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Webisodes, TikTok, and YouTube Whatnots

Please post a webisode, TikTok, or YouTube video that’s entertained you lately. Don’t worry about commenting much on it in introduction, but please use your 200 words to comment on a clip that another class member uploads. 

36 replies on “Webisodes, TikTok, and YouTube Whatnots”

Florence — I love that you’re revitalizing this video. It was a childhood staple and one of the first early YouTube videos I remember watching. The absurd, low-budget humor feels so specific to that early internet era. It’s really about the puppets; while you can tell some care went into making them, it’s their blatant, homemade charm that makes them so funny. It’s fascinating to revisit it through a contemporary lens, especially now that YouTube has become so polished and commercialized, and largely replaced by TikTok/short-form content.

I’m curious what sparked your renewed interest in the video. It’s somewhat reminiscent of Pee-wee’s Playhouse with its absurdism and playful, chaotic energy. In Pee-Wee, the set draws on and parodies elements of popular art and culture, like the Classical Greek Discobolus. In doing so, the show creates a surreal, self-aware environment that blurs the line between high and low culture. Potter Puppet Pals: Snape’s Diary does something similar, though instead of referencing fine art, it reimagines popular film. It takes the serious, dramatic world of Harry Potter and transforms it into something handmade, silly, and self-deprecating. In both cases, the humor stems from juxtaposition by placing something familiar and “elevated” in a context that feels childlike. That tension between sophistication and simplicity gives the parody its charm and comedy. Potter Puppet Pals also captures the spirit of early YouTube creativity: a participatory culture where people could mold mainstream media into something funny and homemade.

Ryder, this is not what I expected to see when I pressed the link, but at the same time I don’t know what I was expecting. Nonetheless, this is pretty awesome! First time seeing a pet raccoon which is pretty interesting. I like how the commentary that this is being presented with is like a live sports event and not just an observation of an experiment. There are some great comedic comments that contrast the monotonic observations of the choices that Piper makes.

This is really a great advertisement!! Seeing this raccoon eat all of these crackers really made me crave some of those flavors. I think there is something about seeing an animal choose something over another, that makes it believable that they must be correct. Because honestly, I would also prefer the parmesan goldfish crackers.

I am not sure if I would willingly choose to watch this, but I can totally see myself watching this late at night. It provides action packed content, Gordon Ramsay level food critique, and an observation of Piper which is really all you need.

This video is surprisingly entertaining. I feel like I hear a lot of talk about short attention spans nowadays but the fact that 683 thousand people watched a thirteen minute video that’s just a raccoon eating goldfish restores my faith in humanity. With the rise of so much short-form content with TikTok and even shorts on YouTube, I am glad that longer YouTube videos are still in style. I would easily watch a whole series of this with different foods (maybe the creator already made one) or maybe with his different pets as the taste testers.

This video feels very early days of YouTube with the basic concept, handheld videotaping style, and simple editing. I feel like this video could have easily been made in like 2010 and I was at first a little surprised that it came out only three years ago. I do think that in general the variety of content on YouTube has stayed pretty consistent the entire time I have been aware of the platform. I think with the freedom to release basically anything you want on the platform makes this make a lot of sense. It’s really cool to see that people can create content that they enjoy and it can reach lots of people with similar interests.

I have been skiing since I was 5, but I switched to snowboarding when I was 12, and teaching both was my first job. So, because I feel I have a lot of insight into the ski world and culture, I was very interested in this video! The culture around skiing and snowboarding has changed vastly over past years, but I still think there is a lot of pressure to conform to certain standards. In the video, the “ski bum”is very clearly mocking some of these common traits among park skiers. Indeed, he fits the typical look of this type of skier. Historically, I think skiing is seen as a very rich sport, and the more “bum” looks were reserved for snowboarding. In Wisconsin, where I am from, there are still certain hills specifically reserved for skiing, with a ban on snowboarding, due to the common attitudes and behaviors from the snowboarding community. Overall, this video is a great representation of what is happening in current winter sports, despite it being from many years ago.

