TV laughter is totally obnoxious! Or I'm a perimenopausal shrew! Or both!

[Ginevra]

Damn those wireless headphones for not working! The show about practical jokers - funny when *I* am watching it, but so. Stinkin. Irritating. If I am simply overhearing it. Who the heck laughs this much at their own jokes? Is it just subliminal conditioning to make the audience laugh?

 

Just SHUT UP! Stupid TV. :-/

[Farrar]

Sometimes I watch an old comedy show I used to like and realize it had... gasp... a laugh track or a studio audience. Eek! The laughter makes everything so much less funny.

 

It's so weird how sometimes seeing someone laugh is funny and sometimes it's irritating.

 

But this, this cracked me up even though the joke was terrible. Just shows a genius Tig Notaro is. I was dying laughing!

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/577/something-only-i-can-see?act=2#play

(Summary for those who don't want to listen. The comedian Tig Notaro's mil was trying to tell her and her wife and family a joke but couldn't get the joke out because she was laughing so hard. Tig decided to put her in front of an audience to tell the joke before she'd even heard the joke, just because watching her try to tell it and laughing so much at herself was so incredibly funny. It killed. Like, greatest comedians of all time killed. But the joke is *terrible* in and of itself. It's just the laughter that's so funny and the idea of someone making themselves laugh.)

[Gil]

I often find laugh tracks obnoxious and I am definitely not peri-menopausal.

[Guest]

I often find laugh tracks obnoxious and I am definitely not peri-menopausal.

:D

[MercyA]

:grouphug: , Quill. Brady Bunch has the worst laugh track *ever*. I'm glad my daughter is through that phase.  :)

[Guest]

:grouphug: , Quill. Brady Bunch has the worst laugh track *ever*. I'm glad my daughter is through that phase. :)

Some of the kids shows are pretty terrible, too. Like that iCarly show. Gah!

[Farrar]

The laugh track is not the primary thing making iCarly bad...

[heartlikealion]

I don't understand why laugh tracks are still used in this time. Even "live studio audience" is not excuse for the excessive laughter on shows like The Big Bang Theory. You know darn well that studio audience isn't yucking it up every minute.

[creekland]

I guess I'm one of those rare types who totally ignores laugh tracks or audiences?  It never occurred to me to for that to be a pet peeve.  We either like a joke/comedian and laugh or we don't.  Hubby and I (& the boys when they're home) will make comments about what was said/done, but laugh tracks?  Those literally have never come up in any of our discussions.  They're totally non-issues, not pro or con, just not noticed.

 

If one learns something new every day, I'm done.  That was easy!   :coolgleamA:  Now what do I do...  :huh:

[Guest]

I guess I'm one of those rare types who totally ignores laugh tracks or audiences? It never occurred to me to for that to be a pet peeve. We either like a joke/comedian and laugh or we don't. Hubby and I (& the boys when they're home) will make comments about what was said/done, but laugh tracks? Those literally have never come up in any of our discussions. They're totally non-issues, not pro or con, just not noticed.

 

If one learns something new every day, I'm done. That was easy! :coolgleamA: Now what do I do... :huh:

Have you not ever overheard it from another room while your not the one watching tv? To me it's like hearing the faucet drip in a quiet house or hearing the smoke alarm low-battery chirp every ten minutes. Once you have noticed it, it goes on amplifying in your head until you want to throw a brick at the offending equipment.

 

Or it is only the touchy personalities that have this problem. :)

[creekland]

Have you not ever overheard it from another room while your not the one watching tv? 

 

Remember, I've already admitted we're weird...

 

No one in our family watches TV when we aren't all watching it.  This goes back to even when my three boys were home...

 

We tape all shows and when we want to watch something, we rotate who gets to pick their choice and we all watch it.

 

There is only one thing I leave on in the mornings while I go about my "getting ready for school routine" (or other if not working).  That's the news.  I've yet to hear a laugh track on the news unless they're showing something from the previous night's talk shows - comedy part.  Hearing that laughter is key for me to go back into our living room, back up the news, and see if what they showed was funny.  :coolgleamA:

 

No one in our family has ever really been interested in TV the way many families work.  My kids have come home surprised that our method is not generally the same in other families.  They wonder why someone would want to watch a show alone or without other members!  Discussion after the show (short or long, shallow or deep) and the common brain neurons to be able to use anything in a show or movie in future discussions is important.

