Alison Willmore 

Alison Willmore: the 10 funniest things I have ever seen (on the internet)

The film critic spends most of her time in front of a big screen – but her small screen is suitably deranged, nonetheless
  
  

Alison Willmore
‘When someone mentions a bit of discourse I haven’t heard about yet, I tear the internet apart like a club kid at a stranger’s medicine cabinet’: Alison Willmore Photograph: Supplied

I’m way too online for a film critic. The screen I spend most of my time in front of is the big one, and I’ve been trying, for years and with varying degrees of success, to reduce the amount of time I spend on social media. All that’s meant is that instead of getting this stuff directly, I absorb it all through friends, co-workers at Vulture and New York magazine, and various group chats.

And when someone does mention a bit of discourse or funny video I haven’t heard about yet, I tear the internet apart trying to find it like a too-sober club kid might a stranger’s medicine cabinet.

1. My weekend as a 28-year-old in Chicago

This is close enough to the kind of numbing urbanite consumption videos being poked fun of that it’s not until he’s mentioned going out to eat four times in less than a day that you realise something else is going on.

2. The Mask

Chaos comedian Conner O’Malley makes videos that have been edging into the realm of short films for a while now and this one, about an aspiring improv performer who moves to LA to get famous and instead drifts into conspiratorial beliefs, is as tragic as it is funny.

3. Event Horizon

I was thinking the other day, as I often do, about how great it would be if more soundtracks contained songs that are about what happens in the movie, a la Huey Lewis and the News or Will Smith. Then I remembered this track from the band .357 Lover, which was not featured in the 1997 space horror movie Event Horizon but is nevertheless an epic tribute.

4. Lesley the Pony Has an A+ Day

I think I was on the jury of a short film program that included this one at some festival once? My brain instantly melted and ran out of my ears, and I never got the song out of my head (ever).

5. Sisyphus got that dawg in him

There was a moment last year where the myth of Sisyphus, of all things, went viral thanks to someone on TikTok claiming that the tyrannical king of Ephyra was actually happy about being made to roll a boulder fruitlessly up a hill by the gods for all eternity, because he was getting stronger. The resulting pile-on yielded this meme, which remains one of the funniest collections of words I can think of. Sisyphus, a rise-and-grind icon!

6. Rejected

This was nominated. For an Oscar. It did not win but history has proven, as it so often does, that the Academy Awards are no reliable record to greatness.

7. Wide Load #tutorial

I appreciate that the relationship between a fan and an online creator is supposed to be troublingly parasocial and defined by a voracious need for personal information, but I never want to know more about the dude behind these videos, who seems to work in a kitchen and makes avant garde fight scenes using dough.

8. Office Hours Live

I was begged not to pick anything too long because everything had to be vetted, and realised that submitting a 12-hour video would definitely lead to someone at Guardian Australia tracking me down personally to weep at me in rage and resentment. So I found a clip. Though the full thing is actually a reasonable (whispers) 65-ish minutes, it just loops in a way that can barely be noticed at first because it is a pitch-perfect parody of an interminable Joe Rogan podcast. The comedians Tim Heidecker, Jeremy Levick and Rajat Suresh do an astounding job of talking nonsense while acting as though every word coming out of their mouth is a bold act of truth-telling and research, even when extolling the health benefits of something called “crab salts”.

9. TV Too High

The best subreddit is this one making fun of people for mounting their televisions too high. I could browse it forever, and also I live in fear of their judgment of the altitude of my own TV.

10. Artwood.ig

Here’s another guy I never need to know anything more about aside from what he’s put in his bio, which is just his name (and even that is a relatively new addition). Kuttiya Kanchanasopawong lives somewhere in Thailand with a bunch of incredibly happy looking labradors, and seems to spend his days taking them to the countryside and on swims. Sometimes he’s driving while they nap beside him and other times, one of the dogs is driving, while he maintains the exact same deadpan expression. It’s soothing and also deranged. I think he might be living in some kind of canine heaven, and I would like to go there too?

  • Alison Willmore will be appearing on the Consuming Culture panel at the Melbourne international film festival on 2pm on Saturday

 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

CAPTCHA

*