A Beginner's Guide to Collegehumor.com

“So what are you interested in?”

“Well, tennis. I played tennis in high school”

“Oh cool! I played tennis too, such a fun sport! So what else?”

“Um… “

And that’s how the conversation goes every single time. Interviews, rush, meeting any other human beings in a social setting…

So I thought to myself- “Steve, what DO you do with all your time?”

Class… homework…

Oh shit, I spend 95% of my time on collegehumor.com, don’t I?

Odds are that you personally have remarked on the disproportionately large amount of time I spend on that website… and even I worry about how frequently I start sentences with, “have you seen…”

But you know what? It’s worth it. Collegehumor is AMAZING! It takes all the work out of youtube (because we all know how laborious youtube is, right?) It collects the best videos on the entire internet and puts them in one spot, and there are new ones every day. Sorry Will, I think collegehumor is the single greatest site on the internet, even if nobody is masturbating.

I recently made a promise to my roommate/physics lab partner/chauffer/brotha’ from anotha’ motha’ Jay Todd. I told him that along with his ongoing education about memes and message boards and nerd-dom in general (JT, I think you know what your comment on this blog needs to be), that I would give him a guide to the majestic beast that is today’s collegehumor.com. So that’s what I’m doing. And I’m sharing it with all of you. So once again, internet, you’re welcome. Love, BK4.

A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO COLLEGEHUMOR.COM - CONTENTS

Introduction

Site Sections
-Pictures
-Articles
-Hotlinks
-Videos
--Originals
--Other

Series
-Videos
-Articles

Weekends on collegehumor.com

Advanced reading


INTRODUCTION:

Anybody can head over to collegehumor.com and enjoy it, that’s the beauty, but at this point, it’s kind of like jumping into the office right now. As long as you’re under 30, you’ll enjoy it, but let’s be honest, it just won’t be as special. You’ll miss some of the jokes, you won’t know the characters, and it might not be as good as it was in it’s golden days. That’s why I’m here to help you. With this simple guide, you’ll be a collegehumor pro in no time.

SITE SECTIONS:

The site can be broken down into four main sections: pictures, articles, hotlinks, and videos. There’s links on the top of the page, but I have never clicked on those. That’s not the way to do it.


-PICTURES: Most of the time, collegehumor sorts its pictures into galleries. Every so often, they will post one of these galleries on the main article feed (running down the left side of the page). This is the best way to do it, to avoid picture fatigue. Note: Be sure to read the captions! Back in the day, you could go to the pictures section, click on one, and then click on one of the ones it linked too... but that has recently been ruined by the terrible ratio of funny to not-funny pictures they've posted in the non-galleries.


-ARTICLES: Articles is a super loose term here, but they’re not videos, and they’re usually not just pictures, and sometimes there is even text… Anyway I’ll talk more about the articles you’ll see here later, under series. These are all found going down the wide column on the left/center of the page.


-HOTLINKS: Running down the right side of the page are the hotlinks. This is a key, often overlooked part of the site. I usually check out almost half the hotlinks every day. Most of them only take a second, and they’re worth it. Some of them will give you a McAfee site advisor warning, I’d listen, they’re not very careful about what they link you to, unfortunately, but the vast majority of the links are safe. There’s a lot of memes to be found here, funny message board posts, craigslist, and random one-joke websites like hellenkellersim.com and tomscott.com/weather/starwars/. Be sure to read the text of the hotlink, because it always adds to the humor. This is also an important time to teach you all another internet acronym: NSFW. It stands for “not safe for work,” and I don’t think I need to explain more than that.


-VIDEOS: Here it is, the meat and potatoes of the website. All the funniest videos on the internet either start here or get here hours later. There are two flavors: original, and otherwise.

--ORIGINAL VIDEOS: This is where you’ll find videos written, directed, and posted by collegehumor staff. If you click on one of these from the main page, you will be taken to a playlist of every original, but only original videos.

--OTHERWISE: These technically don’t have a name, but they’re just funny videos from all over the WWW. If you click on one of these, you’ll be taken to a playlist, in reverse order of posting, of every video, original or otherwise, that collegehumor has. I recommend only clicking on non-original videos off the home page, for convenience. These are also the most accessible for the newbie who doesn’t want to explore the site.



