a small group of my regular viewers.

Superl8tive.com just invented a cool way to aggregate a bunch of videos and allow for crowd sourcing. Want to participate? You just rank them yourself, or add any others. I like this tool to provide a democratic way to pick my bests… and in general my best videos (“Gum Tree” from 3 years ago is still a favorite) are unknown by most people viewing my videos.

Check out the Superl8tive.com Nalts Video ranking page they created just to be swell.

Online Video

YouTube’s Funniest Guy: ShayCarl

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You know, he may be one of the most over-exposed YouTubers of the summer. But he’s absolutely one of my favorite YouTube personalities. Having met him, I can tell you he’s really centered and a wholesome family man. So that makes videos like this Moto Man (in which he spins his motorcycle around his house for no apparent reason) even more special. And his wife plays a perfect dead-pan straight man. Or woman.

How can a video like this not have millions of views? And what about “Chubby Kid Falls from Roof“? As Sxephil joked to me in LA, “when I saw Roof Ninja, I saw money.” Hence their collaboration on a new SxePhil/Shaycarl channel called, “BamBamKaBoosh.”

And who could forget ShayCarl’s wonderful homage to Nalts and his addiction to YouTube?