The open-sourcing of humor

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

I am of the impression that nowadays, the funniest stuff to be found anywhere is made by anonymous people and posted on the Internet for shits and giggles. Spoof foreign song subtitles, (Insert Name Here) Facts, LOLcaptions... it looks like "professional" humor is kind of lagging behind.

Opinions?

[metapunditedgy]

1. Comments.

1) While cartoonists are paid to be funny every day, the internet works by taking thousands of attempts each day and voting on them to push the funniest stuff to the top. So it's a little different model... there's a lot of unfunny crap out there, too.

2) A lot of the funny stuff is unintentionally funny.

3) Some internet stuff is funny because it has a back-story. It's like an inside joke that the whole world shares. Many professional cartoonists spend years building up enough back-story with their characters to be able to make such jokes. (E.g., Doonesbury or maybe Dilbert.) Many cartoonists don't even bother.

[customerserviceguy]

2. It's happening with all sorts of information and entertainment

Clearly, the blogger has taken some of the spotlight from the mainstream media reporter. Musicians who are willing to build a fan base by going to YouTube are able to circumvent the large record labels. Geeks have long found solutions to techie problems by looking to the Internet to see what worked.

All kinds of things are going open source, that's the world that the Internet opened up for us.