I think it connects a lot to what we are writing about for our final essays. Furthermore, in mine I am choosing to compare the evolution of a genre over time, and it reminds me of how this video evoked similar thoughts of how the community of skiing has changed with time.

Matvei, I really enjoyed watching the YouTube video you posted and oddly, I feel like I’ve learned from it. There were numerous points in the video in which a question that I didn’t know I had was answered. Charley seems like a very creative and motivated individual. Some of the standout points to me included his bus boy strategy at lunch, his unapologetic attitude in doing things like asking for the food sitting out at the cafe for dinner, and his smooth lock picking skills. I also think it is fascinating that he sleeps in a tent, walks around outside in boxers, but it is cold enough in Whistler that he was able to go skiing in that same day. I was thinking about how he must get cold, although he seems comfortable. I was also surprised by how he didn’t take advantage of the showers in the facility even though he had access to them (either for washing himself or his socks).

It seems like he really enjoys this lifestyle that he shared with the video. I wonder if there are aspects of his life that he doesn’t like as much that he chose to leave out, and I am curious about things like how he got his ski equipment and how he might acquire a new skateboard. Finally, I appreciated the role the fisheye lens played in this video-I think it was an appropriate choice, as was the music they played in the beginning.

I’ve never seen Baby Driver, but now I’m influenced to watch it. With Family Ties in the background and the flashy car and police chase, the clips strung together make the movie appealing to me. I think it’s interesting that a lot of movie clips on TikTok are ways that people find new movies to watch. I saw a clip of Superbad on reels and it made me want to watch that movie again. Many times I’ll also get funny clips from TV shows that I’ve seen or want to see. I’m curious how successful short form content is at influencing people to watch longer forms of content. I think there’s definitely a shift from going to the movies to watching a movie at home to watching reels or TikToks about movies, so I’m curious if society will ever revert back (which I’m not convinced of). I think that it’s sad when people need to go on their phones at the movie theater or even watching TV shows—which I’m guilty of—but I wonder if it’s because content has gotten worse or we have gotten more distracted or both. In any case, I do think it’s useful that short form content is a place where people can find movie or TV recommendations through clips or edits.

I agree that this tiktok is incredibly enthralling. I have watched Baby Driver and I think this edit showcases the capability and potential of more modern film. There is a lot of intentionality with the transitions, music, and shots. It showcases how powerful advertising can be with more short form content as you both mentioned, it got you to watch the movie in the first place. The action scenes and the intrigue of someone being named “baby” really draws people in to finish the tiktok. We struggle with short form content as there is so much of it. If there is a moment when we are not drawn in, we simply scroll down to the next one. There is text used in the first part of this that keeps your eye on the screen and makes you want to stay on the slide. When movies are boiled down, there is so much content that can be intriguing and there is much potential to make the viewer interested. There also is enough intrigue that makes one want to watch the movie itself. It’s interesting to reflect on how much content has changed from some of the more action television shows we watched. Baby Driver is almost the reverse of Mod Squad and showcases just how advanced we’ve gotten with the editing, action shots, music, action scenes, and advertising. I love this tiktok because it is such a reflection of our time and the type of content that we are interested in.

This is such a fun edit, thank you for sharing it! I have seen Baby Driver and this makes me want to rewatch it. I think the edit to a new song is particularly interesting in the context of this film, as the whole movie is basically a music video. Similar to Miami Vice, Baby Driver is so heavily stylized and suave that it distracts from the darker undertones of the plot. Yet simultaneously, the darker undertones all serve as a means of authenticity to validate the almost comedic suaveness. For example, if Baby was not a criminal semi-gangster orphan, then his sunglasses would be way less cool. Similarly, if Tubbs and Crockett weren’t violent undercover cops, then all of the stakes of the music-heavy scenes would be lost. For both pieces of media sometimes the music often takes center stage–like how Candace said Miami Vice was originally pitched as MTV with cops. Like all of the car chase scenes where the music overrides all other audio: they do feel like more of a music video than a movie. This got me thinking about the rise of tiktok and how the idea of MTV never really died, it just got reborn in short form media. Bits of songs and bits of video overlayed, creating bite sized music videos that we can watch 24 hours a day. This is even more prominent in videos such as the one you shared, where the essence of a film and song is condensed into one ultra-condensed and entertaining music video.

