When is humor not humor? At times humor is can be used to connect us with some kind of common ground. Most comedians find everyday life as something to make jokes about, usually by putting on a unique spin on it.
Take the Seinfeld show—I think every show had a unique bizarre spin on anything that they could come up and sometimes jokes were very hurtful at times, but people seemed to find the sense of humor in this show regardless. Comedy that had a more slapstick approach was effective to some degree; some people that like that type of humor, and found that when someone else got hurt, they laughed.
However, when you look at these types of humor, it is highly dependent on who’s doing the jokes and who is on the receiving end. Perception of these types of jokes makes the most impact. With social media coming at us with such force, sometimes these humorous attempts can backfire. Information spreads fast so care in how you put that information out there is necessary.
We should always look on the positive side. Using examples like the Old Spice videos “your man can smell like this” gives us a questioning look: what is that supposed to mean and almost looking forward to the next odd expression or video with a perplexed look on your face!
You have to admit that some Super Bowl ads are hysterical, though they keep you wondering how they came up with some of those ideas. Take, for instance, the boy who had on the Darth Vader costume with the huge helmet. We all want our make-believe stories and dreams to take place even when we are looking at a Youtube video, hopeful that our dreams will come true like the little boy when he waved the “lightsaber”. He had the car do its tricks and in the background, the music from the movie “Imperial March” played as his make-believe fantasies came true. With these types of ads, the humor is something that maybe all of us can relate to sometime in our life.
Social media, ads, or brands can sometimes express humorous attempts that can be very hurtful to others, even harmful, especially if they aren’t part of the process. Hurting people’s feelings seem to be made easy when it is not accounted for personally. Watching a TV ad with a distant look because we aren’t standing with a group of people telling jokes can be hurtful. It goes back to how each of us perceives jokes, whether on TV or in person.
Recently there was an ad shown on a popular video about the spaghetti sauce Ragu. Ragu wanted to take an opinion poll and had asked parents about cooking. Somehow, it got so turned around that pretty soon, Ragu hated Dads. There, humor backfired. The Ragu approach was weak and some Dads didn’t take this as a humorous approach to Dad’s cooking. Stereotyping was the biggest issues and it was made perfectly clear that brand names shouldn’t use this type of humor if they are at all concerned about their reputation and people buying their products.
Humor is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly, by spreading misconceptions online through social media; it is always wise to consider the subject matter of each joke. Humor can be very hurtful, especially at the expense of someone or a group. Brand names should really think this through and make better decisions when they think something is funny when it truly is not.