Funniness threshold
Do you ever watch or read a tremendous amount of something intended to be amusing, don’t find yourself laughing at first, but at some point start laughing and then just can’t stop? I do. And I love that there is something like that… kind of a threshold for silliness.
For example, I had this happen yesterday, because I did, as mentioned, watch all the “Get a Mac” ads at once. There are 30-35 of them on the site right now. I watched the first couple, thinking, “Sure, these are funny… ish.” But around when I finished the 15th one, I just couldn’t help but laugh out loud at every single one of them. I’m sure I was chuckling heartily for the last four that I watched, but I’m also pretty sure they weren’t any funnier than the first few. (My favorites were “Work Vs. Play”, “Choose a Vista”, and “Misprint”, btw.)
Other recent experiences with this phenomenon: Flight of the Conchords episodes and Cute Overload posts.
I need a name for that particular characteristic of amusing media that, with sufficient exposure, becomes exceedingly funny. All I can think of right now is “snowlol” …which may, as it happens, become much funnier if I had already made a similar joke 15 times.
One Comment
- gerard callan replied:
“snowlol” is a pretty good first stab at it. perhpas my cronies or any readers at memeticians can offer their own suggestions. we’ll be linking to you tomorrow.
my idea would be ‘pulling an achorman’ because of the experience i get wathcing that movie over and over.
glad to see you are reposting again! cheers
February 6th, 2008 at 5:15 pm. Permalink.
