You may have wondered in the past what the funniest video to appear on YouTube is. I bet, whatever criteria you used, you wouldn't choose this one. Which is odd, because according to Google's comedy algorithm, it should have us all in stitches.


As part of a research project, Google set out to find a way in which they could calculate how funny YouTube videos are. Huh, right. Because everybody knows that computers and algorithms have a great sense of humor, right?

That wasn't enough to put Google off, though. A team of researchers developed software that looks for sounds associated with laughter, internet acronyms and emoticons to rate humor. How... advanced. It gets better: It then ranks them according to those same features. As in, their algorithm ranks LMAO above lmao, and LOOOOOOOL over plain old LOL. Throw some exclamation points in and, wow, the commenter must think it's funny.


Roll all that together, and the highest ranking videos were then spat out into a public vote. The winner was "Ceiling Fan Trick Knockdown". Seriously, Google? [Google]