This video was so interesting! The format of it, in terms of the setup of the home and the camera and position, made me feel like I was somehow intruding on a real moment of this person’s life. Even though I know that he was addressing the audience throughout the video, since I’ve never seen this person’s content before, I felt like I was dropped into the middle of an already on-going conversation. The immediate pan down to his child once the video started made it seem like the start of a phone call.
Watching this video made me think about the role of the host on TV and how it’s evolved over time, which we’ve seen throughout our class. While early shows like The Milton Berle Show had one host and many guests and acts, nowadays many late night shows have far fewer guests per episode and the host is also less involved in performing and more involved in relating the events of the show to the audience. I think it’s possible to view youtube content like this as some kind of alternative to that ‘host’ model, since if you stick with the channel for a long time, there’s a similar relationship that might develop from the recurrence. Additionally, the creator in this particular video was both narrating and instructing the process of this haircut. However, it’s definitely much more personal and amateur-like than professionally made TV.

Simple. Brief. This video in its entirety represents many aspects of short-form content in 2025. Here are my personal takeaways:

1. Imaginary, even bizarre to look at

The inherent nature of the clip raises questions about the plot behind the video. Why do I see two chickens on my screen? And why are they talking? However, the comedic function of the clip is just that; we are entertained by the sheer bizarre nature of the clip. Much of what short-form content contains bizarre videos, many times imaginary, to a point where the dialogue itself isn’t all the comedy but the people, animals, and things(?) involved makes you say: “what did I just watch?” to a point to where you just give a smirk.

2. Relevant Dialogue

What makes content good is making sure what you’re including is popular and/or relevant to people at the time. This clip is about two chickens that don’t know what to do. It’s indicative to boredom experience by many of us in points in our lives. Tell me you didn’t, at some point of your life, know what to do with your boredom for a string of days? At the same time, it really vocalizes the day in the life of a chicken, pretty much eating food and doing nothing.

3. Editing

Good short-form content, typically, comes with good editing along with it. Cuts between the chickens are timed well and voice-sync is on point. All of those things contribute to a well-timed, well-made TikTok.

When I played this TikTok video, my roommate — without even looking up from her homework — joined in, reciting the rest of the lines perfectly in sync with the chickens on my screen. She didn’t even need to see the video; she knew it by sound alone. It reminded me of how we sing along to songs we may not have listened to for years — except now, it’s not music but viral audios that get stuck in our heads. This particular clip was one I’d completely forgotten about, yet the moment I heard it, I was pulled in, scrolling through a dozen variations of this chicken video to the same sound. The individual videos are short, but they create a loop that’s hard to escape and suddenly ten minutes have passed. It made me wonder: is TikTok our generation’s version of “trash TV”? It provides the same mindless comfort, the same guilty pleasure of consumption without effort or commitment. Yet unlike television, it’s participatory – people act out, remix, and parody the same content endlessly (started with the Harry Potter Puppet Pals YouTube video that I shared). The line between audience and creator blurs, but the addictive cycle remains. Watching these clips feels trivial, but the collective familiarity of these sounds reveals how strangely communal our passive entertainment has become.

