Times have sure changed, but America's insatiable appetite for the same six jokes sure hasn't. Isn't our sense of humor due for a bailout?
BURBANK, CA - Entertainment researchers released a study Wednesday that found that every home video ever submitted to ABC’s America’s Funniest Home Videos since the program’s debut in 1989 has fallen under one of six very narrow plot categories. According to researchers, the spectrum of topics considered “submissionworthy” by AFV’s viewing demographic is shockingly finite, making it very easy for analysts to classify them.
“These findings are extraordinary,” said Los Angeles entertainment pundit Gary Vickerstaff. “It almost seems as though Americans who watch AFV lack maturity in the part of the brain that says, ‘Hey, only my family would find Grandpa overshooting the Slip ‘n Slide humorous.’”
The show’s producers have confirmed that approximately 18% of viewer submissions could be accurately and comprehensively described as “a cat chasing a flashlight beam.” Additionally, another 14% fall under the narrow genre of “overweight dad causes rupture of above-ground swimming pool.”
“This certainly helps explain the overwhelming success of small-minded, vomit-inducing, slapstick-centered television and cinema,” said UCLA pop culture professor Adam Adonis. “If you tell me that 17% of AFV’s submissions fall seamlessly into the category of ‘young boy’s goofing off during recital results in faceplant fall from choir stand,’ I’ll pretty much believe anything you say about the degraded intellectual state of our nation.”
Other analysts have suggested that the study reveals an alarming sense of egotism and narcissism in the AFV-viewing populace. Shane Weibesynth, former AFV viewer, now runs a Glendale, California-based non-profit aimed to help recovering AFV submitters.
“The primary goal of Nobody Gives a Shit (NGS) is to help Americans realize that when Dad gets whacked in the nuts with a Wiffle bat while playing catcher at a tee ball game, it’s only funny to their own family,” Weibesynth told reporters Wednesday. “Let’s say AFV actually chooses your video over the thousands of other, almost indistinguishable ones and airs it. Congratulations. You’ve just perpetuated a dangerous phenomenon and will probably cause the sale of 5,000 more Bride Wars DVDs.”
“How the f*ck you even figured out how to operate a camcorder is beyond me,” he added.
The study also caught the attention of the Obama administration. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters in a press conference Thursday morning that President Obama intends to sign a piece of legislation offering tax incentives to citizens who use video recordings of their young sons inadvertently making embarassing remarks about them while sitting in Santa’s lap at the mall for private, in-home use only. Americans who upload such material to online video sharing services would not be eligible for the benefits.
“We are hoping for cooperation from the House and Senate on this issue,” Gibbs said. “The president is eager to sign a bill that would help deter families from rotting our brains with footage of Uncle Rick’s ladder collapsing as he attempts to clean the gutters.”
