5 ms·

Others tried to mimic what they did by being more bold, or gross, or edgy... but I don't think it was about the stunts. Somehow they made you feel like you were

Others tried to mimic what they did by being more bold, or gross, or edgy... but I don't think it was about the stunts. Somehow they made you feel like you were part of the group. I don't know if it was the way they filmed it, or the fact that they were so casual and normal around the cameras, even the setups for the scenes were kind of goofy and "home video" style.

smcl 5y ago
> Somehow they made you feel like you were part of the group This is a great point, so maybe they were also among the first to attract the sort of parasocial relationships that also emerged with the rise of social media.
- handrous 5y ago
  > This is a great point, so maybe they were also among the first to attract the sort of parasocial relationships that also emerged with the rise of social media. Maybe I'm misreading the situation, but I'm pretty sure political AM radio show hosts beat them to that. Casual, conversational, "unlike those morons, you and I both know..." style, tons of in-jokes. Extensive call-in segments.
- smoldesu 5y ago
  I don't really buy this whole "parasocial relationship" theory. If there's any science on it, I'd love to see it, but people have had obsessions for ages: that doesn't necessarily excuse them or make them healthy, but also don't see how the information age changes that in any way.
at_ 5y ago
Totally agree - just watched a bit on Youtube out of nostalgia, and was taken aback by the charm of it for sure. There's a restraint that I don't think I appreciated when I was watching it as a young teenager - it's defined as much by the the places that it doesn't go (that other shows did, as you say) than the places that it does
- aaronax 5y ago
  Indeed, even with edgy "out there" content it is important to have "restraint" like you said...someone with a vision of what the product will be. This can also be seen in the Trailer Park Boys TV show. Seasons 1-7 under the direction of Mike Clattenburg do have a lot of swearing and dirty jokes, but it is always genuinely good humor, or serving plot and character development maybe. I'm sure I don't describe it well, but "I know it when I see it."[0] The following seasons with other directing/production have lost that tact and restraint; like they just call someone 5-6 dirty words in a row, funny only for the shock value of the words. Not funny. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
  - swader999 5y ago
    RIP Jim Lahey.
post_break 5y ago
It also helped seeing the movies with the same group of friends, or talking about the show at school with the same friends. Did you watch viva la bam last night? Or wildboyz? Just hearing the name Johnny Knoxville makes me feel nostalgic for skateboarding with friends.
- the_doctah 5y ago
  Wildboyz is an underrated nature show. Or maybe it's more that Chris Pontius is underrated.
  - post_break 5y ago
    The scene where he’s holding a snapping turtle and goes “I wonder why they call it a snapping turtle, let’s go in for a closer look” and it clamps down right on his nose. Pure genius. https://youtu.be/5HQpbGq010c https://youtu.be/5HQpbGq010c
tmountain 5y ago
Jackass came out of CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) which started off as a bunch of friends who rode skateboards making homemade skate videos with a bunch of bloopers/excerpts. They quickly realized that people liked the filler as much as the actual content and capitalized on that interest with Jackass. It felt authentic because it was. The people making the videos had a genuine connection / were actually friends, and were really just doing it for fun in the beginning and that makes it feel different than a lot of the manufactured content that people are exposed to today.
- throwkeep 5y ago
  That's a vital aspect. Kenny vs Spenny is an example of this too, I think. You wouldn't be able to capture that authenticity with a top down approach.
- steveklabnik 5y ago
  Don't forget (as the article mentions) Big Brother. In some ways, it was very similar, but also, very different, being a print magazine. Video really changed things.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    I was going to post this. Big Brother was a good-ass magazine, the peak of skate magazines, and also launched the career of Spike Jonze. Videowise, there was another skate vid during that period called "Whisky: The Movie" that was in the same hilarious vein as the Jackass stuff. Looks like it might have been DMCA'd off of youtube.
  - sturadnidge 5y ago
    Such a good magazine, I (finally) threw a bunch of them out when I moved house maybe 10 years ago… I should have least kept the issue that introduced Johnny Knoxville to the world - who knew it would go so far!
- sergiomattei 5y ago
  This is it. I'm a huge fan of Impractical Jokers for this same reason: they really make you feel you're part of them, they let you into the inside jokes, etc. It's really just a group of people making funny content. They feel genuine and that draws people in.
axaxs 5y ago
yeah I remember the CKY guys had similar premise. But they were more 'dark' or extreme or something. Definitely not as entertaining as Jackass, and never really got as popular either, probably for that reason.
cwkoss 5y ago
I think an essential part was that the cast had the perfect combination of masochism and drug intoxication so they'd laugh riotously immediately after being injured. If they didn't laugh so hard right after being injured, a lot of their videos would be horrifying. Their laughter invited you to laugh with them.
kbenson 5y ago
> Others tried to mimic what they did by being more bold, or gross, or edgy There was a while there where it was genuinely upsetting to see some of those people. They really didn't understand the difference between pranking a friend that's opted in to the behavior and random people in public, and what's acceptable as a prank in both instances. I'm sure Jackass had a few misses in this department too, but at least by the time they were famous the public stuff seemed more along the lines that might leave public people that saw it or were unwittingly involved thinking "WTF did I just see" or a story that later they would start with "You wouldn't believe the stupid person I saw today" and if the person realized it was a prank would generally think it was rather funny since it didn't affect them. Contrast that with youtube "pranksters" of the time when they first started being popular physically assaulting people, or stealing things, or tricking someone into thinking they had lucked out and then making them feel the loss of that when it was shown to be fake as well as humiliating them in front of the world. "Haha you thought that $100 bill was real? Psyche! It's fake, you didn't find anything! Hey everybody, look how sad he looks now. Why are you sad, bro? It's a prank, be happy, the whole world is watching!" I remember having to very carefully counsel my young son who kept stumbling on them and watching them on why these people weren't being funny, they were being mean, and this wasn't how people should be treated.
- JauntyHatAngle 5y ago
  It really is that, most Jackass pranks the joke is the jackass people themselves, with other people's reactions being part of the humour but usually not at their expense. The central source of the humour is the jackass people acting silly or humiliating themselves somehow. CKY had a few bad ones though (throwing a life-sized doll off a motorway in front of cars is a good example of a bad one...) but they seemed to grow out of it.
- asiachick 5y ago
  Meh, a few were funny when they only pranked each other but * taking a dump in a hardware store was not funny to me or to the people in the store * their antics in Japan were horrible. Snorting wasabi and throwing up might be funny if you do it in your own apartment but it's not funny when you ruin every other diner's night. They even put people in harms way like when they blocked the escalators at train stations. If you ever seen someone get mutilated by an escalator you'd know how irresponsible it was of them to block it. I laughed at some of the jokes on each other but the ones involving innocent bystanders were almost all just horrible.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
Maybe that's why I didn't really like the Jackass films compared to the show - especially in some moments it was too staged, too acted and well-produced.
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
> Others tried to mimic what they did by being more bold, or gross, or edgy... Makes me think of Filthy Frank, he was one of the worst. But it had some great fourth wall breaking moments, when they crack up themselves after idk, a neighbour yells at them for screaming from the roofs in the middle of the day.