I was hoping to see one of these! I personally have a ton of football edits saved on my Tiktok even though I don’t follow it super closely. I think videos like this are a really creative way to make sports accessible to everyone, especially women in America who haven’t been raised watching or playing sports because its not what’s societally expected of them. Not to mention it’s just really clever and catchy. Another thing that I think is a very interesting side effect of these kinds of videos is that it instills a sense of community within the viewers. For me, whenever I see an Eagles edit, I know I’ll be able to go to the comment section and see that it’s filled with people from my hometown, and it reminds me that even though I’m halfway across the country, I’ll always have a community to return to.
Aside from these deeper insights, I think that this edit is great. First of all, I love the song- I haven’t heard it in a while so you know I blasted the volume as soon as I knew what was coming. I’m also a big fan of the transition at the beginning. It kind of reminds me of this one, among others: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMtqVy65/. You should definitely take a look if you’ve watched the new Superman movie. Also, not really an Alabama fan but still enjoyed watching.

SNL has been helping me a lot lately. There was a lull period during the 2010s, but since COVID, I feel like they have been running on all cylinders. Unfortunately, I believe only a portion of the recent improvements are due to any script changes or newly hired comics. I think the world is just a mess… and it seems to keep getting dumber and less believable. Each week of SNL, since its inception, feels like a small, satirical time capsule for the absurdly relevant things happening in the United States, and occasionally, the world sneaks in there.

Regardless, the reason I wanted to talk about this clip is that I actually found the real-life mayoral debate to be much funnier. All due respect to Ramy Youssef, Miles Teller, and Shane Gillis, but Mamdani, Cuomo, and Sliwa took the show. Sliwa persistently talking about being shot by the Bambinos in the back of a yellow taxi way back in the day was a turn not a SOUL in the city saw coming and will be parodied for the foreseeable future.

Now we discuss Cuomo, a mayoral candidate who doesn’t even live in the city, a democrat getting endorsements from our Republican, orange president, and an ex-mayor persistently references his previous tenure… where he was dishonorably discharged and accused of SA. Oh, I almost forgot Sliwa is still in the race purely to spite him. Cuomo is an oxymoron wrapped in his dad’s mayoral clothing.

Last but certainly not least, within a vocally Islamophobic United States, the newly appointed Mayor of our own Mekka, New York, is young, Islamic, inexperienced, a socialist, doesn’t want to go to Israel (mayor race for NYC btw), and worst of all… gives me hope for things to actually change. What a scum bag!!!

The SNL cold open about the NYC mayoral debate is hilarious and entertaining because it’s a perfect mix of exaggeration and chaos. Miles Teller as Cuomo totally leans into the drama, while Ramy Youssef as Zohran Mamdani has those goofy lines about smiling so much it hurts. stuff that’s relatable but blown way up for laughs. Shane Gillis playing Curtis Sliwa going on about random fake happenings was probably the most enjoyable part for me. The sketch works because it takes real NYC politics and makes it ridiculous; it’s all over the place, which keeps you laughing. At the same time, you can tell the actors are having a blast, and their timing is spot-on. It also kind of reminds you of old-school vaudeville stuff. Quick gags, big personalities, physical comedy, exaggerated voices, it’s like watching a stage variety act but on TV. I think SNL has kind of mastered this genre in which they operate.

The SNL cold open about the NYC mayoral debate is hilarious and entertaining because it’s a perfect mix of exaggeration and chaos. Miles Teller as Cuomo totally leans into the drama, while Ramy Youssef as Zohran Mamdani has those goofy lines about smiling so much it hurts. stuff that’s relatable but blown way up for laughs. Shane Gillis playing Curtis Sliwa going on about random fake happenings was probably the most enjoyable part for me. The sketch works because it takes real NYC politics and makes it ridiculous; it’s all over the place, which keeps you laughing. At the same time, you can tell the actors are having a blast, and their timing is spot-on. It also kind of reminds you of old-school vaudeville stuff. Quick gags, big personalities, physical comedy, exaggerated voices, it’s like watching a stage variety act but on TV. I think SNL has kind of mastered this genre in which they operate.

