"A major use of the Internet here at Futurama, which I wouldn't have seen when we started … we go to fan-run sites to see what we did on old episodes. We don't have our own resources and don't need them. The fans have taken over them, and we go there every day." - Futurama's David X. Cohen, with Matt Groening, discussing with USA Today their love of technology and how it helps them create the show.
We've all been there: you've ripped off your What Would Bobby Bottleservice Do? bracelet in a anabolic steroid-induced rage and now have no reference for how to function in normal society. Fortunately Nick Kroll's internet etiquette advice offers a tutorial on how real people interact via this grand series of tubes. "Don't take pictures of your private parts and send them around willy-nilly, because they will end up on the Internet," Kroll explains in Details. "Unless your boobs are really fantastic or your dick looks like fantastic boobs. In that case, send them around the Internet like a goddamn congressman." Try not to overdo the status updates, says [...]
After Piers Morgan awkwardly reads Conan's Tweets in a matter that sucks all potential humor out of them, there's actually a very interesting conversation about Conan's relationship to social media. As he's moved from the old model to the new, Conan organically learned how to best interact with the space. Besides being a funny guy, Conan is a smart guy (Fun fact: his Harvard Class Day speaker was Mario Cuomo) so there is a real value to this – well, if you can get passed Piers Morgan continuing to insist he needs to exist.
This is not a hilarious bit of faux news people! The Onion's paid content system, which will require readers to pay once they read more than five articles per month, is in it's testing stages. As of yet only international users are affected; after surpassing the five per month limit, readers will be asked to subscribe for $2.95 a month or $29.95 a year. The system doesn't affect the A.V. Club nor the homepage, nor will the system be put into place in locations hosting large numbers of American troops, because that is literally the last thing those people need. "By 'test,' we sincerely mean it. We want [...]
So the New York Times ran an article today about how Twitter is "a virtual workshop" for "performers and writers up and down the comedy food chain." The Times, ladies and gentlemen, is always on the cutting edge of new trends. But amid the anecdotes about comedy writers who got their jobs through Twitter is a pretty cool story about the improvised creation of the joke Twitter accounts for the characters from Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. The Onion's head writer Seth Reiss started Tweeting as Matt Albie four years after the show aired, and other characters were soon created by people Reiss didn't [...]
For Wired's Humor Issue, Andy Samberg discusses web comedy with Chris Hardwick of The Nerdist, exploring the intricacies of how to deliver a dick in a box unto the people. Samberg reminisces how Lonely Island started making videos on the cheap, his SNL audition ("It was very silly. You’re supposed to do impressions and characters, and I basically had none. So I did a lot of stand-up and tried to show how I was a dumbass.") and how a YouTube video of Jay Pharaoh's celebrity impressions basically got him hired. While the emergence of the internet has vastly complicated issues of copyright/ getting paid for your work, Samberg [...]
