Google Gone Bad Gets Funny

Following online video means watching a lot of sketch comedy. After all, sketch comedy is to Youtube as superheroes are to comic books: a fundamental fact of the medium, the basis upon which entire companies are launched. There’s a lot of comedy online, and very often it’s not very good. But every once in a while, you come across a group that really gets it.

In Los Angeles, practically every sketch comedy group born out of the Groundlings or Upright Citizen’s Brigade or Second City schools is putting up its own shorts, and on the surface the Vacationeers are no exception. Their bio page is pretty typical, referencing Chicago improv training and small roles in feature films (though there are some impressive — which is to say, paid — writing and acting credits mentioned). And their shorts follow the traditional patterns of the broke and funny: a bunch of young white guys hanging out in somebody’s apartment, with one attractive girl added occasionally for flavor.

But with their five-part series The Googling, the Vacationeers have struck viral and comedy gold, using three simple techniques: 1) Each video is short (under three minutes); 2) they’re funny, well-produced, and well-written; and 3) they take aim at Google, a company so present in our lives that it seems only a few years away from from becoming a real-life Cyberdyne Systems (sans killer robots, of course).

Tapping into the paranoia we all felt when checking our home addresses on Street View for the first time, Google Maps is a surprisingly creepy bit of dark comedy, anchored by Jeff Grace’s underplayed terror. The black humor continues as our heroes in a Los Feliz apartment check out Google Moon, Google My Maps and Google SMS; each Web 2.0 experience ends in grim tragedy. This isn’t exactly new territory: Ever since technology started to outsmart us, we’ve been afraid of it using that power against us — lots of people call 2001: A Space Odyssey science fiction, but for me the sound of HAL’s voice is flat-out horror. But by keeping each short funny and punchy, the Vacationeers manage to play on these familiar tropes, poking fun at the underlying paranoia even as they push each scenario into Stephen King territory.

Sure, it’s no drunk baby demanding her rent money. But in an space driven by dick jokes, it’s smart comedy. And that makes it special.