Pranks and pranksters are huge (including
Just For Laughs’ Gags channel, with over 4,000,000 subscribers). So are eccentric people simply talking to their rabid fan base. Most promising is that the low barrier to entry allows infinite experimentation…which will lead to new breeds of humour analogous to the medium (and to its increasing mobile use). Without even trying, YouTube has already spawned a motherlode of unique talent that has built its own infrastructure.
THIS is where YouTube has its greatest role, opportunity and responsibility for the comedy of tomorrow. In the 1967 book “
The Medium is the Massage,” visionary Marshall McLuhan said that “We impose the form of the old on the content of the new”; in other words, our new content takes on the form of that which preceded it (which is why early TV looked like visual radio). Right now, despite its success, it’s not enough for YouTube to be satisfied with server farms filled with filmed live performances, talking heads or sketches that look like old TV or indie films. The role of YouTube is to drive the next generation to do more, to take the next shot, to take risks, and to deftly incorporate the past to drive the future.
That is why, at this year’s Just For Laughs, my number one priority is welcoming the new-breed YouTube comedy stars to the event, and ensuring that they don’t merely meet their more traditional brethren and sistren, but find a way to collaborate with them…and change the humor industry.
And perhaps while doing so, find a nice niche within it for a gutsy, outspoken, ostentatious veteran like me to occupy ;)
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