Old internet humor has not aged well

"Had to be there at the time" really does describe a lot of old internet humor.

Internet humor has always been weird because it's completely different compared to what a professional comedian does.

When you watch a professional comedian's act, even if it's something old, you can still get a good laugh out of it. An exmaple of this is Buddy Hackett Live and Uncensored from 1983. Sure, that was made almost 40 years ago at the time I write this in 2021, but those are jokes that work because you can follow along with what's going on.

Then there's internet humor. A lot of it revolves around whatever is popular at the time, tech and games for the most part.

An example of this is College Saga:

In order to find this funny, you have to know what video game it's parodying. If you don't, then the humor is totally lost.

Another is Star Wars Kid:

This was a massively popular video, but for anybody that watches it today, all they see is a kid haphazardly swinging a pole around. It's just a little funny at best.

And here's one just with an image:

There's so much stuff you have to know in advance just to understand this.

You have to know it's from Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show that ended its run in 1994 (close to 30 years ago as of 2021).
You have to know it's the character Captain Jean-Luc Picard from that show.
You have to know that the image is supposed to represent frustration out of annoyance, and not just being tired.

You even have to know when someone types *facepalm*, they're referencing the above image.

Ridiculous.

I try, but don't always succeed, not to use internet humor or slang in what I write here, because I know there's little chance anybody in the future would understand what it even means.

Published 2021 Oct 19