2013 will bring more bad jokes
Parody accounts the latest in trend of poor humour
Nathan Ross
Arts Editor
Rolling in the new year, we can hopefully say goodbye to a lot of trends that have overstayed their welcome. Unfortunately, that can only mean that some other soon-to-be-despised joke format is about to take over. First though, a nod to the most overused joke format of last year.
2012, which was unofficially the year of the meme, took the format of an image (frequent, but not always, a rage comic) and put minimal text on it and oh my God it was hilarious — for the first few months.
Then the lack of originality set in, and you’d be lucky to see a meme that made you laugh maybe once a month. It was too late, though. Every school, fandom, corporation and niche had their own meme page that was constantly being updated.
These too were funny until the few jokes that everyone could relate to were told, and those pages became bland and boring and were desperate enough for “likes” and traffic that they would post anything. There has to be a point where enough is enough.
Fortunately, it seems like the meme craze is petering out. Unfortunately, a new joke format started taking its place, and seems primed to explode in 2013.
What you have to dread popping up all over social media next year is the parody account.
In the beginning of social media being used to make jokes about current events, wannabe comedians and genuinely funny people would take to Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr to make fun of whatever was happening. Then those jokes were taken and reposted over and over again, and after 48 hours nothing that was once funny could ever be funny again.
All of that changed with the introduction of the parody account. It still rehashed those jokes that were becoming more and more unpopular, but changed the game by having those jokes come from a parody account of the person who it involved.
The Mitt Romney binder joke was funny enough, but if you were to read those jokes from a Twitter account that was designed to be the binder itself, then it was meant to be that the jokes would multiply tenfold in hilarity.
Except for those jokes were based off a one-time thing, and once you’ve made four or five jokes about it, the joke died. Memes were great for that, because it could capture a moment in a single meme and that would be it.
In the final few months of 2012, we have been treated to parody accounts of The NHL Podium, Kanye West’s shirt and the Royal and “Kimye” fetuses. (I wish I was making this up, really I do.) At first, the jokes of “I live in a princess” were just too funny, but after the tenth tweet you have to wonder how much attention the people running these are going to need before they’re all done and finished.
It doesn’t seem like it will end any time soon, because if there is one thing that social media users love, it is being in on the joke. For as long as they’ll be hunting for the next account for Grumpy Cat, humour will continue to die a slow and painful death.
This will undoubtedly be the biggest internet trend for the first few months of 2013, and will likely stay until someone else discovers an even worse way to stretch out a joke way longer than it should. Let it be known that my money is on Youtube re-enactments of pop culture, complete with Twitter accounts to vote on an alternate ending so that the fun will just never end.
