...is a laugh track. You know, that canned laughter that they used to insert into TV sitcoms. The outbursts of cleared pre-recorded laughter never really gave the impression that the show was being filmed in front of a live audience, because even an idiot could tell it was canned. It always seemed to me more designed to tell the audience what parts of the show were supposed to be funny (even if they weren't), and thus when they should laugh at home. It was like remedial education for the laugh-impaired.
I always wanted to take a really terrible episode of one of those shows and re-edit it, putting the laugh tracks in completely different places. Instead of inserting them after the punchline of a bad joke, I'd throw them in when there was an outbreak of bad acting. Or really lame dialogue. Or in completely inappropriate moments, as in this clip from Pulp Fiction: http://www.dula.tv/watch.php?file=pulp-fiction-with-a-laugh-track.flv <%20http://www.dula.tv/watch.php?file=pulp-fiction-with-a-laugh-track.fl\ v> That's what FFL needs in my opinion, a laugh track. It's gotten so serious around here lately, what with all the politics and the ad hominem and the posturing and the self defensiveness. I think adding a laugh track would be just the ticket. As I imagine it, the outbursts of canned laughter would occur at random intervals. You'd be in the middle of reading some heavy conspiracy theory or political screed, and suddenly there would be the sound of laughter, as if some astral audience reading over your shoulder had just cracked up. Or you'd be reading someone's oh-so-earnest attempt to sell you a "right" belief of fix one of your "wrong" ones, and again the laugh track would go off. According to my theory, the random outbursts of laughter would remind the readers that it was OK *to* laugh at random outbursts of seriousness, and at themselves for ever taking them seriously. As a result, goes my theory, there would be fewer serious replies, as fewer people got their buttons all pushed. How 'bout it, Bhairitu, or the other programmers here? Can you whip up an app that lives in the background as you're reading or writing to FFL that randomly laughs at you from time to time? I think it would be a useful utility. :-)
