An Ode to CollegeHumor
This is an ode to CollegeHumor. If you didn’t know, CollegeHumor is a website where they have made internet comedy and written articles since 1999. You may have seen it in the news. “On Wednesday, the site’s parent company, IAC/InterActive Corp., sold CH Media — the overarching name for CollegeHumor, its streaming platform and a few other websites. The sale left more than 100 employees without jobs. CH Media’s new owner, Sam Reich, publicly announced the layoffs and sale Wednesday on Twitter.”
This is been one of my favorite website since I’ve been able to access the internet starting way back in the days of AOL. I remember when I first was able to access Facebook back in 2006. This was a time when there were many college students were on and access just been given to high school students (based on invitation from current users). At the time Myspace was one of the predominant social networks that most young people were using. However Facebook would have a different quality about it that would make it take off and one of the first pages that I “became a fan off” which changed to “like” on there was Collegehumor.
Back in those days the internet and social media was a lot like the wild west. People would post photos of different parties they went to, illicit drug use crazy videos, all sorts of debauchery. You know just the general kind of absurdity that you would expect from the younger crowd that was into it at the time. Not that you can’t find this today on things like Instagram or Snapchat or Tick Tock or whatever the new was social media craze is, but this was the first time that clips like these would be uploaded in a way for they would basically now become a permanent part of Facebook’s infrastructure and the internet itself. Previously people had taken old fashioned physical photos and had VHS tapes then while other people May have seen them if given the opportunity there wouldn’t be such widespread access.
However, Facebook made it very easy for everyone to connect with one another that’s being able to tag themselves in photos and upload albums that of course since everyone else was on it but it was mostly adult free zone you would be able to you know connect with people at different colleges and see what was going on and there was a general fund sense about what was happening.
This is where we have the beginnings of CollegeHumor You can see the progression on the website overtime via the Way Back Machine. Many of the same people around that age were kind of into the same things and maybe more of a frat like humor. Those who have worked for CollegeHumor admitted their primary demographic was males in the 18 to 24 year old range, a very valuable audience for the precious advertising dollars a day we need to grow the website. In in the early days of Collegehumor it was a lot of user posted content about things like: is it cold Beer Pong or Beirut, tips for showing your off-campus apartment, this is the best picture on the internet.
It should come as no surprise that Brohemian Rhapsody was one of my favorite early sketches from back in 2007. It’s magical.
I can tell you that I have been to a house party like this and that the attire of the time between the polo shirts and jeans skirts. And of course on the more absurd side they Nicks Zune Warehouse (Us Zune owners would forever be the butt of many jokes).
This early internet comedy videos have that low resolution but high creative quality that drove many people to online comedy in the first place. What was lack for in production values was made up for in general random comedy. We were young kids together participated in what was then internet culture. Remember how comments on websites used to be? CollegeHumor remembers.
In fact it was even brought up in high school during my German class. To this day one of my favorite videos is Power thirst. “ “When god gives you lemons, YOU FIND A NEW GOD!"
CollegeHumor worked for comedy groups that would later have major successful stars break out as result of their early and wacky humor. Did you know that Donald Glover was predominately featured on there when he was through Derek Comedy? I recommend Girls Are Not To Be Trusted.
It’s amazing to think that he started out making these low budget videos and then went from there to community to be one of the most successful hip hop and at acting players in the game. They also had some of the best cartoons you could find in the Flash era that coming to an end this year.
Right around 2009 when I was in community college, CollegeHumor really began to take off in terms of the popularity of the website. The ever funny “Hardly Working” and “Jake and Amir” series along with numerous other smaller creative sketches provided a daily dose of laughter in what was my usually overburden college schedule. When I was sick in 2010, I spent hours going through the videos from the cite all the way to their first few video projects in 2006. If you go to the YouTube page and sort videos from Oldest to newest, you find many old and still hilarious sketches from the early days. Here is a great one from 2012, “Mexican Standoff”.
Also, they would have all night binges called All-Nighters. They would stay up for 38 hours, making content all throughout the night. This was done in concert with most colleges having their spring academic finals. You know, that time the unprepared children stayed up, snorted adderall and procrastinated by watching these very same videos? Perfect demo. But they had some of their best work. Here is a rap intro from The ten-dollar Founding Father without a father himself, Lin-Manual Miranda. (as part of Freestyle Love Supreme of course).
Collegehumor then made a major move in that they were able to get their own MTV series. They tried to make a TV show out of what was usually most of the internet sketches combined and well it had its moments it didn’t exactly pan out as intended. However most of CollegeHumor success wouldn’t be from their first show but from the multiple other spin offs that came from many other cast members. Streeter and Amir would host a prank show on MTV. Adam Conover has found success with TruTV out of one of college humors original sketches Adam Ruins Everything. And Emily Axford and Brian Murphy (Murph) have own series on pop called Hot Date which I would also recommend. I know you know who Ben Schwartz is. See him in the High Times Editorial Office (Office Parody).