smcl 5y ago

> Somehow they made you feel like you were part of the group This is a great point, so maybe they were also among the first to attract the sort of parasocial relationships that also emerged with the rise of social media.

handrous 5y ago
> This is a great point, so maybe they were also among the first to attract the sort of parasocial relationships that also emerged with the rise of social media. Maybe I'm misreading the situation, but I'm pretty sure political AM radio show hosts beat them to that. Casual, conversational, "unlike those morons, you and I both know..." style, tons of in-jokes. Extensive call-in segments.
smoldesu 5y ago
I don't really buy this whole "parasocial relationship" theory. If there's any science on it, I'd love to see it, but people have had obsessions for ages: that doesn't necessarily excuse them or make them healthy, but also don't see how the information age changes that in any way.

at_ 5y ago

Totally agree - just watched a bit on Youtube out of nostalgia, and was taken aback by the charm of it for sure. There's a restraint that I don't think I appreciated when I was watching it as a young teenager - it's defined as much by the the places that it doesn't go (that other shows did, as you say) than the places that it does

aaronax 5y ago
Indeed, even with edgy "out there" content it is important to have "restraint" like you said...someone with a vision of what the product will be. This can also be seen in the Trailer Park Boys TV show. Seasons 1-7 under the direction of Mike Clattenburg do have a lot of swearing and dirty jokes, but it is always genuinely good humor, or serving plot and character development maybe. I'm sure I don't describe it well, but "I know it when I see it."[0] The following seasons with other directing/production have lost that tact and restraint; like they just call someone 5-6 dirty words in a row, funny only for the shock value of the words. Not funny. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it
- swader999 5y ago
  RIP Jim Lahey.

post_break 5y ago

It also helped seeing the movies with the same group of friends, or talking about the show at school with the same friends. Did you watch viva la bam last night? Or wildboyz? Just hearing the name Johnny Knoxville makes me feel nostalgic for skateboarding with friends.

