I don’t believe anyone has ever laughed out loud watching a funny video. That being said, you can often find me holding my phone an inch from my face watching a stream of mindless content and forcefully exhaling through my nose when I find something exceptionally funny. It’s one of life’s rare uncomplicated pleasures. I do it for three hours every morning when I wake up and four hours every night before bed. That’s why my brain works so well.
There are few things more quietly devastating than showing a friend a funny video. They stare blankly at the screen for 10 seconds. They ask, “How long is it?” You reply, “Not that long! Wait this is a good bit”, and the good bit comes and goes without them so much as cracking a smile. It’s even worse when you’re the one being shown the video – to have your friend watch your face expectantly, looking for reassurance that your friendship hasn’t been some insane charade built on nothing. It’s pretty much a lose-lose every time.
Anyway, I’m excited to put us both through that process with this article.
1. Paris with Kate Berlant and John Early
Here’s the thing about Paris. You watch this sketch for the first time and think, “Wow, that’s so funny. What great character actors, what funny jokes.” You don’t think about it, maybe, for another couple of hours – but something draws you back and you watch it again. You notice new favourite moments: Kate peeping through her fingers, John repeating the word “fluent”. Without thinking – almost without breathing – you immediately watch this video another four times back to back and send it to every person you’ve ever met. And then, all at once, somehow, like some kind of violent brain virus, Paris has taken over every fibre of your being – you’re restructuring your personality, your vocabulary, your sense of self. You’re crossing your eyes. You’re screaming “fear-based culture”. You’re printing a homemade T-shirt that says “FOUND A GUY!” on it and you’re wearing it to Kate Berlant’s live show at the Edinburgh fringe in 2018. I’m being totally serious. It happens.
2. Jamie Demetriou: Big D
Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Pure heaven.
3. Billy on the Street with Lena Dunham and Elena
Say what you want about Billy Eichner – or Lena Dunham or, to be honest, the politics of milking a live cow in the meatpacking district and uploading it to YouTube – but there’s a certain undeniable magic to seeing an elderly woman clutching an udder while a controversial writer-director is handed a diorama of “Ricky Gervais pitching that show Derek to Netflix”. Difficult to beat.
4. This tweet from Charlie Bardey
thinking about being self righteous and wrong. why not 🙂
— charlie (@chunkbardey) August 10, 2020
Charlie owns Twitter and this list could quite easily be made up exclusively of his tweets. I don’t know why this one hit me so hard but I think about it all the time. It’s so beautiful to me. And so profound! Why not! Why not!
5. Orson Welles’s champagne commercial
A stone-cold classic. A drunk old man who doesn’t know what he’s doing? I’m laughing already. That man is Orson Welles? Honey, I’m watching this video upwards of 400 times.
6. Year Friends: February
I love the 2016 web series Year Friends. Watching these six people spout total nonsense for 12 (well, 11 actually I think) truly deranged episodes was probably the highlight of my 2016. (To be fair, very bad year for me.) This is my favourite ep, almost entirely because of Al Roberts saying, “I would kill a hundred men just for one night with that spicy clam.”
7. This tweet by Joe Castle Baker
I hope I win the MacArthur genius grant for my work as a bitch
— joe equality baker (@joecastlebaker) September 27, 2019
This really resonates with me.
8. Cat Cohen’s poetry
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Catherine is the funniest girl in town and one of the world’s most thrilling stage performers (for real) but she is also the modern American poetess. She has this lovely style that, line to line, will swing wildly between the funniest and the saddest thing you’ve ever heard. Just like life, I guess …
9. Cher does West Side Story
“I will be playing all the parts.” Serving suggestion: drugs.
10. Magpies Love Mirrors: My Cat is My Son
Emmeline Downie is my best friend and the funniest person human civilisation has yet produced. This is the only video of her publicly available on the internet. If I’m out of the country for a while, I will watch it to remind myself of her genius and, even though I’m still slightly unclear what this sketch is, laugh hysterically.
