Cracked Observations

Been watchin’ a bunch of Cracked movies today.

Two thoughts kick around as I do this. One, that I’m kind of annoyed and amazed that this website that’s supposedly a comedy website designed to just be generally funny is that it’s also basically a sort of media studies course in slow motion framed around sex and pee jokes. That is, itself, a media studies factor, where you recontextualise information using the language of the day, where academic recognition does not have to bring with itself academic language and understanding media is a gateway to understanding and influencing culture, in their oh-so-selfaware way.

The other thought is why did I ever think I could submit to Cracked?

I never did it. I mostly looked into how, looked into the process, read a bunch of their articles and was left with the profound realisation that I don’t know how to be funny. I like to think I am funny, I get reactions as if I am funny, but this past few years of my life, particularly with twitter as an outlet for comedy, has been a little boiling essay of how I’m not actually funny. Mostly, I’m sarcastic and mean or pathetic. I can be funny if I’m the object of the comedy, if the humour is more about how bad I am at telling jokes, or if I’m really ripping into someone in an aggressive way.

This is a bit of a problem, since I liked to think of myself as a writer capable of comedy, but thanks to my feelings about my environment, the limitation of the audience I have listening, I’ve kind of just become dull dad jokes and a miserable recognition that I once again have nothing to me but utilitised cruelty.

Still, good stuff in these videos. They’re pretty good about making themselves and their framing device the object of the comedy, rather than, y’know, other people.