Humor on the internet
The history of humor on the Internet begins together with the
Impact on humor
Internet made an impact on humor in several important ways.
Similarly to other technical innovations (from printing to TV), Internet significantly increased the speed and the extent of the propagation of humor over the world.[5] The joke is a commonly transmitted type of internet meme. It is well-known that orally-transmitted jokes and other kind of folklore undergo evolution and mutations. Internet speeds up and globalizes these processes.[6]
A
- Somebody makes up the joke.
- The joke spreads to about 50 people.
- Somebody posts it to rec.humor.
- Ten thousand people read the joke on rec.humor.
- Eight hundred of these people repeat the joke to somebody.
- Twenty of those people are clueless enough to repost the joke to rec.humor, apparently lacking either the reading skills to have seen it the first time, the basic pattern-recognition capability to identify it in its last ten repetitions, or the short-term memory to realize that it's the same joke again.
- Loop back to step 4, about ten times.
- Repeat from step 3 about every two months.
On the opposite side, unlike previous technical means, the Internet as a whole eliminates censorship and self-censorship of humor. For example, before the Internet, black comedy, such as dead baby jokes, was almost exclusively spread orally.[5]
The Internet blurred the lines between written and spoken in terms of language use and the directness of speech, between what is permitted in private and in public. Also, YouTube blurred the distinction between a spoken and recorded joke, in that the narrator is actually present.[5]
Limor and Lemish observe that internet humor is a part of the participatory culture, where the consumers of jokes may reciprocate by generating and transmitting humor, i.e., act as producers and distributors.[8]
New types of humor
New possibilities provided by electronic means of communication gave rise to new types of humor. An early example of these is humorous
The ability to easily manipulate with images and videos combined with ease of the dissemination of them via the Internet introduced new forms of graphical humor, such as
See also
- Internet phenomenon
- Faxlore
- Computer-Mediated Communication
References
- ^ a b Limor Shifman, "Humor in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Continuity and Change in Internet-Based Comic Texts", International Journal of Communication, vol. 1, 2007, Quote: " A content analysis of 400 humorous texts from eight salient humorous websites shows that the Internet functions both as a ‘carrier’ of old humor types such as jokes and cartoons and as a ‘generator’ of new humor types."
- ^ Eric S. Raymond, The Art of UNIX Programming, p. 44. Quote: "Software, ideas, slang, and a good deal of humor flowed over the experimental ARPANET links. Something like a shared culture began to form"
- ^ Trevor J. Blank, Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World, 2009, . Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.
- ^ Attardo, Salvatore (2023). Humor 2.0: How the Internet Changed Humor. Anthem Press. pp. 207–11.
- ^ ISBN 1501510894, 2015, pp.41, 42
- ^ Rec.humor FAQ (retrieved March 6, 2017)
- ^ Limor Shifman, Dafna Lemish, "“Mars and Venus” in Virtual Space: Post-feminist Humor and the Internet", Critical Studies in Media Communication, 28(3), 253-273. (preprint version)
- ^ Stark, Joan G. (2001). "The History of ASCII (Text) Art". Archived from the original on 24 October 2009. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
- ^ Robert, Paul (11 May 2005). "Typewriter Art". The Virtual Typewriter Museum. Retrieved 5 March 2008.
- ISBN 0262680920, 1996, pp. 48, 49
External links
- Media related to Internet humor at Wikimedia Commons