 

Now that my boys are in college and we occasionally watch different things from each other, discussions can be strange.  We have to start with, "Have you seen _____?"  Discussions have to be changed when some of us haven't seen the show in question.  When they are home we try to catch up with each other - esp with favorite shows (which I tape) and any decent movie any of us have seen.

[creekland]

Expanding upon our family and "catching up," hubby and I finally endured Inside Out this past weekend merely because our boys had seen it (they liked it).  Now when we get together we'll understand their references to parents, cats/dogs (the only worthy parts of the movie for us), and things like Goofball Island.

 

We (adults) also watched the Cokeville Miracle:

 

 

because our new neighbors made a copy of it and suggested we watch it after a fun talk about ghosts on the Gettysburg battlefield and spirits, etc.  Truthfully, neither hubby nor I expected we'd like it.  It's really not our genre.  But since we like our neighbors...

 

Now that movie is on our list to take south with us so we can watch it again with both boys while there on middle son's spring break.  ;)  It should produce some awesome discussions - and we suspect the boys will really like it.  We did!  (We'd never heard of that incident before... I guess because we were in college at the time and oblivious to most news stories going on.)

 

We're weird in how our family watches things. I admit that.  I also have no regrets... and it totally eliminates any laughtrack problems from another room!  :coolgleamA:

[Night Elf]

What bothers me about tv is that it's too loud when I'm not wanting to watch something and DH does want to watch something. I always go into the bedroom to read because I can't focus on my book with talking/laughing in the background. But laugh tracks in and of themselves don't bother me. I either laugh with them or I don't. I guess I'm just so used to them that they don't register on my radar. I do have to admit that sometimes when I hear laughing from the other room, I wonder if I'm missing something, but never enough to get up and go see. :)

[SparklyUnicorn]

I don't understand why laugh tracks are still used in this time. Even "live studio audience" is not excuse for the excessive laughter on shows like The Big Bang Theory. You know darn well that studio audience isn't yucking it up every minute.

 

Actually they might be.  I watched several shows talking about how they do their show tapings and the studio audience is used as a gauge for whether or not the material is considered funny.  So if they don't laugh, often times they change the scene.

[Guest]

Remember, I've already admitted we're weird...

 

No one in our family watches TV when we aren't all watching it. This goes back to even when my three boys were home...

 

We tape all shows and when we want to watch something, we rotate who gets to pick their choice and we all watch it.

 

There is only one thing I leave on in the mornings while I go about my "getting ready for school routine" (or other if not working). That's the news. I've yet to hear a laugh track on the news unless they're showing something from the previous night's talk shows - comedy part. Hearing that laughter is key for me to go back into our living room, back up the news, and see if what they showed was funny. :coolgleamA:

 

No one in our family has ever really been interested in TV the way many families work. My kids have come home surprised that our method is not generally the same in other families. They wonder why someone would want to watch a show alone or without other members! Discussion after the show (short or long, shallow or deep) and the common brain neurons to be able to use anything in a show or movie in future discussions is important.

 

Now that my boys are in college and we occasionally watch different things from each other, discussions can be strange. We have to start with, "Have you seen _____?" Discussions have to be changed when some of us haven't seen the show in question. When they are home we try to catch up with each other - esp with favorite shows (which I tape) and any decent movie any of us have seen.

That is amazing. My own TV watching almost entirely fits into these categories: in the morning, news with DH, or, after 9:30 or 10 pm when DS is in bed. At that point, I am most often in my room, watching cooking shows or HGTV. News analysis once in a while.

 

It's usually the TV that someone else is watching while I am making dinner that I find so annoying to hear in the background. I tried to fix this buy getting noise-cancelling wireless headphone for myself, but they don't work and I returned them.

[heartlikealion]

Actually they might be.  I watched several shows talking about how they do their show tapings and the studio audience is used as a gauge for whether or not the material is considered funny.  So if they don't laugh, often times they change the scene.

I got a little jaded this week when I saw this:

(warning: language)

 

http://rare.us/story/this-guy-explains-why-he-hates-the-big-bang-theory-and-he-makes-an-amazing-point/

 

I do like and watch the BBT when I can (I don't have TV at the moment), but it's true to me that often the laughing is happening when there's nothing to really laugh about.

Edited February 1, 2016 by heartlikealion