If you are on the Internet and have friends who are also on the Internet and all of your friends like funny things, then it’s highly likely that you’ve been sent, at one point or another, a link to the work of Allie Brosh, whose web comic Hyperbole and a Half is one of the funniest and strangest online. (For a good example of how Brosh perfectly captures modern life, check out the slightly NSFW This is Why I’ll Never Be An Adult.) But it turns out that Brosh’s unconventional sense of humor is not limited to still images — or drawn art, for that matter.
The YouTube channel ickybana5 currently hosts seven videos created by Brosh, three of which feature animated versions of her trademark crude artwork (deliberately crude, she says in the Hyperbole and a Half FAQ, “because sh—y drawings are funny”).
This includes her most recent video, devoted to raising awareness of the endangered Chilean Huemul, as well as her most viewed video at over 500,000 views, Cat Safety Propaganda, which is… Well, pretty much what it says on the tin.
The animation on these videos is as crude as the artwork being animated, but if it were to lose their its edges, the effect would be ruined. But Brosh’s second-most-viewed video which is her funniest — and unexpectedly, it’s also completely live-action. How To Put Yourself Inside a Coat is an exhaustive step-by-step guide to putting on a coat, and also a brilliant satire of instructional videos. This video is funny no matter how you slice it, but if you’ve ever had to write a script for an instructional video, then it is super-plus funny indeed.
(Brosh on the video’s origins, from her YouTube profile: “My internet connection was really bad today, so I was forced to make this video as a means of entertainment. It’s about coats and how to use them properly.”)
Some of Brosh’s video experiments are more strange than amusing, like a lip-dub to Timbaland’s Apologize meant as a response to someone saying that she’s ugly. (Spoiler alert: Brosh is not ugly.) But she’s an extremely engaging performer on camera, even when drunk on a playground in the middle of the night.
It’s little surprise that Brosh’s video efforts are unpredictable and unconventional, given how that same spirit imbues her work on Hyperbole and a Half. In print form, Brosh is primarily a storyteller, one who’s built an audience thanks to her brash honesty and random references to sharks and raptors. Her YouTube presence lacks that quality — instead, it’s where you can see just how delightfully random she can get.
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