Plagiarism

I really liked the article about the laugh tracks. I thought I was the only person in the world who didn't get the point of them. I remember when I was little I used to think that when there was laughter on the show it meant that it was really funny and you should laugh anyway because everyone else did. And most of the stuff on sitcoms in the past were actually funny. I didn't start to realize how stupid laugh tracks were until I watched the show on Nickelodeon Drake and Josh. I remember they would say really stupid, corny jokes and the laugh track would play and I'd sit there and think "why is that funny???" I think for old sitcoms like Three's Company the laughing in the audience is ok because nobody laughs at once. At some points of the show you can hear like a few people laughing at something funny because it appealed to them and it seemed more real because maybe those people thought something was funny when others didn't. I also agree with his comment about how we laugh a lot here in the US. I know I laugh a lot. I don't think there's anything wrong with that really. Maybe Europeans should lighten up a little haha.

Although I think laugh tracks are dumb I think they are able to change the genre of something quite quickly hahaha. I found a clip on Youtube from the movie The Shining. Everyone knows this movie is a horror film but someone took scenes from the movie and put it in a Seinfeld style show with the laugh track and that little bass interlude that plays during changes of scenes on the show hahahaha:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRtyqK4nbVU&feature=related


The movie seemed a little more funny to me after I watched this haha.

For the article about plagiarism I agree that a lot of people my age do copy a lot. I think it's because there's this notion going around that writing papers is so awful. I don't think it's that bad unless you're writing about something you don't care about. I can understand how that feels to go "ughhh I don't want to do this. I don't even care!" and you just want to copy off of people but you can't do that. I do think some plagiarism rules are a little too strict but it's not ok to take sentences word for word without giving credit.