Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Youtube is the new America's Funniest Home Videos

There was once a time where life was embarrassing for everyone. It was a time when ABC sitcoms were actually popular and Jesse Frederick did the theme song for every show (the man was a god on the piano). It was during this time that America thought Bob Saget was actually funny. I am happy to say that in these enlightened times we now know that Bob Saget is not funny, but there was once a time that Saget had two separate television shows to stretch whatever lack of talent he had.

He looks like Mr. Rogers less cool nephew.

While Full House allowed a whole ensemble of characters to carry the show, there was another television program that was plagued by Saget. America's Funniest Home Videos (or AFV for short) relied solely on the premise that America wants to see Bob Saget make corny jokes about home movies sent in by white people. America would tune in every week to watch whatever wacky video was chosen by ABC and to watch Saget die a little inside after every joke he had to tell. AFV was the kind of show that you watched at your grandmother's house when you were bored or your family didn't have anything to talk about. The videos ranged from people getting hurt by doing something stupid to pets or babies being cute. Now with AFV gone (I assume it's not on anymore), America still has one bastion for their clips of adorable animals and awesome injuries: Youtube.
Continuing America's desire to watch the mundane.

When you think about it, Youtube is really a lot like AFV. Look at David After Dentist, a video involving a drugged up child being ridiculed by his father in the car ride home. With 66 million views on Youtube it's insane how popular a whacked out kid can be. Really all the video's missing is corny jokes by Saget and it could of won the $10,000 grand prize on AFV. Instead of Saget you have asinine comments to read by users who fail at fundamental socialization. Comments are either pointless quotes from the video you just watched or unnecessary anger derived from said video. No wonder I don't even bother to read the comments anymore.

Youtube is an amazing phenomenon that is not going anywhere. How many hours, dear reader, have you wasted going from one video to another out of boredom? Without Youtube videos to watch I would actually be forced to have a conversation with my friends. Instead we just gather around the monitor and argue over what what attention seeking person's video to look up and watch next.

Youtube has not discovered anything new, it has just allowed a new outlet to watch people who really shouldn't be diving into swimming pools from their roofs. Youtube is a lot better than AFV, with the interactivity it allows us and not having to deal with Saget's droll delivery of tired jokes and for that we thank you.

UPDATE: Turns out AFV is still on television. It's really no surprise though. For the record I'm not making fun of viewers of AFV, just the show whoring out family entertainment. It's a show made for relatively no money that abuses it's own family base. The 90 percent of the show made up by videos is fine, I have no problem with that. It's the other ten percent where they try to force every joke. If the video is funny than let it be funny. Stop trying so hard.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with you. They should've taken this show off the air back in 2005 at least, yet they had to get rid of Monday Night Football to ESPN. Network television sucks.

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