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Bob Saget 2.0

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the robo-saget-desires-your-funny-movies dept.

theodp writes "Slate makes a pretty convincing argument that YouTube and its knock-offs can trace their roots back to America's Funniest Home Videos." From the article: "The show's stock in trade was to find the lowest common denominator and then hit it in the crotch. Consider this list of select highlights from the show's 'Best of Kids & Animals' DVD: a kid doing a cannonball onto his dad's groin, a baby running into a church pew, a dog peeing on a wedding dress, and a kid clocking his dad in the nuts with a helmet. While these clips are all certainly lowbrow, they've also got something else in common: They're oozing with family values."

13 of 145 comments (clear)

  1. Why is 1800 of 2000 trampoline accidents? by iogan · · Score: 4, Funny
    At its height, viewers sent America's Funniest Home Videos 2,000 VHS tapes a day, and at least 1,800 of those, it seemed, showed some kind of trampoline mishap.
    Wouldn't that seem a bit high? What are all these people doing on trampolines? What am I missing here?
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    Nyhetsankaret.com -- det bÃsta av Sveriges Nyhetssido
    1. Re:Why is 1800 of 2000 trampoline accidents? by xeoron · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Don't know about you, but most of the AFHV's was not that funny or often at all. Most of the videos only would be funny if it happened in person to someone. Instead of them cherry picking what the masses might like, places like youtube let people choose themselves, along with screen any videos instead of a select few.

    2. Re:Why is 1800 of 2000 trampoline accidents? by a16 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wouldn't that seem a bit high? What are all these people doing on trampolines? What am I missing here?
      The joke? ;)

  2. But youtube isn't usually funny! by crazyjeremy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Now if most of youtube's content could be somewhat funny, or even "slightly more funny than bland humor" I would see comparing it to funniest home videos. Like it is, youtube is painful to endure. I would venture to say countless people singing into a qvga camera isn't exactly entertaining for most of us.

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    Funnypics
    1. Re:But youtube isn't usually funny! by legoburner · · Score: 5, Funny
      "America's Funniest Home Videos" culled out probably 99% of the tapes they received

      The department which did that must have a higher suicide rate than the russian military!
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      Warhammer forums
    2. Re:But youtube isn't usually funny! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Funny? "America's Funniest Home Videos" rivals Japanese extreme gore for the title of most concerning social development of the past 20 years. Visual media with no other discernable purpose than enjoying the infliction of pain have been increasing in popularity for decades but those are all make-believe. Week after week of a dim, smarmy host fronting videos of real personal home injuries and harrowing narrow calls crossing over to healthy family entertainment says more about the general public than violent video games ever could.

  3. Youtube Wins by potpie · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Youtube may have some low-brow physical humor, but America's "Funniest" Home Videos doesn't have TV clips and music videos. The variety alone places Youtube in an entirely different category. Plus, Youtube doesn't have those annoying voice-overs.

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    Esoteric reference.
    1. Re:Youtube Wins by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 4, Informative

      You should see his stand-up. The guy's hilarious, and his stuff is dirty as hell. He just sold out completely for Full House.

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      <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
  4. speaking of... by chasingporsches · · Score: 4, Insightful

    speaking of bob saget and youtube...

    THIS is bob saget 2.0! (NSFW)

  5. There go the family jewels... by Chaffar · · Score: 4, Funny
    For all its black eyes and unplanned water landings, America's Funniest Home Videos always reinforced the nuclear family as this country's central institution. A child hitting his dad in the groin is a child who's spending quality time with his dad.
    Remind me to kick my dad in the balls next time he wants to spend quality time playing Scrabble with me...
  6. I'm missing something here... by Wilson_6500 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sometimes, someone will send me a link to a video on YouTube that's pretty funny. From there, the "similar videos" function lets me find other humorous videos in the same vein (e.g. Stephen Colbert clips, MST3K clips, whatever).

    However, when I approach the site's front-end, the "most X" (where X is popular, viewed, voted on, or whatever) lineups are jammed full of webcam clips, in-jokes, and episodes of anime. It's a bizarre disconnect.

  7. Re:GCD, LCM by richdun · · Score: 4, Funny

    Actually, lowest common denominator is okay. For instance, when adding the fractions 1/6, 2/3, and 4/18, you could convert all the fractions to a denominator of 54, as in 9/54, 27/54, and 12/54. But the correct procedure is to convert them to a denominator of 18, as in 3/18, 9/18, and 4/18 (16/18, or 8/9). And the lowest common denominator is only 1 if the numbers are all integers. You can't express 1/6 as a fraction of integers with a denominator of 1.

    For more, see Wikipedia.

  8. New slogan for YouTube by jb.hl.com · · Score: 5, Funny

    "YouTube: Everything Slashdotters hate about MySpace rendered as a low quality video"

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    By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --