The iComedy Theory

I’ve come up with a theory – it’s my first theory so don’t be too harsh. I’ve called it the iComedy theory because it revolves around how I think new technology and social networking is changing the face of humour and how this change has allowed anybody to become their own comedian.

In the old days, if you wanted to tell a joke to a lot of people you’d have to find work at a comedy club and get yourself a five minute slot after convincing the management. Then you’d probably stress over your material for hours on end by trying to get input from everyone and anyone to reassure yourself that the crowd will love you and your jokes – remember, these people probably haven’t paid to see this new talent so they won’t hold any bars if they don’t like what they hear and probably wouldn’t be above heckling until the act broke down into tears.

However, in 2010 and with the introduction of Facebook and Twitter I reckon that the whole aspect of comedy is going to change, where instead of being talent spotted in a dingy bar at 2am sweating like a Liberal Democrat realising a hung parliament is inevitable while being covered in urine thrown at you by drunk truckers who think they’re attacking a The Who support act, that you’d instead catch the eye of an agent with one simple Tweet.

For my theory to have any basis I need to further explain why I think social networking is rapidly evolving comedy… I’ll try my best. Picture this: you’re sitting at work or at school, twiddling your thumbs trying to make one go forwards and the other one go backwards but you instead see something happen in the class or office you’re in and bam… You’ve thought of a great observational comedy joke, or overhear a funny conversation that you can take out of context, or you’re browsing BBC News and you’re able to think of a dark joke about a murder or a rape or something. If you have your phone or a computer handy, you can simply type out the joke and send it off to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc. There you have it; it’s done, no trucker’s urine on you and hundreds of people have now read your joke, and if they enjoy it then they’ll either ‘like’ it, comment it or send you a Tweet back. Instant gratification in action.

This goes one step further with Twitter though, if people really like your joke – they may retweet it for a whole new audience to read and reply back to you, this again creates further feelings of instant gratification – and this time from people who you don’t even know. However, let’s say your joke does not go down well, no-one comments on it or you re-read it and think that you can make it better. No problem, you can simply delete it and start all over again without the fear of getting further backlash because you physically retract your actions.

I do this all the time and therefore have firsthand experience with the iComedy theory, I often think of funny quips that usually involve dark humour to the extent that I often refrain from publishing them such as the following joke: We should elect a black man to become the new Labour leader, you know, it’s ironic… Slave labour. Usually when I publish a joke, 99% of the time people comment it, ‘like’ it or reply which gives me instant gratification because I wouldn’t say such jokes in real life for fear of them not working out which isn’t a problem online because I can simply delete and refine. With everything, however, there are some down sides.

Even though I feel this new wave of comedic expression is a good thing in order for comedy to evolve beyond that of a theatre stage, it all relies on one thing: the published jokes have to be funny, if they’re not funny, (which is obviously subjective, but you know the sort of people I mean), it leads me to think that maybe some people, some time, should shut up.

Steven, Administator.

Swirling around in clever juice

Yeah, my brain is currently sitting like a blob in the middle of my head bobbing around in clever juice. I’m on about 6th Form of course, a lot has happened since I last wrote about it, (so long ago in fact I can’t find the post). Just to remind you, I’m currently taking English Language, Information Technology, Media and Psychology.

They’re all going alright; I handed in the first half of my Media coursework last week, I handed in my English Language coursework about a month ago. However I still have to complete two units of Information Technology and the second half of my Media coursework for before the Easter half term, so that shall be a test of my abilities.

Today I got results back for my first Psychology exam and first Information Technology exam; in the former I got a C, (which is apparently good for A Level), and for the latter I got a D. Now although a D sounds bad, students do worse in the exam because that’s the nature of exams and it’s 1/3 of my overall AS grade so I need to get 55/70 on my next two units to secure myself a good grade B which I think is do-able.

I also went to parents evening today; all subjects are happy with me so I think I’m on the right track, just need to finish lots of work before the Easter half term.

Anyway, not a really interesting update so not much else to say.

Steven, Administrator.

Popularity

Popularity can be a tricky thing to comprehend; it can be difficult to know where you are in the social hierarchy, (particularly at school), and why you’re even there in the first place. While I was watching Glee, it made me think about all of the different social levels that there are and how desperate people can be to fit into these levels.

Obviously, most people aspire to be at the top level. If we put this into American-ism terms; this would be where you would find the jocks and the cheerleaders. From a British perspective, the top level would consist of the “hard” people, the kids who would play up in lesson, always had girls waiting to be wooed by them and they would somehow just appear to fit in. From the first moment you go to school, you are instantly aware of who is considered cool and who isn’t. How does that work? It’s not as if anyone tells you, it’s sort of like instinct.

For most of my school life, I would have considered myself to be one of the funny-but-cool kids. These kind of people mix within the cool kids, but are generally considered to be at the bottom of that level. It’s odd how I managed to fit into this group considering I have a stutter, I thought that would have made me a prime target to be pushed and kicked down to the bottom level. Maybe my school was just accepting, or maybe people managed to see past that, I’m not really sure to be honest.

Ever since Year 6/7, that’s where I knew I was on the hierarchy. However, during the latter half of Year 11 all of that changed. I’m still not sure what happened, but my friends had for some reason turned on me and instead of acting “cool” and letting it slide so hopefully things would go back to normal; I let them knew it was getting to me. And letting your friends know what gets to you is a bad idea, because they’re bound to repeat it because they find it funny, and maybe it is, but from the receiving end its hard not to feel hurt. I was no longer happy being where I was so I decided to abandon that group and fall right to the bottom level: the library kids. These are the kind of kids who spend their lunch times alone in the library reading books and browsing the Internet, just to pass time until they can go to class and ultimately go home. For a few months this is where I stood, I also spent mornings in the toilets just waiting for bell to go so the day could officially begin. It was horrible.

