The Tears of a Clown

re: The post that mentions penny-arcade.com ... took a look... don't get it... wtf is so funny... nothing there... don't waste your time

Way too limited an analysis here. There is far more to comedy online than pure video sites. Check out a site like Cracked.com - a site that blends strong written content with videos and photos. No Will Ferrell gimmicks, no sifting through hundreds and hundreds of user uploaded garbage. Just pure funny content all the time.

Way too limited an analysis here. There is far more to comedy online than pure video sites. Check out a site like Cracked.com - a site that blends strong written content with videos and photos. No Will Ferrell gimmicks, no sifting through hundreds and hundreds of user uploaded garbage. Just pure funny content all the time.

I think Newsweek's Discussion of comedy is too narrow. One branch has been doing very well: Web Comics. Sites like www.penny-arcade.com (NSFW) and www.pvponline.com have a large following and have allowed their creators to work at their craft full time. Penny Arcade has grown so well that their annual Charity ??? Childs Play (http://www.childsplaycharity.org/) brought in $1.3 million last year. They also have an annual gaming convention PAX (http://www.pennyarcadeexpo.com/) that had 37,000 attendees in 2007.

Funniest stuff on the web is on 1938media.com

There is a site called www.rooftopcomedy.com that is doing comedy right on the internet. They feature standup comedy from clubs all across the country. They just finished hosting their first comedy festival in Aspen as well. They are definately in it for the long haul and benefit comedy as a whole instead of some of the sites that just have the useless videos of people huring themselves for others pleasure.

Comedy is the eye and heart of the beholder. I suspect that Newsweek is just feeling the sour grapes since their publication, like all other print mediums, has suffered a direct hit from up-start Internet publishers.

Interesting takes on the medium and demographics. I've been thinking of trying to inject more of a comedic bent to my one-man webcomic/podcast site, www.heroisum.com, which features straightforward, comic book action aimed at that same demo (and younger -- I aim to keep it clean). I guess it's all about finding the right niche and hitting the right note and the only way to tell if you've done it is to keep working at it until you either develop an audience or give up from the exhaustion of screaming in the wilderness, hoping to be heard (or seen).