So you missed the most recent episode of The Ellen Show, and in an effort to stay up to date, you fire up your trusty Instagram app to see what you missed. You quickly search up @ellen, and find that @ellentvshow has popped up. Perfect. Click. You’re ready to see the best, bite-sized portion of Ellen-tastic content, but what is this. Text-posts with a simple punchline? Hm… well, @ellentvshow is a meme page. And if you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, sorry to break it to you, but you might be old. Unfortunately, you might be in this position far more often in the future as Generation Z redefines how comedy is presented to everyone. Gen Z has said bye-bye to lengthy stand-up routines from the likes of Chris Rock, Jerry Seinfeld or Sarah Silverman, and said hello to meme pages and daily vlogs curated by ‘edgy’ or ‘quirky,’ Starbucks’ drinking, regular-old teens like themselves. Yes, Gen Z is changing humor, but how exactly? Well according to Jeff Fromm of Millennial Marketing, self-deprecating humor mixed with an apathetic view towards virtually everything is the humor of the future. Or, is Gen Z’s humor as ruthless as “a living, breathing episode of South Park” as Brandon Morse of RedState suggests? Well, using People Pattern we can understand what 18-year-olds are clicking, sharing, and following to help us learn exactly what is tickling their funny bone.
First of all, we had to find if teens even cared about humor anymore. We found that humor was the 5th largest interest to these teens, with 9% of the audience we analyzed having it as their primary interest. For any person, their primary interest is the single thing they talk about and interact with the most on social media. We found that teens are drawn to humor they can relate to. In addition to Humor, their top four secondary interests were school life, dating, family, and parenting; who doesn’t love a good collective rant about “how big of a jerk Brad is being to Rachel,” or “how unfair it is that Mom took away the car because I’m failing chem.”
The verdict is still out on the classic argument: are boys or girls funnier? Girls are far more concerned with humor (Oh you were expecting something else? Shame on you!). Females actually discussed humor related topics at almost double the rate of males, 10% as opposed to a mere 6%. Inside of this, we wanted to analyze and understand how males and females discussed and consumed humor.
For males, four of the top 10 mentioned humor accounts were sports focused. If we take a second and look at their most significant phrases it’s also mostly sports and videogames. Eight of the top 12, in fact, are about these two topics. But outside of the expected topics, the guys also focus on political humor, with two of the top ten mentioned humor accounts being politically fueled (@realdonaldtrump and @cloydrivers), and a top five keyword of “‘merica”. We observed with other projects that Gen Z males tend to be influenced by conservative accounts; this may demand further analysis. Finally, continuing with the theme of relatability, one of the top 10 accounts was @CauseWereGuys, implying the importance of relating to their identity.
For the females with a primary interest in humor, their secondary interests were identical to the entire group with school life, dating, family, and parenting rounding out the top four. However the difference between the Gen Z females with a primary interest in humor and the general group of females lies in their conversation or top keywords. The girls top keywords consisted of sh*t, b*tch, a**… and so on, I think you get the picture. Lol. Who knew cussing was how to get the attention of their Gen Z peers; well, pretty much everyone. However, apart from the slew of expletives, the females also had a large portion of their conversation consisting of words such as love, life, cute, heart and feel. These imply a somewhat softer or more wholesome side to their humor. Additionally, the females had more keywords of girl, mom, and women, indicating that they also appreciate the same gender-focused comedy the males enjoyed.
So we know female and male 18-year-olds are interested in different types of comedy, but how do they get their daily dose of laughs. Well regardless if you believe that our attention spans are shrinking to goldfish level numbers, it’s obvious to see that comedy is responding to it. Comedy has shortened from a newspaper comic section to a one sentence meme and from a 90 minute comedy routine to a 10 minute YouTube video to a six second Vine. I mean, honestly, if you’ve made it this far without picking up your phone or clicking away, hats off to you. For most of Gen Z, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter are the go to options. Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter can produce easy to read memes as well as short comedy sketches or shows, while YouTube makes entertaining daily vlogs, reaction videos, and sketches available in short form.
The most popular way for teens to consume humor is through memes. Of the top 5,000 followed Twitter accounts for the 18-year-olds, 448 were comedy focused (≈ 9%). Of these 448, 201 were classified as meme pages. This is almost 45% of the entire humor sector, and almost double the next highest category of humor. Memes are obviously capable of taking the attention of teens nationwide. Even recently, memes surrounding the absurd idea of invading Area 51 so we can “see them aliens” have inspired over 1.9 million users to sign up for the facebook event. Their infectious, easy to absorb portions make memes the premier way for teens to enjoy humor.
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Youtube is the main source for comedical buzz for the group of teens with a primary interest in humor. It is the top domain in terms of shared links and mentioned content. Even when Youtube influencers are mentioned, eight of the top 10 are comedy focused, proving that 18-year-olds’ use of YouTube is heavily humor focused.
But why? I believe Vine is 100% responsible for this phenomena. Now if I said Vine and your first thought was a plant, either you found your second clue that you might be getting old or you have a pretty impressive reading level for a 5-year-old. Vine was an app where users could post 6 second videos of almost anything. Reaching over 40 million users at its peak in 2013, the app jump started the popularity and fame of many comedy influencers today. Of the 448 most popular comedy accounts, 196 are specific personalities (not a meme page, tv show, etc.). Of these 196, 50 began their career on Vine. However, after Vine was shut down in January of 2017, many Vine creators turned to YouTube as their next best option. 43 of those 50 made the transition to YouTube, and these 43 people make up almost 40% of the top 110 comedy YouTubers. With such a dedicated following from Vine, these creators were able to find the same niche on YouTube and continue their success.
So are Memes and YouTube the comedy of the future? At the end of the day it isn’t as much how the comedy is presented, but if it is relatable, strikes a chord with its audience, and is easy to consume. As a Gen Zer myself, we tend to seek out comedy that gives us the space to connect with others. The simple meme format is a catalyst for this as it’s easier than ever to share new jokes and build community with laughs. Along with that, we want comedy to make us feel at home and allow us to relax with the notion that others also go through the same problems we do. I mean, how much more self-centered can we get.
To learn more about People Pattern or how we produced this analysis contact us.
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