Youtube Cliches Part II: When They Cry

A few weeks ago in the comments of one of my posts, frequent Zombie Baby Nursery guest star Juan del Lobo pointed me in the direction of a Youtube video that is compiled of clips of Oprah yelling out celebrity names (click here to watch).  I found the video funny, partly because Oprah's odd vocal intonations are inherently humorous ("MARIAH CARE-EEEEEEEeeee!" being one of my favorites), but also because this video exemplifies a Youtube cliche.  The cliche I speak of, my friends, is what I refer to as the "celebrity tics video".  To assemble a video of this type you need to pick a famous person, find a relatively minor but consistent thing that they do or say, and assemble a video to highlight this verbal or physical tic.  In the case of the aforementioned Oprah video, it's her habit of wildly barking out the names of her famous guests that's being put on display.  Another video edits down Natalie Portman's Oscar speech to highlight her excessive use of filler words, whilst another focuses on Juno's habit of saying "you know".

But to me the crème de la crème of the celebrity tics genre is this gem, the Julianne Moore crying video.  Three plus minutes filled with sniffing, weeping, and face contortions.  It's that kind of stupidly brilliant video that makes me say, "God, I love the Internet."

For the sake of clarity let me try to break down why I love this crap.  First off, they epitomize online culture.  While the web can indeed be a dark cultural abyss filled with such depraved human creations as lolcats, there is something genuinely funny about videos of this type.  They are one part observational humor and another part absurdity.  The existence of these videos implies a certain type of obsessiveness in both the video's creators and audience.  And this kind of obsessiveness is a big part of the appeal to me.