SERIES:

Collegehumor does have some recurring articles and video series, so I’ll just break those down for you here.

-VIDEO SERIES:


--Jake & Amir: Jake is a cool guy, Amir is his clingy but lovable friend. Almost all of their videos revolve around Amir annoying Jake, and the basic premise is that Amir is obsessed with Jake, but Jake is his best friend, deep down inside. In-Jokes you’ll want to understand: Amir always asks Jake, “dinner tonight?” and loves McNuggets, (he eats them almost exclusively.) Jake, for the purposes of this series, has a crush on Sarah, their co-worker. Amir makes up words. Sometimes they do plot arcs that seem like actual real-life stories in the office - they're not. It’s best to start with their older stuff: http://www.collegehumor.com/jake-and-amir/page:9. Work backwards, you’ll appreciate it more. Watch the first ten before you watch anything else.

--Bleep Bloops: This is collegehumor’s video game review talk-show. It’s more comedy than review based, and the best part of the show is the jokes they make about the games. Watch basically any of them in any order.

--Hardly Working: This is the generic name for the main original video series on CH. It basically follows the employees of CH (who are the actual employees, btw), through their imaginary work days. Again, watch these in basically any order, it’ll be fine. There’s basically one important in-joke here: Ricky, the boss, and his standard meeting line of “If you’re gonna use two staples, just use one.”

--Phantom of the Office (sometimes Streeter Theatre): This random character is some sort of weird immortal who loves to talk about how he changed history and knew Jesus. He loves Sarah, and can kill people by looking at them or touching them. Watch from the beginning: http://www.collegehumor.com/tag:phantomoftheoffice/page:2

--Gale Beggy: CH’s “technology consultant” – She’s completely clueless about technology (or is she?). She might be from the future, and all of our stuff is just too primitive, but that’s for you to find out. http://www.collegehumor.com/tag:gale-beggy

--POV: stands for Point of View (obvious?). There’s not much to say, it’s just a bunch of scenarios from a 1st person POV, with thoughts narrated.

-ARTICLE SERIES (best of – this blog’s gettin’ looooong)

Most of these series post once a week

--105% o’matic: just a series of quick quotes. Pretty funny.

--Parents just don’t understand: stories of technologically challenged parents and grandparents, and a funny picture to go along with it. Read the caption on the picture, just like every caption everywhere on the site.

--Roommate Confessions: Did you pull a prank on your roommate? Send it in to collegehumor so they can find out about it with the rest of the world. Some of the stuff these roomies do to each other is pretty awful, hopefully it doesn’t happen on BK4.

--Dating, it’s Complicated: Hilariously terrible dating stories.


WEEKENDS AT COLLEGEHUMOR.COM


On weekdays, new content of all types is posted by 2ish every day. Weekends can be the best/worst time. If you’re a loyal follower like me, you’ll be bored by the lack of content (nothing is posted), but CH also sums up the week with the “Best of the Week” box on the top of the page. This is a great time to catch up on what you missed, but be sure to check through that long video playlist for interesting things you missed that just didn’t make the cut.


ADVANCED READING: Once you can name every employee in the office and start recognizing links they’ve accidentally posted before, you’re ready for advanced reading. To not miss a thing, when you go to the site, immediately scroll to the bottom of the articles column, and click next until you get to an article you’ve already seen. Then, work your way backwards to the first article, reading everything good along the way. Next move onto the original videos. Pick one of them from the home page, and watch them all, in reverse order of the playlist. Then do the non-original videos (there are a lot of these, so do the playlist in order, but don’t forget to scroll down pretty far to see what else there is). Finally, finish up with the hotlinks. Congrats, you didn’t just write your WRIT140 paper. And wasn’t that the point all along?



If you made it through that whole post, here’s an RIDONCULOUS website about furbies for your enjoyment: http://thefurbyfunhouse.owlwatcher974.com/cemetary.html.

Steve- Sworn defender of the floorby