In a nutshell, yes
Is there anything worse than badly judged amateur standup? Well, yes, of course there is. There's world famine, disease, animal cruelty... basically there's a whole bunch of things that are definitely worse. But there are few things as cringe-inducing in 2015 as fresh-faced would-be comedians staring down the cold lens of a Canon 5D, spewing their 'witty observations' out into the gaping maw of the Internet and praying something lands.
This is not Comedy Central Presents The Roast of EDM. It's a Windows Movie Maker cry for attention from a gang of inherently annoying wannabe Sam Peppers. It feels more like a parody of YouTube comedians than the razor-sharp send up of youth culture the makers so clearly wish it was. It's so bad that it's hard to nail down just what exactly is most wrong with the video, but I'm going to try my darndest and run you through the cliff notes.
It's about Two Years Too Late
Lets start with the obvious: at some point a group of nine self declared comedians got together in a brainstorming session and not one of them thought that maybe it's a little too late to come out with a "What's the deal with EDM? lol!" video. Nine people, that's one for every circle of hell and not one of them equated taking the piss out of EDM in 2015 to joking about minidisc players, DVD rentals or emo. Actually they even managed to squeeze in an emo joke, but we'll get to that later.
It's Presented By This Dick
This is Carlos Santos. I'd never heard of him before watching this video, but it's apparent from his mannerisms and presenting style that were I to meet him in a bar, he'd be annoyed that I didn't know who he was. I gave him a quick google and - assuming he's not a 3-time World Brazilian jiu-jitsu heavyweight champion or a former Olympic Puerto Rican boxer - he's a 34 year old VJ from MTV Tr3́s. He's the least funny person in this video mainly because he tries to act like he knows it's awful. He congratulates us on getting through to the end and asks us to "say all of the trash" in the comments, before making a joke about self-harm. You're not above this Carlos and no amount of knowing looks will convince us otherwise.
It Makes Fun Of 'Things' Which Aren't 'Things'
You know how every DJ's name ends in "o"? Isn't that annoying?! Well no, because that's not A Thing. Kelly Landry thinks it's A Thing, because she can name two DJs with names ending in "o". There are two shitty webcam comedians in this video called "Kelly". Don't you just hate it how every shitty webcam comedian is called Kelly?
It's Lazy
And I don't just mean that the subject matter is lazy - it is - but I mean that the whole video is lazy. It trades off stereotypes and acronyms as humour and it can't even keep that up for very long. A mere thirty seconds in and already the well of hilarious backronyms has been exhausted leaving our buddy Carlos to deliver the absolute zinger: "Excrement Moves ???". Then at 1:52 he actually fluffs a line and rather than edit it out, they keep it in. This is a video that has a completely unnecessary and probably staged outtake reel and they kept this blunder in the core video? 😞
It For Some Unfathomable Reason Equates EDM With Emo
You see that? I told you! That right there is an outdated, poorly realised stereotype of an emo. Emo is a youth subculture that by all accounts ceased to be relevant by 2007. That's eight years ago. This is an eight year old, inaccurate reference. Ray William Johnson is 33 years old, that means he was 27 when emo died. It seems that while the 27 club claims the lives of great rock stars it only claims the pop cultural references of hack vloggers.
This Segment Did Not Need To Ever Exist
Just. No.
It's Just Plain Awful
I don't know if the concept of the dad joke exists in America, but this video argues a pretty strong case that it doesn't. When they run out of tired jokes about glow sticks, molly and 'The Drop', they resort to the sort of playground mentality that deems Calvin and Martin to be 'nerdy' names, yet they somehow equate Elvis and Ringo with being cool. I don't know about America, but if you were a kid called Elvis growing up in Belfast, you'd have a much harder life than Calvin ever did.
It's Less Funny Than This T-Shirt
I remember seeing a t-shirt in TK Maxx around 2005 with a similar design to this one. I picked it up, smirked at it for a second, then promptly put it back on the rack where it belonged. In one sentence that t-shirt makes all of the same points that this FOUR MINUTE video makes. Namely: dance music is repetitive and people who like it tend to also like drugs. That's it. That's the one joke in this whole video and it was done better a decade ago by a t-shirt in an outlet store.
Lets just hit 'dislike' and agree to never talk about this again, shall we?
