Lord, what fools these mortals be.

We’re all in the same silly boat, together.

In my last post, “No Gen is an Island,” I posited that, despite the ways in which the landscape of social networking must present itself differently to various generations, these are social platforms where a broad (and widening) audience of people gather to communicate with one another.  Certain facets of human communication are almost universally interpretable, participable and, moreover, prone to propagation.  Specifically, little attention has been devoted to humor as a catalyst for sharing behavior or, macrocosmically, its impact on the realm of viral marketing.

On a practical level, there’s no doubt that the online medium serves as an impediment to grasping some nuances in tone and content (whether through the constraints of text or other online media, user interface design, etc.), especially for some Gen X-ers and the generations prior.  But, I suspect, that “internet” fluency happens much like general language acquisition; if you aren’t immersed in the language and culture from a young age, you can still become fluent (or conversant, at least) through practice and experience.  That being said, I’d like to leave these more practical concerns behind for now; what my previous post, “No Gen is an Island,” advances is the notion that the psychological barrier between Gen Y and older generations with regard to the social networking experience may not be as solid as mainstream media suggests.

On the marketing front, fine-tuned audience targeting is useful, effective and revealing.  But a return to core aspects of human communication suggests that there are some very simple tactics which can engage a much broader audience of people, incite positive sentiment, and get them talking to others.

Reuters insists that (in the context of the workplace) Gen Y-ers “speak a different language; [they] respond to humor, passion, and truth.” … Because all the generations to come before only spoke and reacted to communications uttered in some archaic parlance, which best channeled the solemnity, lassitude, and dishonesty, respectively, that ultimately motivated its workers.

The vicarious laughgasm:

To this point that Reuters rather absurdly articulates and, thus, I can’t resist prodding at above (perhaps then I’ve chosen here the characteristic best suited to my Gen Y-ness), I’d like to discuss the universally infectious quality of humor.

I had just come through the little fishing village of Sausalito, and the first thing I said was, “There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito.”

“There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Aaaaah!” He pounded himself, he fell on the bed, he almost rolled on the floor. “Did you hear what Paradise said? There must be a lot of Italians in Sausalito? Aaaah-haaa! Hoo! Wow! Whee!” He got red as a beet, laughing. “Oh, you slay me, Paradise, you’re the funniest man in the world, and here you are, you finally got here [...]. Aaah! Hooo!”

The strangest thing was that next door to Remi lived a Negro called Mr. Snow, whose laugh, I swear on the Bible, was positively and finally the one greatest laugh in all this world. This Mr. Snow began his laugh from the supper table when his old wife said something casual; he got up, apparently choking, leaned on the wall, looked up to heaven, and started; he staggered through the door, leaning on neighbors’ walls; he was drunk with it, he reeled throughout Mill City in the shadows, raising his whooping triumphant call to the demon god that must have prodded him to do it. I don’t know if he ever finished supper.

When I read this passage from Jack Kerouac’s On The Road several months ago (before this post was even a twinkle in my eye), I laughed out loud– and then I sent out a tweet:

The psychologist Robert Provine found that individuals laugh thirty times more often when they’re in the company of other people than when they’re alone. There’s no obvious reason for the physiological response that manifests as laughter; in fact, it’s “expensive” for the body (the brain goes out of its way to express the ingenuousness of an internal state externally to an audience), which suggests that laughter is a form of communication. Moreover, it’s contagious.  Per psychologist Steven Pinker in his book How the Mind Works: “Even when people laugh alone, they are often imagining they are with others: they are reading others’ words, hearing their voices on the radio, or watching them on television. People laugh when they hear laughter; that is why television comedies use laugh tracks to compensate for the absence of a live audience.”

So, not only is laughter contagious, but the physiological reaction is involuntary– which then gets passed along to other people, who often can’t help but laugh themselves after having heard the sound of another’s laughter.  If you disagree, I dare you to try and resist “The Giggle Loop” [YouTube requires that you view the clip on its site-- click on the textual link to be transferred]:

The Giggle Loop: the viral pass-along –> LOLing, and vice versa:

In the online sphere, we feel compelled to inform others textually that we are “LOLing,” because that qualification somehow buttresses the sincerity of our expression.  In the absence of auditory release, it seems we still need to communicate our experience of laughter to others.  Why? Steven Pinker suggests utilitarian uses for humor on a social level but, more simplistically, it’s perhaps because we’ve felt a positive sensation and want to share it (not that this is wholly altruistic– there is no doubt that we enjoy serving as the emissary of “original” and amusing content, and the credit of conjuring positive emotions in others).

Perhaps the most successful viral marketing “case study” is Weezer’s “Pork and Beans” music video (who would have guessed?).  It’s an amalgamation of all the (already) most viraled YouTube videos, rolled into one, including the “’stupid ninja guy,” and a guy who made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for wearing the most t-shirts at one time, along with several other “internet celebrities.”  One incidence of the video has nearly 17.5 million views (and counting) on YouTube [YouTube requires that you view the clip on its site-- click on the textual link to be transferred]:

So, maybe you’re thinking that hit home primarily with the Gen Y demographic.  But how many moms of varying ages do you think tuned in for the notorious, (accidental) viral phenomenon “Charlie Bit My Finger” home video, which is presently killing even the aforementioned “Pork and Beans” music video in user views, with over 90 million to date:

So, my suggestions here are that:

1) Humor holds universal appeal.

2) Laughter is involuntary and contagious.

3) Online, where we can’t audibly communicate our laughter, we substitute other modes of expression to gain the release laughter affords: aside from textually expressing our appreciation (LOLing, for example), the most effective thing we can do is spread the laughter remotely by passing along the stimulus.  In some contexts, this is called viraling.

4) Currently, humor is an under-appreciated component of viral marketing campaigns (not just to Gen Y-ers, but for all demographics).

In my next post, I’ll explore more specifically the mechanism of humor: what constitutes “funny” in a fairly universal sense, and the role that humor plays in social relations– a role which does transfer largely, for our purposes, from the offline realm to that of online social interactions and networking.