Whether slowing things down, speeding them up, chopping videos to pieces or just throwing down a few well-placed “beep” sounds, the whole re-edit cult is producing some of the best content on YouTube at the moment. That is, if you’re a simply amused pseudo-adult with the attention span of a five yea- oooooh, wow, you would not believe how fluffy my hair is right now. Like, oh... oh, that’s like patting a cashmere scarf. Oooooooooooooooh... Where was I?
10. Disturbing Strokes
Remember Different Strokes? What a great story. Kindly old, rich white man lifts two struggling black orphans from the depths of the ghetto to the heights of his penthouse apartment, where they grow up harmoniously, having year after year’s worth of laughs and adventures along the way. What charity. What love. Right? SO WRONG! DON’T GET IN THE CAR, YOU FOOLS!
9. Friends without the laugh track
Keeping up with the ‘unnerving’ vibe, it turns out that removing the laugh track from
Friends both a) makes the show unfunny; and b) makes everyone in it look awkward and uncomfortable. Just like real life, really.
8. Bert and Ernie play the drums
I can’t explain to you exactly why this is so funny, but I assure you, it really is. Rarely has so much been done with a grand total of about 3 seconds of footage. Also, the idea that there are people out there who listen to this music for pleasure makes my eyes bleed.
7. Friday the 13th
Proof, if it was ever needed, that everything, everything is improved with the addition of Yakety Sax.
6. Drunk Jeff Goldblum
Who woulda thunk it? Slowing Jeff Goldblum down to half pace makes him both look and sound horrifically soused. Here he tries to sell the world the iMac at the tail end of what appears to be a four day whiskey and vicodin bender.
5. Snakes on a Plane
This video gets points because it was actually broadcast on television at one point. Good to see Samuel L. Jackson has cleaned up his act.
4. Pastor Gas
I don’t care how old you are, fart jokes are still hilarious. There’s a scene just before the three minute mark which is at least as funny as anything Monty Python has ever done.*
* Potential overstatement
3. The G.I. Joe PSA
Back in the 1980s, when G.I. Joe was still considered the primary moral voice of middle America, the cartoon produced a series of educational shorts for children, telling them about the dangers of talking to strangers, cooking by themselves, patting stray dogs and sky-diving without a licence. Twenty-odd years later, in 2003, the good people at Fensler Film decided these PSAs needed to see the light of day again, but with messages updated to suit the needs of today’s children. That need apparently being a big ol’ slab of ‘what the fuck just happened?’
2. Colby
This video deserves an Academy award for Best Editing. Like, seriously. Starting out as a heartwarming, poorly acted and very era-specific story about the burgeoning friendship between an “overweight computer” named Colby and a bunch of brightly coloured pre-teens, by the time it hits the 3:30 mark this video increasingly looks like it’s been vigorously assaulted by Richard D. James (he of Aphex Twin fame) before tumbling into a conclusion so mind-warpingly shitcrazy that it’ll haunt your dreams for weeks. Oh, and the whole thing was taken from a Christian educational TV show too. CONFUSING!
1. The Count Song
This video is so simple and so perfect that anything I might say about it could only possibly detract from the experience.