Thought about it to much

Sharkeisha, Shovel Girl and the Social Permission Theory Response

               I’m not sure exactly why but the Sharkeisha video seemed really depressing to me.  It has nothing to do the actual content of the video, which is funny.  The strange name and the cathartic violence make the video funny.  The part that is depressing is that this video speaks to many problems for society as a whole.  The problem isn’t that people find it or video’s like it funny.  One of the problems it demonstrates is the problem with overexposure.  Just from the handful of memes shown on the blog it is clear that the it suffered from overexposure.  That is the death of comedy, but still people continue a joke well after it is dead.  This is common for anything well known, but is not beneficial to society because ruins things.  The main problem I see from the videos is societies willingness to give up their right to privacy.  Events that would generally be private matters or unfortunate incidents are now not only public knowledge, but widespread jokes and memes.   The fact that this happens is terrible but the worst part is that people willingly do this.  They release these video’s on their own accord, conceding their own right to privacy.  What makes it worst is that society promotes this self-relinquish of our rights. 

               I agree that the humor from the videos probably come from the social permission theory.  There is also some superior theory and incongruity in them.  As said in the second paragraph the humor from the physical interactions could be associated with any theory but superiority fits best.  Comedy cannot be explained by one theory; even specific examples can rarely only fit one theory.  Now saying that, the false alarm theory does not work at all.  The girls in both videos do not seem to be ok afterward, they both look like they should go to a doctors to get checked out for a concussion.  The girls do get up but do not seem safe post alteration.   Also I feel little sympathy for the girls in the videos because there had to be a buildup that could be predicted to violently explode for there to be people filming.  The sympathy comes from the realization that their friends didn’t care enough about them to stop filming and help.  We laugh at them because society tells us they put this up so go ahead and laugh but the more I think about the videos the more these seem like tragedies than comedies.