Social Media is Hilarious!

To break away from some of the more negative aspects of social media that I've been talking about recently, I thought I'd focus on something lighter: comedy.

It is called 'social media', right? What is more social than making people laugh?

Mashable has listed 85 of the best comedians to follow on twitter. Some of these (like @boburnham) are entirely web-based celebrities, using youtube and their blogs to express themselves.

I think that's one of the most fun, and engaging part of the social media tools we have now. Sure, there are all kinds of people out there looking to make a buck by spamming you, stealing your identity, or all kinds of other nefarious things.... but there are just as many people who just want to make you laugh.

Burnham has been posting videos for years, and has grown quite a following. Hollywood celebs like Will Ferrell have launched sites like funnyordie.com which has given him and his collegues a place to express themselves, and entertain us. We all know of sites with hilarious content, free to anyone who might stop by.

With the popularity of Twitter exploding, so are the number of irreverent Twitter profiles (@jackbauerfacts or @Sockington are good examples). In case you're curious, Sockington is a cat. His feed describes his daily activities, and internal dialouge. As of writing, he has over 850,000 followers.

I think my favourite sources of comedy online arethe completely user-driven sites. Places like fmylife.com, and textsfromlastnight.com are two sites that allow users to upload their own short contributions to a database of hilarious content. Fair warning, many of these posts are profane and offensive (as a lot of comedy tends to be) but their are also a great example of how people aren't just consuming comedy online, but are taking part in its production. That's cool! (not to mention a pretty smart business model for the webmasters)

I frankly love sources of brevity throughout the day. These social media tools are supposed to make our lives better, and if nothing else twitter and facebook we have almost made the fwd e-mail chain-letter jokes obsolete. Now THAT is an improvement!

I'm always looking for more hilarious sites? If you know of any, send them to me!