This is a great video, and I think it’s an excellent example of the “short-form comedy skit” genre that’s emerging on Tiktok, Instagram Reels, and elsewhere. I’ve gotten a lot of these in my feed from channels such as American High and Tommy Armstrong. There are some prominent formal standards that demarcate this genre, and I wanted to lay out how a few are exemplified here.

This skit has a very fast pace, both narratively and formally. All of the actors deliver their lines quickly, and the script jumps from loosely-connected scene to loosely-connected scene briskly. The video is filmed almost entirely handheld, and a whip pan is always used when the camera moves. It features a large amount of J-cuts, using audio to blend every clip into each other. These choices have a two-fold motivation – of course, when the vast majority of short-form videos are less than a few minutes long, it’s smart to cut down on runtime wherever possible. However, it’s also instrumental in maximizing audience engagement in a medium that encourages the viewer to be liberal in scrolling off each video, always in search of the next dopamine hit.

The style of comedy shown here also feels emblematic of the genre. A classic feature is escalation – a simple comedic idea is established, and then varied in increasingly unrealistic scenarios. This is evident in the move from interviewing to be an executioner, to the friends being diligent references, to the nonsensical tango halfway through. Many of the skit’s lines feel as though they interpret jokes for audience consumption (e.g. “I make $38,000 a year” “Wow, that’s not very good”). There’s clearly some self-reflexive humorous intent, but it also feels like a dumbing down to make the content more accessible for a variety of age ranges.

I think this is a great edit and it really encapsulates the spirit of the show well. Having already seen the show and loving it, I think this edit portrays the stress and intensity very well. The cliff hanger at the end does a great job of reeling you in and making you want to watch the entire show. The quick flashes between chess players and the intense narration captures the themes of the show. It also shows clips from other parts of the show, such as Beth as a child, which makes you want to watch the rest. It makes chess, which can sometimes be viewed as a slower game, seem very high pressure. Overall, I think this edit does a great job of drawing viewers in and capturing the show’s high stress nature.

This also speaks to the power of edits in general. I often find myself in a similar situation watching something after seeing a captivating edit of it. I don’t know if anyone has actually looked into this, but it would be interesting to see how effective edits actually are at convincing people to watch shows. I sometimes find edits more captivating than the official trailers, due to their quick, attention grabbing nature.

I thought this was a really moving piece just by merit of its content, and found it very fascinating. Although obviously somewhat limited in scope, it does a great job using its resources to tell a story. More than that though, I thought that in the context of our class, it serves as a great example of how social media has completely changed television. When basically anybody can gather enough interest, fame, and financial power through social media to be able to make something like this short film, which although clearly not produced at the level of big TV shows or movies, still is very well made, it is completely destructive to the network’s dominance over television. When that level of quality could only be found in theaters or at home on TV, networks had the ability to monopolize it and control what people had access to. However, nowadays, with the advent of the internet and social media, people have so many different avenues to find entertaining content that the idea of a network doesn’t even make very much sense. Instead, we have shifted to sites like YouTube or streaming sites like netflix.

Alec, I’m really glad that you posted this video because this genre of video is similar to a lot of the humor that I laugh at on the internet. I appreciate the ridiculous comedy featured in your video, and I think it is interesting that many people would have an adverse reaction to what you posted. While it made me laugh, I think it is fascinating how different this video is compared to a majority of the videos shared by our classmates.

I think this genre of video, completely absurdist and nonsensical humor is relevant to concepts of postmodernism and surrealism that we have discussed recently. To the same extent that television shows such as Peewee Herman evolved past modernism, by using new forms of editing, cinematography and mise-en-scene, a lot of internet humor follows similar not by the books forms of humor.

The video you posted is emblematic of a term popularized by the internet, referred to as ‘brain rot,’ which is included in the Oxford dictionary. Brain rot is an umbrella term that refers to the deteriorating quality and logic involved in internet humor. The video that you posted, and a lot of other brainrot-adjacent humor almost feel like “post-post-modernism” in that they have evolved past and changed post-modernism styles.

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