Tbf it’s more that the feel of a live audience would be missing otherwise. They wanted that live audience feel and be a fully written TV series.
I guess to some degree it’s not completely wrong tho.
Comedy shows have laugh tracks cuz they aren't that funny
Submitted 2 months ago by Kintarian@lemmy.world to showerthoughts@lemmy.world
Comments
hoshikarakitaridia@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Kintarian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s just a passing shower thought
Boozilla@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Laugh tracks are awful. So are shows where the live audience has people screaming “Whoooooo!!!” whenever their favorite actor enters the scene. Married With Children being one example. Jerry Seinfeld calls it “the sound of dumbness”.
jimmy90@lemmy.world 2 months ago
laughing has been show to be a social activity which is why almost all comedies have a fake or real audience
Kintarian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I feel like laugh tracks are way to manipulate the audience. The reason they have to manipulate the audience is the joke wasn’t all that funny. If you don’t have a laugh track or a live audience then you have to actually be funny. Your jokes actually have to make people laugh in an organic way.
1rre@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
The reason they have to manipulate the audience is because people look for validation and so feel good when other people react to things in the same way as them. A laugh track can’t save a terrible show, but it can manipulate people into finding a mediocre show funny, but a mediocre show will make people laugh organically at least a few times anyway
Kintarian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m talking about laugh tracks. They are fake. The sound of laughter is homogenous. If you listen to a real audience, some people laugh louder, some softer. Also with laugh tracks, you can tell someone is turning a volume knob or slider on a mixer. It’s all fake.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 months ago
I mean the laugh tracks are still real people who have been recorded. It’s not just AI generated.
Diddlydee@feddit.uk 2 months ago
Alan Partridge, The IT Crowd, Black Books, Only Fools & Horses, Blackadder, Red Dwarf, Fawlty Towers, Father Ted all disagree.
Kintarian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Used to love watching the IT crowd
xoggy@programming.dev 2 months ago
Same reason tiktok and instagram reels are overlaid with that dumb wheezing laugh track.
billbasher@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That is an instant skip for me. Same with the vertical split with just pointing at the video and adding nothing of substance while shrinking the video
burgermeister@lemm.ee 2 months ago
audience loses their shit at this comment- people are rolling on the floor, gasping for breath, beginning to choke their fellow humans out of sheer comedy.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 months ago
There was a time when the average sitcom was filmed with a live studio audience and the laughter you hear is actually coming from real people watching the taping.
finestnothing@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The reason why they no longer do live studio is a TV star got followed home by someone in the audience and they tried/planned to hurt her. After that they used laugh tracks, and other shows followed suite when they realized that audiences didn’t really care. Made it easier to film
Kintarian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
When I lived in Los Angeles I used to go to some of those shows. It was pretty fun. One of my favorite shows from back then was All in The Family. Of course I didn’t get to see that one live cuz I don’t think they even filmed that in California. That would have been awesome though.
halykthered@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
There’s a show called Kevin Can Fuck Himself that uses a laugh track to bias the audience in favor of certain characters.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That show is some of the most genius content of the last decade.
Your description way undersells it.
Kevin Can Fuck Himself is about a woman who wants to kill her husband Kevin because she thinks it’s the only way she’ll ever get it of her marriage.
Whenever Kevin is in the room it’s lit and filmed like a multi camera sitcom. He says and does horrible things to his wife and the laugh track runs. It’s a really scathing criticism of how sitcom wives are treated.
But the real genius comes when Kevin and his friends are out of the room. Suddenly it becomes lit and shot as a single camera drama. I absolutely love it. It’s so effective.
mycodesucks@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Kintarian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Some of those jokes were actually amusing. I don’t know why they didn’t have a real audience. Most people will come for free just to watch the show.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
The audience usually attends for free (“for free tickets to the _____ show, call…”), but there’s still a lot of overhead. Not only do you need ushers, security, and so on, you need to be filming on a sound stage with a place for the audience.
On the flip side, laugh tracks are easily added in post.
thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 months ago
real people are unpredictable.
fhqwgads@possumpat.io 2 months ago
If you have about 20 minutes or less if you crank the speed, this podcast about laugh tracks is pretty interesting.
Kintarian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Wow, that first one was horrible. Someone was screaming like maybe they were getting murdered.
Kintarian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Never heard of it. I definitely have to look that up.
EndOfLine@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You aren’t necessarily wrong. Have you ever seen Friends without a laugh track?
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Friends without a laugh track is 1000% funnier.
Especially Ross…who becomes basically a serial killer vibe.
In The Big Bang Theory without the laugh track, Raj becomes just a huuuuuuge asshole.
lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 2 months ago
Oh man you weren’t kidding, at least drunk Raj becomes an unfunny asshole if nobody is laughing.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKS3MGriZcs
volvoxvsmarla@lemm.ee 2 months ago
To be fair, with or without a laugh track, TBBT is depressing as fuck. I feel incredibly sorry for the faith of most characters.
Lifecoach5000@lemmy.world 2 months ago
There was a great take on one of these called “Everybody Hates Raymond”
It was the show Everybody Loves Ramon but the laugh track was completely replaced with boos and was frickin hilarious. I think it got removed from YouTube though cuz I haven’t been able to find it for years.
helmet91@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Holy shit, this is much better than the original!!! Damn, I should rewatch the series like this. Where can I find all of it without the laugh track?
ech@lemm.ee 2 months ago
The pauses are there because it’s not a “laugh track”, it’s a live audience. That’s not to say it’s 100% genuine laughter, but they’re pausing so the laughter doesn’t bury the dialogue.
Nollij@sopuli.xyz 2 months ago
Timing and pacing are inherently different when there’s a laugh track. You can’t just silence the laughter or cut the time range. In some cases, you have to rework the joke.