Humor on the internet

The history of humor on the Internet begins together with the Internet itself. Initially, the internet and its precursors, LANs and WANs, were used merely as another medium to disseminate jokes and other kinds of humor, in addition to the traditional ones ("word of mouth", printed media, sound recording, radio, film, and TV).[1] In lockstep with the progress of electronic communication technologies, jokers took advantage of the ARPANET,[2] e-mail,[3] Usenet newsgroups (e.g., rec.humor and alt.humor), bulletin board systems, etc, and finally the Whole World Wide Web. Gradually, new forms of humor evolved, based on the new possibilities delivered by electronic means of communication.[1] A popular form of internet humour is found in the form of 'internet memes'. Reaction videos, where amusement is expressed through a person's response to something, are another prevalent form of humor unique to the internet.[4]

  1. ^ a b Limor Shifman, "Humor in the Age of Digital Reproduction: Continuity and Change in Internet-Based Comic Texts", International Journal of Communication, vol. 1, 2007, Quote: " A content analysis of 400 humorous texts from eight salient humorous websites shows that the Internet functions both as a ‘carrier’ of old humor types such as jokes and cartoons and as a ‘generator’ of new humor types."
  2. ^ Eric S. Raymond, The Art of UNIX Programming, p. 44. Quote: "Software, ideas, slang, and a good deal of humor flowed over the experimental ARPANET links. Something like a shared culture began to form"
  3. ^ Trevor J. Blank, Folklore and the Internet: Vernacular Expression in a Digital World, 2009, . Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press.
  4. ^ Attardo, Salvatore (2023). Humor 2.0: How the Internet Changed Humor. Anthem Press. pp. 207–11.