I do feel that being that left at that time in my life affected my exam results because for the last few months of Year 11, I had no friends and as you can understand, was very sad about that. I was really, really thankful when that year had ended so I could spend the next 16 weeks alone, by myself before 6th Form started. But I realised that I could not go another two years of having no friends and feeling that way I had done in Year 11 because that would not have helped me out at all. So, despite what I thought was “cool”, I made some new friends with people you could consider to be un-cool. It was hard for me to adjust to the sudden change of social status and the sort of people I was now hanging around with, however my opinions would soon change about this.

I’m nearly half way into my first year of 6th Form and I can genuinely say that I am happy being near the bottom, I am happy with the friends I have because I know that they care about me. I would rather be at the bottom and happy than be at the top and feel isolated.

I’ve never told anyone this because I thought it was embarrassing to admit that I had let my “friends” get to me so much, but watching Glee has made me realise that it doesn’t matter where you are as long as your happy, and this ultimately means it does not matter what anyone else thinks as long as you go bed at night and reflect upon the day as positive experience spending it with friends and feeling comfortable around them.

What do I consider myself to be now? I’m Steven Knight. I’m just myself. And that’s a brilliant label to have.

Steven, Administrator.

GCSE results and future education

To be honest, this is a bit of belated post seeing as I got my GCSE results a few days ago, I’ve just been busy with the new blog over at Clear:Both to post about them. Anyway, without further ado…

In short I got: 2 A*’s, 1 A, 3 B’s, 2 C’s, 1 D and 1 E. So a mixed bag of results there. I am a bit disappointed with my C in Maths because I really wanted a B, and I’m also disappointed with my B’s in English Language and Media Studies because I really, really tried in the exams so I was hoping for A’s.

Failing Design Technology, Business Studies and French doesn’t really bother me, they’re not the big subjects anyway. However, on the plus side I am really happy with my A* in Religious Studies and my A* and A in Information Technology, (although I could have got an A*, A, A and A in it if I didn’t have a certain teacher teaching me, oh well). I can’t really complain because I didn’t really revise until the last week. Saying that, my parents are very proud of me so I know I did some good.

With those results I did get enough points to get into 6th Form college and Wollaston School – you needed 10 points in total and I think I got around 26 points. The new term starts 7th of September 2009 and I’ll be learning: English Language, Information Technology, Psychology and Media Studies. I expect myself to perform well in 6th Form because it’s a different kind of schooling that I want to use to my advantage. I really can’t wait for it to start because to be honest I’m pretty bored on week 15 of my 17 week holiday – I know it’s the longest holiday I’ll probably ever have, but it does drag on.

If you’re bored like me, visit Clear:Both, who knows what you may find?

Steven – Administrator.

My language, accent and dialect.

I haven’t updated my blog in a while, so I thought I’d post a blessay. This is what I recently wrote as part of my summer work for 6th Form. In case you haven’t guessed, this is for English Language. This is activity two of three for that particular subject, activity one is nearly done while activity three will take a while to do as it involves collecting certain things, anyway, I hope that you enjoy reading this.

MY LANGUAGE, ACCENT AND DIALECT.

I was born and raised in Andover, Hampshire with my Father and Mother until I was four years old. As I was at a relatively young age when I was living in Hampshire, I can’t recall recognising or questioning my accent or those around me, but it all became apparent to me when I moved in 1998 to Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.

I attended Irchester Primary School at the age of four in September 1998. For a while I assumed that I spoke normally, just like everyone else assumed that they spoke normally, however it was during the latter half of Year Two and beyond when I started to realise that I didn’t speak like everyone else.

It’s not an accent or regional dialect per se, but I do have a stutter which affects the vocabulary that I use and the dialect I use to convey those words. For example, when I try to put a point of mine across, I usually have an intelligent array of words and phrases that I so desperately want to use, but it is usually the case that that does not happen. Instead, the words and phrases I would have liked to have used are usually substituted for easier to pronounce synonyms that nine times out of ten make the pronounced sentence appear unorganised, unsought and very unintelligent as a result; to which point I usually give up all together.

Because of the social stigma attached to a stutter, those uninformed about it usually assume that I am incompetent and uneducated when simply trying to talk; which deeply upsets me because beneath the audible exterior there is a colourful rainbow of rich vocabulary, phrases and philosophies that want to be used so very, very much.

Pushing aside my substituted choice of words when talking, there are often a variety of different ways that I speak. For example, sometimes I find it easier to talk slowly so I don’t trip myself up, sometimes I affect a lisp which for reasons beyond my control, also help me talk. Other times I talk fast until I’m out of breath so the stutter doesn’t catch up with me. Whenever you talk to me, the real Steven is never the one you hear.

Perhaps that is why I am in love with language of the written form, it allows me to use the vocabulary that I wish I could use flippantly on a spoken day to day basis. When writing, there are no social stigmas attached, for example, lower and upper class writing. Of course we know that there actually is a person behind the text, but we don’t think of their accent, dialect or class unless they specifically reference it, do we? We only judge of what’s on the page, what’s in front of us. Isn’t that brilliant, and after all, isn’t that how it should be?

Steven – Administrator.