Of course that isn’t counting many of the other staffers who went on to other shows that are much larger and much more influential. Dan Gurweitch, one of my favorite writers from CollegeHumor, is now a writer for Last Week Tonight among several others (BTW I just learned he has four Emmys). Last Week Tonight has that certain wacky and information style of Collegehumor that makes the show hilarious. Streeter Seidel and Sarah Schneider both write for SNL. Jake and Amir have their own Podcast Network. Many others have gone on to other shows.
If you look through CollegeHumor’s YouTube channel (which their website CollegeHumor.com now forwards to) and look at the videos that have the most views you can definitely see most of them are between 7 to 11 years old meeting that the approximate time frame that popularity was between 2009 and 2014. They were the subject of an article in 2013: 18 Things CollegeHumor Can Teach You About Content Marketing (And 1 They Won’t). “The site, which sees 15 million unique visitors per month, was up 40% in 2011 and another 20% in 2012. Their YouTube channel has 4.5 million subscribers. CollegeHumor CEO Paul Greenberg seriously understands funny business.” Many videos from this era show the increased production value, and a more active series of shows. From the same article above, point number 15 stands out:
Dive Into the Data. If there’s something funny about your data, it’s probably not a good thing unless, of course, you work at CollegeHumor. “We have a lot of data [and] we spend a lot of time analyzing it,” declares Greenberg. “We’ll look at the ratio between likes and views: Is this getting shared a lot but not watched a lot?” This data also helps determine if a new piece of content should be serialized or given an extra boost.” See a great one in If Google was a Guy.
They also had a very active social media presence everywhere. In fact, I once won a zombie doll via a photo caption contest. (Thanks to those CollegeHumor Interns).
They have been able to create videos that can hold over time with a combination of cleverness and excellent timing.
You could see that the cast worked well together. There was a great interview in Lifehacker with the Chief Creative Officer (and now unfortunately the owner) Sam Reich. One great anecdote that spans across the time shows a certain comradely among the staff.
On someone’s birthday, we give them “birthday claps”: we start clapping, then gather around them, then sing “happy birthday,” then chant “speech,” then — the moment they start speaking — interrupt them with cheers. This exact tradition has been in place since 2006.
In 2006, Collegehumor was looking for someone to start their video division, In 2013, they moved the video division from New York to LA to start pitching and selling TV shows. These included early success with Adam Ruins Everything, and that allowed them to sell other shows to MTV, Pop TV, Freeform, and digital platforms like Go90, YouTube Premium, and Facebook Watch.
Now they had launched their new streaming service Dropout. It has all of the original Collegehumor material from the website, along with some less advertiser friendly themed content. I remember taking a survey from them asking if I would pay for a streaming service, which I was skeptical at the time. That was until I got my free trial and watched WTF 101. This is like if Rick and Morty and The Magic School Bus had a baby.
The show, created by Mike Trapp, presents stranger-than-fiction tales that actually happened in our real world in hilarious ways that will not only entertain audiences but might just teach them something in the process. It satisfies both the dark humor and morbid curiosity itches. I was very much looking forward to Season 2.
Alas, as I alluded to above, Barry Diller’s media company IAC has sold CollegeHumor Media, whose portfolio includes comedy site CollegeHumor, Drawfee, Dorkly and relatively new streamer Dropout, which debuted in September 2018, Variety has confirmed. The move resulted in over 100 layoffs at the company. What happened? Facebook. They have warned us about Facebook. All the way in 2011, when it was on the path towards social media dominance.
“In order to beat YouTube, Facebook faked incredible viewership numbers, so [CollegeHumor] pivoted to FB,” former CollegeHumor writer Adam Conover presciently tweeted last October. “So did Funny or Die, many others. The result: A once-thriving online comedy industry was decimated.”Facebook agreed to pay $40 million last year to settle a lawsuit after advertisers sued the social media giant for inflating video metrics by up to 900 percent. But many former CollegeHumor staffers blamed the pivot to Facebook, which couldn’t deliver on its advertising promises, for the previously successful company’s collapse.”
So now, the website is down and forwards to their YouTube page. Dropout.Tv is still there, and they have about six months of content left to give. Sam Reich is now the apparent owner of the company, and had to let go of so many funny talented people. Sometimes capitalism is just the worst. Facebook remains the Smaug of social media haunting us, and CollegeHumor is on life support.
I for one an not using my Facebook for access to Dropout. I joined them on YouTube. If you like the content they have provided over the years, you should as well. Part of the reason I have YouTube Premium is that I didn’t want to see anymore ads and support the channels I actually enjoy. Collegehumor is one of those channels. There is obviously so much content from there that I haven’t covered, and it would be a shame to see all those years of experimentation, dedication and creativity vanish. They even have books! Hopefully Sam sees a huge increase in Dropout subscriptions or maybe someone cool invests in CH Media. With so much content and so much of it hot garbage, sometimes you just want to look back and laugh. You can do that by supporting Dropout and CollegeHumor. I wish these guys nothing but the best and hope they all land on their feet. Thanks to all the writers, cast, crew and users who helped make CollegeHumor a comedic presence online. I hope the change turns out in your favor. I know how tough it can be.
