#2 Laugh Tracks

We've all been there. Flipping through channels, when you're unfortunate enough to stumble upon the Nickelodeon channel or something equally appalling. A combination of sheer boredom and the desperate hope of potential entertainment stays your trigger finger. You watch just enough to catch the last three words of a joke from a sassy 7-year-old girl, essentially telling her parent to do something that is not anatomically possible. And people wonder why kids have no respect for their elders these days. As if this wasn't bad enough, there is an invisible audience of adults laughing at a unimaginative joke. Due to your low self-esteem as a child and a inexplicable desire to fit in, you let out a few small chuckles in spite of yourself. Of course, no one wants to be the odd man out, not laughing. No one wants to be that guy. An angel falls out of heaven and breaks her neck. Somewhat conscious of the fact that you've just laughed at a joke that you don't find funny, you grow irate. Not only has this 7-year-old girl forced a laugh out of you that you will never get back, she just brutally murdered and disemboweled any possibility you had of enjoying your monotonous channel-flipping session. As you clean up the graphic crime scene in your head, you turn off the TV, lay down on the couch, and toy with the notion of guzzling hydrogen peroxide. Then slowly you come to the realization that it's not the 7-year-old's fault, it's the invisible audience's.

Why do laugh tracks exist? It almost seems as though laugh tracks draw attention to the fact that the show is not, in and of itself, humorous enough to bring people to laugh without the use of an auxiliary audience. Which brings us to the root of the strategy. Please somebody explain to me why a group of people laughing is reason enough in your mind to laugh along, regardless of whether the joke was understood or even humorous. I suppose the reasons could be endless.

Maybe a desire to fit in stemmed from a childhood full of bad playground memories.

Maybe hearing other people laugh makes you laugh.

Maybe life is just so great and wonderful that you can't contain an endless spout of giggles.

Maybe you don't have a desire to genuinely laugh, but various extraneous forces dictate that you do. (i.e. social politeness, crowd psychology, the bandwagon effect, etc.)

Personally, hearing others laugh automatically gives me an impulse not to. If several people are laughing at once, I'd rather observe quietly and analyze the so-called joke. After lengthy examination of the people involved and the root of the humor itself, I afford myself a few quiet chuckles. Often at the expense of people questioning my sanity. If you want a scenario where sanity is questioned, consider the person who lets a group of people control his individual output.

I suppose I have to give you guidance as a reward for spending the two minutes reading this. Because this age of instant gratification dictates such, correct?

In my opinion, as is this entire blog, laughs are worth something. If the less you say makes your words more valuable, and the less you kiss people makes your kisses more precious, then the natural extension of that logic is that the less that you laugh, the more it means every time you do.

William Shakespeare said: "Men of few words are the best men." And also, "When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain."

I'm not saying to be miserable and to not enjoy life. I'm saying that you should only laugh when you genuinely think something is funny.

I'm saying the next time you have a crowd-driven impulse to laugh, stop and reconsider whether it's actually worth your laugh. And I believe it will, as a direct result, mean more to people when you do laugh.

Alright get out of here, all of you. You're a waste of my time.

Whether you believe it or not, this is the most productive thing you've done all day.