The internet can be used for many things. It can be used to spread misinformation. It can be used to bully your classmates from the comfort of your home. Or you could buy uranium on the dark web. But it can also be a right laugh. Here are some of the funniest things I’ve seen on the internet.
1. Aunty Donna: standing up to bullying
Everyone discovers Aunty Donna the same way. It will be around 1am to 3am and you can’t get to sleep. Instead of drinking a cup of tea and trying to count some sheep, you decide to let daddy algorithm take you for a walk. After hours of reaction videos, video essays on the hidden meaning of Family Guy, and conspiracy theories (I do think Avril Lavigne is a clone, for the record), you stumble upon the undisputed kings of Australian sketch comedy.
While they are pretty much household names these days, with a fantastic show on Netflix under their belts, and an upcoming show on the ABC (about damn time), the fellas’ best material still lives on their wildly successful YouTube channel. The cream of the crop, in my humble opinion, is the underrated classic Standing Up to Bullying. This is classic Aunty Donna, good ol’ nonsensical madness. Plus, Broden yelling “fuck off you cunt” will never fail to get a laugh from me.
2. Gilly and Keeves: Sleep Cop
Gilly and Keeves is a sketch duo featuring standup comedians Shane Gillis and John McKeever. This sketch has a pretty simple concept: what if a police officer sleep walked? I think the genius of this is how they keep the tension rising. It just keeps building and building until it reaches boiling point. Fair warning, this sketch does get a little red hot in terms of content – but if you’re a true connoisseur of internet sketch comedy like I am, Gilly and Keeves are definitely a tasty treat.
3. Slingshot prank
Oh baby, I love me a good prank. Love ‘em with all my heart. But something happened to internet pranks … they stopped being about the pranks, man! They became terribly acted “social experiments” (like this cringe classic from the king Joey Salads) that baited their viewers to mutter “I’ve lost all hope in humanity” to themselves while ignoring their own children to waste their lives getting into Facebook fights.
But don’t be fooled: there are still some ripper pranks on the web, like this classic. What really tickles me about this prank is the hopelessness you see in the man’s face as he is shot into the sky. He is resigned to his fate as his life flashes before his eyes. All his regrets, all his successes, his first love, his first heartbreak; all consume his thoughts before he is shot to the heavens. You might think I’m reading too much into this seven second video, and to that I say: you’re not reading into it enough.
4. Fergie cartwheeling
Fergie is the greatest performer to ever grace God’s green Earth. The screaming, the one-handed cartwheel, the fact she does it not once, not twice … But FOUR TIMES! Fergie had no reason to go this hard for a performance on a morning show. But thank God she did.
5. Rey Mysterio – Hero
OK, there is nothing inherently funny about this video, but for a bit of context: as a kid, I was a huge WWE fan (still am). I had the action figures, I had the video games, hell I even had the CDs that had all of the wrestlers’ entrance tracks. Shout out to my mum for having the restraint to not snap my copy of Wreckless Intent – if my kid played Batista’s theme song (Saliva’s classic I Walk Alone) on a 24-hour loop, I would throw the CD player and my son into the ocean. But I digress. What really tickles me about this video is that the 60,000 views this video has mainly consists of eight-year-olds and emotionally stunted men thinking, “Woah … this is epic.” And honestly, they’re not wrong. This is epic!
6. Drake Cake
drake cake pic.twitter.com/mBbtNNys4L
— fucked up looking food (@fuckedupfoods) September 6, 2022
@fuckedupfood has to be my favourite Twitter account at the moment. I spend hours of my days scrolling through their page. Some of my personal favourites are the peanut butter and tomato sauce sandwich, and some bangers and mash where the mash potato was made with chocolate milk. If you need confirmation that God is truly dead, this Twitter account is for you.
With that being said, there is something wholesome about this Drake fan trying to make a cake inspired by Drake’s Nothing Was The Same album cover. Like sure, the cake looks atrocious and inedible, but it was made with love! And isn’t that the most important thing?
7. Boonk Gang
2018 was the year of the clout. Getting internet clout was more important than breathing fresh air. Many clout chasers were pulling insane stunts in the pursuit for their 15 minutes of fame, but no clout chaser could ever hold a candle to the absolutely mind-boggling stunts that Boonk pulled. If you’ve never seen Boonk Gang before, his shtick is pretty simple: Boonk will walk into an establishment, steal something and then run away screaming “Boonk Gang, whole lotta gang shit.” While I personally do not endorse any of Boonk’s actions, I would be lying if I said I’ve never scanned apples as onions at Woolies and quietly muttered “whole lotta gang shit” to myself.
8. This is how you eat a Big Mac
Damn. This one hurts me the most. For all we know, we’ve been eating Big Macs wrong for our whole lives and Fatboy SSE just wanted to show us the error of our ways. But now we will never know, because just before Fatboy SSE sinks his teeth into that meaty goodness, his so called friend slaps the burger out of his hand … a damn shame.
Also this video is solely responsible for my “taking off my shirt and yelling ‘come on son’” era I had in the summer of 2018.
9. Dan Rath’s Comedy Up Late set
Standup comedy is my first and true love. I am always going down the YouTube rabbit hole to find new comedians. But one clip I always come back to is Dan Rath’s Comedy Up Late set. Rath is one of the best comics Australia has ever produced. Just watch it. You won’t regret it.
10. The Butterfield Diet Plan
The first time I saw this, I was hanging out with some comics after a show. We were all zonked out on the couch playing videos on the TV. My mate Nick then asked a question that changed my life forever: “Have you seen the Butterfield diet?”
“No,” I responded innocently, unaware that my world was about to be turned upside down.
The writing in this sketch is insane. No sentence is wasted. It just keeps shooting jokes at you at such a rapid pace that it’s hard to keep up. This video is so goddamn funny, that when Nick put it on, I thought I was going to die. I thought I was going into cardiac arrest. Not to overhype the video or anything, but if you don’t see your life flashing before your eyes while watching this, maybe comedy isn’t for you.
Dave Woodhead is a comedian and host of Triple J’s Lunch show, 12pm to 3pm weekdays