the_doctah 5y ago
Wildboyz is an underrated nature show. Or maybe it's more that Chris Pontius is underrated.
- post_break 5y ago
  The scene where he’s holding a snapping turtle and goes “I wonder why they call it a snapping turtle, let’s go in for a closer look” and it clamps down right on his nose. Pure genius. https://youtu.be/5HQpbGq010c https://youtu.be/5HQpbGq010c

tmountain 5y ago

Jackass came out of CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) which started off as a bunch of friends who rode skateboards making homemade skate videos with a bunch of bloopers/excerpts. They quickly realized that people liked the filler as much as the actual content and capitalized on that interest with Jackass. It felt authentic because it was. The people making the videos had a genuine connection / were actually friends, and were really just doing it for fun in the beginning and that makes it feel different than a lot of the manufactured content that people are exposed to today.

throwkeep 5y ago
That's a vital aspect. Kenny vs Spenny is an example of this too, I think. You wouldn't be able to capture that authenticity with a top down approach.
steveklabnik 5y ago
Don't forget (as the article mentions) Big Brother. In some ways, it was very similar, but also, very different, being a print magazine. Video really changed things.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I was going to post this. Big Brother was a good-ass magazine, the peak of skate magazines, and also launched the career of Spike Jonze. Videowise, there was another skate vid during that period called "Whisky: The Movie" that was in the same hilarious vein as the Jackass stuff. Looks like it might have been DMCA'd off of youtube.
- sturadnidge 5y ago
  Such a good magazine, I (finally) threw a bunch of them out when I moved house maybe 10 years ago… I should have least kept the issue that introduced Johnny Knoxville to the world - who knew it would go so far!
sergiomattei 5y ago
This is it. I'm a huge fan of Impractical Jokers for this same reason: they really make you feel you're part of them, they let you into the inside jokes, etc. It's really just a group of people making funny content. They feel genuine and that draws people in.

axaxs 5y ago

yeah I remember the CKY guys had similar premise. But they were more 'dark' or extreme or something. Definitely not as entertaining as Jackass, and never really got as popular either, probably for that reason.

cwkoss 5y ago

I think an essential part was that the cast had the perfect combination of masochism and drug intoxication so they'd laugh riotously immediately after being injured. If they didn't laugh so hard right after being injured, a lot of their videos would be horrifying. Their laughter invited you to laugh with them.

kbenson 5y ago

> Others tried to mimic what they did by being more bold, or gross, or edgy There was a while there where it was genuinely upsetting to see some of those people. They really didn't understand the difference between pranking a friend that's opted in to the behavior and random people in public, and what's acceptable as a prank in both instances. I'm sure Jackass had a few misses in this department too, but at least by the time they were famous the public stuff seemed more along the lines that might leave public people that saw it or were unwittingly involved thinking "WTF did I just see" or a story that later they would start with "You wouldn't believe the stupid person I saw today" and if the person realized it was a prank would generally think it was rather funny since it didn't affect them. Contrast that with youtube "pranksters" of the time when they first started being popular physically assaulting people, or stealing things, or tricking someone into thinking they had lucked out and then making them feel the loss of that when it was shown to be fake as well as humiliating them in front of the world. "Haha you thought that $100 bill was real? Psyche! It's fake, you didn't find anything! Hey everybody, look how sad he looks now. Why are you sad, bro? It's a prank, be happy, the whole world is watching!" I remember having to very carefully counsel my young son who kept stumbling on them and watching them on why these people weren't being funny, they were being mean, and this wasn't how people should be treated.

JauntyHatAngle 5y ago
It really is that, most Jackass pranks the joke is the jackass people themselves, with other people's reactions being part of the humour but usually not at their expense. The central source of the humour is the jackass people acting silly or humiliating themselves somehow. CKY had a few bad ones though (throwing a life-sized doll off a motorway in front of cars is a good example of a bad one...) but they seemed to grow out of it.
asiachick 5y ago
Meh, a few were funny when they only pranked each other but * taking a dump in a hardware store was not funny to me or to the people in the store * their antics in Japan were horrible. Snorting wasabi and throwing up might be funny if you do it in your own apartment but it's not funny when you ruin every other diner's night. They even put people in harms way like when they blocked the escalators at train stations. If you ever seen someone get mutilated by an escalator you'd know how irresponsible it was of them to block it. I laughed at some of the jokes on each other but the ones involving innocent bystanders were almost all just horrible.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

Maybe that's why I didn't really like the Jackass films compared to the show - especially in some moments it was too staged, too acted and well-produced.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

> Others tried to mimic what they did by being more bold, or gross, or edgy... Makes me think of Filthy Frank, he was one of the worst. But it had some great fourth wall breaking moments, when they crack up themselves after idk, a neighbour yells at them for screaming from the roofs in the middle of the day.