Ben Jenkins: the 10 funniest things I have ever seen (on the internet)

The internet was, on balance, a mistake. I believe we’re all more or less on the same page about that now. But knowing that there’s nothing we can do about that, knowing that there’s no way we can shove this bearded, sweaty genie in a trilby and waistcoat back into his awful bottle, it falls to all of us to try and pan for the tiny flecks of gold in this veritable river of filth. Below, in no particular order, are my flecks.

1. Hog the Wad

It’s the only kind of joke on Twitter that’s funny anymore: something incredibly stupid and entirely bereft of context. I can’t point at any part of this tweet and tell you what bit of it the joke is, but even just thinking about it as I type this is making me laugh. You may think that the phrase “hog the wad” is doing most of the heavy lifting in this tweet, but to me the real hero of the bit is the phrasing of “mightn’t I have a chew”. Just like we can’t be sure that the blue I see is the same blue as you see, the voice of the Hog the Wad Guy is probably not universal. For me, if you’re interested, he sounds and looks like John Huston in Chinatown.

2. Guy Gets Trapped in a Balloon

I can’t remember when I first saw this clip, but it must’ve been a long time ago, because the phrase “I am becoming trapped inside the balloon” has been rattling around in my head since I was in my early 20s. I think this actually might’ve even been a pre-YouTube viral video.

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In any case, it’s a beautiful short film where a man tries to get into a great big balloon, then becomes trapped in the great big balloon. This is clearly not the first time that it’s happened, either. For reasons that are never explained, this is just his latest failed attempt at getting his whole body into a great big balloon. It is absolutely crucial that this man’s reasons never be explained, either. The second they are, regardless of what they are, the joy of this video will turn to ash and the world will be a slightly less wonderful place.

3. Dee Dee Mega Doo Doo

Without any exaggeration, I have watched this clip over one hundred times. This might be an insane thing to do, I’m not sure, I am not a brain doctor, but the fact remains that I have laughed each and every one of those times.

4. Liza Minnelli Tries to Turn Off a Lamp

In The Prestige, Michael Caine lays out the basic components of the magic trick. There’s The Pledge, where the magician shows you something that is apparently ordinary; then there’s The Turn, where they take that ordinary object and do something completely unexpected with it; and finally, there’s The Prestige, where they confound further whatever miraculous thing they did in The Turn. Some jokes work like this. Liza Minnelli Tries to Turn Off a Lamp does not. The title card tells us that this will be a sketch where Liza Minnelli Tries to Turn off a Lamp and for the next four incredible minutes that is exactly what happens. There’s no twist, no subversion of expectations, just amazing commitment to a stupid bit from Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill and whoever let this go to air.

5. The Butterfield Diet Plan

One of the funniest things in the world to me is lists that go for longer than you think they’re going to go. If the lists are read aloud in a silly voice and are made up of stupid sounding things, then so much the better. This clip from The Peter Serafinowicz Show is really a masterclass in stupid list comedy. Serafinowicz, who plays Brian Butterfield here, also provided the voice of Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace. Does that make this clip less funny or more funny or does it not change how funny the clip is? That’s not for me to say.

6. Every Character You Meet in an 18th Century Period Film

Speaking of lists, this one by Danny Lavery is one of the best. Lavery is one of the funniest people on the planet, and he’s never funnier when writing in the topic area of “the olden times”. Every single item in this list is memorable and perfect, and your reaction will – if you are pure of heart and sound of mind – range from a little smile of recognition at having a trope you didn’t realise was a trope described for the first time, to full-body hacking laughter at “Eyebrows the Horsewoman”.

7. Perfectly Cut Scream, Coke Bottle Edition

This account is funny every single time, and I don’t know why. It’s infuriating to me that I don’t know why and it may actually send me mad over time. I asked Dylan Behan, an editor who’s worked on pretty much every Australian comedy ever made, about why this editing trick is so consistently funny and he said, “Comedy editing isn’t really a science, it’s just what people find funny. That said, it might just be that comedy is all about the unexpected and these screams, the way they just vanish, are very unexpected? I dunno, though. I wish I knew.”

I have to disagree with Dylan here. It is a science, and in this specific clip, the “length of build-up” to “shortness of scream” ratio is mathematically perfect to get the viewer into what scientists call “The Chuckle Zone”.

8. Garbage Sons – Clickhole

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Revisiting Garbage Sons for this list, I’d forgotten how strong the narrative voice is. Garbage Sons Voice would come to define the next five years of online comedy. I find the far-reaching influence of this piece incredible given that until recently, we had no idea who wrote it. I reckon Garbage Sons will come to be seen as a kind of Rosetta Stone for future comedy archaeologists, trying to work out exactly what we found funny in the early stages of complete societal collapse.

9. Caleb Hearon: POV When You’re Venting to Me and Entirely In The Wrong

This is just a perfectly observed bit. I don’t really have anything to add to it.

10. King Butt Touches

I think a lot about the choices made in every single panel of this strip from Ryan Pequin’s Three Word Phrase series. I think about these choices more than is useful or healthy. But it’s such a good example of an incredibly stupid joke executed with far more care and precision than you’d think it deserves. Every expression and posture and line of dialogue – it’s all completely perfect. There is a lot to love in this strip, but it’s the addition of the scheming vizier at the side of King Butt Touches that puts this on my list.

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