Microsoft isn’t funny at all. Maybe the concept of Bill Gates is funny, maybe some of the stupid stuff Bill Gates says is funny, maybe the way Microsoft screws up your friends’ computers is funny, but Microsoft just isn’t. And neither is Apple. No, both of these major companies seem too serious to write a funny error message or include a humorous default desktop. They are like badly acted drama’s that take themselves to serious. But Google is the postmodern work to their drab, boringness. Google is every bit as big, but a thousand times funnier. And that’s what makes them less often the brunt of the joke, and more often the author.

This post was prompted when I noticed the odd contradiction between Google and Google. On one hand, Google has become the face of the United States to the Chinese. Their ongoing battle in refusing to comply with Chinese demands for search censorship has been interpreted as American aggression toward the government and also a powerful stand against it which has inspired some of the Chinese people who are for freedom. Google clearly has a seat in the middle of very important action.

On hand two, Google is hilarious. I got an error message from Google-run Youtube that said:

Sorry, something went wrong.

A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation.

Less obvious, but in some ways a much more academic and nuanced use of humor is in the Incognito mode( which lets you search without a history) for Chrome. Almost every guy has the tendency to associate (and use) the internet privacy settings for something along the lines of porn, and almost everyone thinks of the Incognito mode as a way to do something naughty without getting caught. Google offers a different suggestion, which is completely unnecessary and as a result, quite hilarious in it’s faux-innocence. Would you like to turn on Incognito mode “to plan surprises like gifts or birthdays”? Gifts and birthdays have never been this much fun.

The last bit is Google’s AutoComplete. An entire site is devoted to the humor of typing in half a phrase and checking out the suggestions, but here are some good ones:

Type in: “this looks li” and it suggests: “this looks like a job for emergency pants”

Or Type in “do you want c” and it suggests “do you want cigarettes on that sandwich”

This whole notion goes really well with House of Leaves. Despite being a kind of creepy/horrific book, there are still moments when it doesn’t take itself seriously. Lots of them. There are definitely funny moments too.

Is humor a vital part of everything postmodern? Can something even be postmodern without it?