College Humor

There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on the run­away hit CollegeHumor.com at the New York­er: Fun­ny Boys.

Two pas­sages that struck me:

A key to col­lege humor, the four have real­ized, is that stu­dents like to think they belong to a small in-crowd that under­stands the joke, while the pub­lic at large remains clue­less. Take the phrase “More Cow­bell,” which is a slo­gan appear­ing on one of the most pop­u­lar of the company’s Bust­ed Tees; it comes from an instruc­tion giv­en in a skit on “Sat­ur­day Night Live.” “Not every­one saw that episode, so the peo­ple who did see it think it is that much cool­er because nobody else knows,” Josh said.

and

Josh, of CollegeHumor.com, is hap­py to point out that his site has sur­passed The Onion in traf­fic, “though I can’t say we are bet­ter.” There is a cru­cial dif­fer­ence in con­tent between The Onion and CollegeHumor.com: while the suc­cess of the for­mer depends on the wit of its writ­ers, the appeal of the lat­ter is clos­er to that of “America’s Fun­ni­est Home Videos.” CollegeHumor.com offers found humor of the sort pio­neered by, among oth­ers, Steve Allen and David Let­ter­man. Yet CollegeHumor.com isn’t the expres­sion of a gov­ern­ing com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty deter­mined to enter­tain an audi­ence with, say, Stu­pid Pet Tricks; rather, the audi­ence decides what is fun­ny, and enter­tains itself. CollegeHumor.com doesn’t just cater to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor; it’s cooked and served by the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, too.