• Chozo@fedia.io
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    3 months ago

    Wanna know something cool and/or creepy? A lot of the “canned” laugh tracks used in TV (for shows that pretend to be filmed in front of a studio audience, but actually aren’t) are from a small handful of sound libraries that get mixed together. Many of the laughter tracks come from live audiences at I Love Lucy tapings.

    If you consider that I Love Lucy was filmed ~70 years ago, and that most of the audience members were likely 20+ years old at the time (the studios were in LA, and the audiences were largely comprised of tourists), then there is a statistically high likelihood that any individual audience member you hear laughing on certain modern TV shows may have been dead for decades.

    • Plopp@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      there is a statistically high likelihood that any individual audience member you hear laughing on certain modern TV shows may have been dead for decades.

      Serves them right for being in a canned laughter track!

      No but seriously, that’s both haunting and beautiful at the same time. They live on. Like laughing ghosts.

    • randomsnark
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      3 months ago

      Every time I hear this observation, I automatically hear Jim Carrey’s voice in my head saying “It’s dead people laughing! Those people are dead!”

      I guess he said it in the 1999 movie Man On The Moon and the line has somehow been permanently lodged in the back of my brain for the last 25 years