Gawker: adult swim

The Internet's funny business tunes out

Owen Thomas — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:00:00 EST

Superdeluxe, Turner Broadcasting's ha-ha video site, has finally shut down. Is anyone going to miss it — or the rest of the Web's other humor-clips startups?

Unlikely, save for one determined Atlanta fan with a taste for hip-hop cartoons. Superdeluxe's staff was laid off in May, but it took the Time Warner subsidiary seven months to move a small portion of its video library over to AdultSwim.com and shut the site down.

Turner isn't the only one finding it hard to get a laugh. Funny Or Die, which has never matched the popularity of "The Landlord," the bossy-baby clip from Will Ferrell, has morphed into a collection of cooking videos and videogame walkthroughs. Heavy.com is in management disarray, and is trying to make money on its advertising network rather than funny videos. eBaum's World, bought by the older brother of Google founder Larry Page, is entwined in a baroque financial disaster. And JibJab, famed for its political-satire musical numbers, seems to make more of its money through serving as an advertising agency for the likes of OfficeMax and Honda.

Why the serial failures? One could point to the struggling market for online advertising, or sponsors' unease with the racier fare preferred by the young male demographic they're hoping to reach.

But I think it has more to do with the nature of humor. Telling someone that they're about to hear a really funny joke just raises expectations. A website dedicated to laffs will find its viewers inevitably drifting away as the gags go flat. Sad as it is to say, people go to YouTube prepared to be bored — and then they're delighted to find something mildly amusing, becauses it's so unexpected. There's no business to be built around such idle surfing — but it's the very nature of how people get their laughs.

Following Hallowed Nerd Tradition, Michael Phelps Dates Asian Chick

Richard Lawson — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 10:00:12 EST

Yeah he might have a hot body, but Olympic swimmer and Son of Neptune Michael Phelps is kind of a dweeb. Those ears! That kind of lumbering awkwardness. Sure his glorious be-medaling has emboldened him a bit, but still. So it's funny that he's gone and done what so many newly-rich, videogame-anime-lady-obsessed nerds have done before him: he's found himself an Asian girlfriend.

I mean, look at all these rich nerds with fetching Asian ladies on their arms. We don't want to sound "offensive" but it's just a thing, you know? I mean, it's not like we blame Phelps, that girl is cute in a cocktail waitress-y way (she, um, actually is a cocktail waitress). It's just fun to watch someone nestle into a cliché so fully.

He even brought her home to Mom.

Turner shuts down comedy site SuperDeluxe.com, and "no one could deny they were crying their asses off"

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:20:00 EDT

Turner will shutter comedy site SuperDeluxe.com and roll its content into AdultSwim.com, paidContent reports. In an internal memo, Turner Animation exec Paul Condolora writes that "in SuperDeluxe.com and AdultSwim.com, we have businesses whose potential for individual growth is limited by their increasingly complementary content." They say dying is easy and comedy is hard, but in this case we beg to differ. It all reminds us of the time — documented in an episode of SuperDeluxe's "Professor Brothers," below — that "a group of Marys went up to lay flowers and toys on Jesus's grave" and discovered "that there were doves, everywhere and they were crying their asses off."

Super Deluxe Becomes The Internet's Arrested Development

Nick Douglas — Thu, 08 May 2008 14:20:52 EDT

It's over! The most consistently funny comedy site on the Internet is getting folded into AdultSwim.com. Turner is shutting down Super Deluxe and laying off most of its staff, according to paidContent.org. Now the original web content will get stuck with clips from Family Guy and Adult Swim's increasingly weird-without-payoff lineup. The good news: The guy below gets a TV deal.

As with Arrested Development, Super Deluxe was a cult hit that just didn't get huge mainstream attention — like pretty much every video content site besides College Humor. But also like the show, it introduced some great talent who are going on to better deals. Well, at least one of them.

Brad Neely, creator of the classic "Washington, Washington" cartoon, got a TV deal for his two Super Deluxe series "Baby Cakes" and "Professor Brothers." Super Deluxe has a preview:

But if the site drops shows like Chasing Donovan and Derek and Simon (which already looks dead), I hope to god they get a deal somewhere else. Because I ain't watching "Tim and Eric" again.

Breaking: Mysterious, Flashing Boxes Not Bombs, Just Poorly Conceived Marketing Campaign

Mark — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 17:33:27 EST

As alluded to in the typically restrained Drudge Report headline above, the freakout level in Boston has been officially reduced from "Holy shit, someone is leaving crazy-looking bombs all over the city!" to, "Hey, no terrorist would ever use Aqua Teen Hunger Force characters to sow the seeds of mass panic! This is just an incredibly ill-advised marketing campaign, everything's OK!" as Turner Broadcasting has claimed responsibility for the harmless flashing electronic boxes it scattered around the city to promote its Cartoon Network show through the widespread soiling of the undergarments of demographically desirable population segments. In its "sorry for the unintended terror scare" statement, Turner indicated that the devices have "have been in place for two to three weeks" in a variety of other cities, including Los Angeles, so our own wave of marketing-induced hysteria should roll along just as soon a shopper decides to report one of suspicious blinking boxes planted in The Grove's parking structure to security, rather than just shrug their shoulders in resignation and agree that it's time someone finally took out that place.