Algorithms Are Now Deciding What’s Funny Rather Than
People
What’s happening to comedy these days? Comedy used to be
shaped in rooms, live and in person. Stand-up comics had to test jokes in front
of real audiences, and in front of their own peers, to see what worked and what
didn’t work. Improvisers relied on real-time reactions, silence, laughter, and more
often than not, failure or awkward pauses to guide what worked for audiences.
Humor used to be negotiated between the performer and audience. Today though, comedy
lives online, where algorithms rather than people determine what gets seen,
shared, and ultimately rewarded.
Comedy success now on platforms like TikTok, FB reels,
Instagram, YouTube etc., is measured by views, likes, watch time, and shares.
Those metrics don’t actually evaluate whether something is clever, thoughtful,
or connecting. The algorithms evaluate if people stop scrolling or not; so as a
result, the type of humor that rises to the top is often fast, exaggerated,
shocking, annoying, or only visually attractive. Subtlety and slow build don’t
perform well in reels or algorithmic spaces because they require presence,
patience and context to become funny.
This shift is insightful for how we understand humor nowadays.
Klosterman touches on this point in our class readings, arguing that culture is
shaped by whatever is most popular at the time; this applies to reels as well.
If AI algorithms are deciding what’s seen by the majority then it’s shaping our culture because we are passive
consumers only watching what’s provided for us. For a lot of pop culture
history, comedy was experienced collectively. Live audiences laughed together,
and even when people watched television at home, laugh tracks reminded viewers
that others were laughing too. Some of the most popular TV shows like Friends
or Seinfeld used laughter as a social cue, signaling not only when
something was funny, but inviting viewers into a shared emotional moment. Humor
was something we experienced with others, even when we were physically alone.
Algorithms are now disrupting that tradition. Is that a bad
thing? Not necessarily, maybe not yet. This does not mean online comedy lacks
value. Many voices online now have found audiences they might never have
reached otherwise. However, it does raise an important question about who
controls cultural taste and what we could be potentially losing as
collective laughter becomes less central to the comedy experience. Today, humor
is mainly consumed individually, through headphones, and during quiet scrolling
moments, often without any outward reaction at all. When everyone can be a “comedian”,
but only some are amplified by the algorithm, humor becomes ultimately less
democratic overall.
There is something to be said about the isolation of the individual within traditionally social environments. An image of a man sitting by himself, hunched over a bar nursing his drink, invokes feelings of loneliness and isolation. He is not socializing in a place where socialization occurs. It is a negative situation whereby the viewers understand that something is out of place in the man's life. We innately understand the tragic elements when the scene is set in a bar, but when technology is involved, we overlook these elements. We give a title to this technology and call it "social", but there is little that is social about it in the traditional sense. Laughing at a video by yourself, despite how many views and likes it has, is different than laughing in an audience. A funny joke must be shared (though it seems that the worse someone is at recounting a joke, the more they have to share it). But as you have pointed out, there is a social requirement to comedy. And if we change the social element of comedy, are we changing comedy?
ReplyDelete