FYW Lead Blog Post #6
For my lead post, I’m going to remind everyone of Hurricane Florence that happened a while ago. I’m sure most of you haven’t thought about it in a while but when I tried to think of something funny for my post this event came to mind. You might be questioning how the hurricane can be made funny and I did too until I came across a social media account about it when it was still going on. A twitter page where Hurricane Florence is tweeting about its journey to shore. If you notice below the pinned tweet is “I’m coming bitches.” with over 20,000 retweets. The account also has almost 12,000 followers.
I came across this account when I noticed so many people I follow retweeting their posts. I clicked on the page and began looking through them. There were posts like “Which one should I hit? With an option to vote for either South Carolina or Virginia. Another one said “Rt for category 5, Fav for category 3.” It was even funnier to read the comments on the tweets with people feeding off of each other and making more ridiculous jokes. Then it was taken to a whole other level when I started seeing other hurricane’s tweeting at hurricane Florence. Hurricane Helene tweeted “My boy @hurricaneflor about to fuck shit up.” and hurricane Isaac tweeting “@hurricaneflor are you gonna hit or nah?”
This account was taking something serious and turning it into a comedic twitter page. I think it can be argued that all three theories of humor came into play in this situation. With relief theory, tension had been built up through watching the news and hearing things about how dangerous the hurricane was going to be. The twitter page was a way to relieve that tension by, in a way, downplaying the effects of a hurricane. They were making jokes about what category it should be and where it should hit when in reality people were genuinely worried about these things. Incongruity theory also comes into play because it is unlikely to see a hurricane making tweets and talking to other hurricanes on a social media site. We also even see an example of people directly affected by the hurricane making jokes about it which is unexpected. In the image below, someone who had to board up their store wrote “Let the bodies hit the Flor” on it. We wouldn’t usually find a hurricane to be funny, so the unexpectedness of it all makes us laugh.
Even the superiority theory of humor can play a role in this depending on what perspective you have. The person who made the twitter page is most likely not being affected greatly by the hurricane or they wouldn’t take the time to make the account and tweet every day. The people retweeting the tweets and laughing at them are also probably not hugely affected by the hurricane either. It’s this detachment from the misfortune of others that allows us to laugh at an event like this because it is not directly affecting us. On the other hand, someone who sees this twitter page that is going to be directly affected by the hurricane may not find it as funny. Even though it has been a while since the hurricane drama occurred, I thought this twitter page was a good representation of the three theories and it gave me a good laugh.
I came across this account when I noticed so many people I follow retweeting their posts. I clicked on the page and began looking through them. There were posts like “Which one should I hit? With an option to vote for either South Carolina or Virginia. Another one said “Rt for category 5, Fav for category 3.” It was even funnier to read the comments on the tweets with people feeding off of each other and making more ridiculous jokes. Then it was taken to a whole other level when I started seeing other hurricane’s tweeting at hurricane Florence. Hurricane Helene tweeted “My boy @hurricaneflor about to fuck shit up.” and hurricane Isaac tweeting “@hurricaneflor are you gonna hit or nah?”
This account was taking something serious and turning it into a comedic twitter page. I think it can be argued that all three theories of humor came into play in this situation. With relief theory, tension had been built up through watching the news and hearing things about how dangerous the hurricane was going to be. The twitter page was a way to relieve that tension by, in a way, downplaying the effects of a hurricane. They were making jokes about what category it should be and where it should hit when in reality people were genuinely worried about these things. Incongruity theory also comes into play because it is unlikely to see a hurricane making tweets and talking to other hurricanes on a social media site. We also even see an example of people directly affected by the hurricane making jokes about it which is unexpected. In the image below, someone who had to board up their store wrote “Let the bodies hit the Flor” on it. We wouldn’t usually find a hurricane to be funny, so the unexpectedness of it all makes us laugh.
Even the superiority theory of humor can play a role in this depending on what perspective you have. The person who made the twitter page is most likely not being affected greatly by the hurricane or they wouldn’t take the time to make the account and tweet every day. The people retweeting the tweets and laughing at them are also probably not hugely affected by the hurricane either. It’s this detachment from the misfortune of others that allows us to laugh at an event like this because it is not directly affecting us. On the other hand, someone who sees this twitter page that is going to be directly affected by the hurricane may not find it as funny. Even though it has been a while since the hurricane drama occurred, I thought this twitter page was a good representation of the three theories and it gave me a good laugh.
It's so interesting how the way we experience these media events help to define our response. I wonder if this is really making fun of the hurricane or the media hurricane?
ReplyDeleteIt is really making fun of the media hurricane because I think the twitter account is what made the hurricane have a humorous aspect. If the twitter account had never been created I would not have thought that the hurricane was funny.
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