Noticed how on the forum lately, there has been discussion about messy slapstick comedy starting to "die off". Decided to create this poll to see how many people still enjoy slapstick in a non-WAM/fetish context. Personally, I never found messy slapstick to actually be humorous or funny. Even as a kid, I didn't find humor in watching someone get messy on TV like Nickelodeon. Instead, it was more like "fascinated" and "envious" I guess. And I even felt embarrassed sometimes seeing people get messy in media since I knew others would find it weird that I wanted to get messy if they knew about my secret.

As stated in a post about why I never liked a certain show on a certain Cable network from the 80s, the slapstick has to be timed properly, and fit into the context of the scenario; and it can't be a long build-up to that joke, either.

It can work, but it's not easy to do, and most times it's not done right. I just think most people who laugh at the majority of it are like trained seals who will laugh at anything.

I never thought of the gunge TV shows of the 80s as comedy, although clearly based on slapstick concepts, they were something different, almost verging on BDSM in some ways. I think while us wammers found them erotic and wished we could be having the experiences and getting glooped, most of the audience were getting more of a cross between "yay at that person getting their deserts" and "eww, I'm so glad that isn't me".

But actual slapstick from the 30s like Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges, Harold Lloyd, or things like Laugh In from the 60s with the "Sock It To Me" sections, those did seem funny and I could watch them just as comedy and roar with laughter. Timing has a lot to do with it, slapstick works best when it's fast, I think. To me the pie fight in The Great Race that lots of people eulogise isn't at all sexy, as I hate Nattilie Wood's outfit, but it is hilariously funny. On the other hand to me the dress worn by the woman who gets pied on her bottom at the start of the pie fight in Battle Of The Century is sexy, so I find that scene both hilarious and erotic.

Mmm, absolutely, this. Being made messy was, by and large, portrayed as a punishment, and it was just about as close to an act of violence to a helpless recipient as could be depicted at the time, sometimes with dubious consent on the recipient's part. The line between love and hate (particularly fear-driven hate) is a fine one and I suspect that I wouldn't have become fascinated without these depictions, but even though I have - and I'm glad about it - I'd rather have lived in a world where those had not been a fact of life.

I'd like to believe the signs I've seen suggesting that the much greater degree of emphasis on, and discussion of, consent has made the world more thoughtful about matters of violence and consent since then, both in these interests of ours and more widely.

Good question, the answer for me is no, because most mainstream Wam in the 80's and 90's involved men as the victim, which I always saw as a wasted opportunity, and from a very early age I knew it was something different about female Wam, so rather than find it funny, it turned me on (although not sure I was aware that what it was at tge time.
So, whilst I love the slapstick set up of beautiful women wearing stockings under dresses, where you know one or more will get messy, but they tease you for a while, it's about the anticipation for me, and when they get it, its not funny, it's horny..

I also think that slapstick humour comes from schadenfreude rather than out and out hilarityPp

All about timing and setup for it to be properly funny. I'll always chuckle at someone say falling over, bumping into things or getting hit by a lie because of basic laughing at someone else getting clattered. For it to get a proper rise out of me requires something much more like unexpectedness or a good line. I mean that's the key to comedy generally so slapstick wam is no different. Things in isolation won't get out but if you look at say the most famous sketches or far out comedy bits then you see they build and build and have multiple jokes that layer into each other until a finale happens. The funniest wam scenes that even producers here have made follow the same line.

As far as mainstream scenes go compare say the Gran Casino pieings, absolutely tremendous for wam but it's devoid of any context and is just a series of hits done rapidly with the only variety being slightly shit costumes. Nee cunts laughing at that like it's fuckin Brass Eye. Compare that with for example the Three Mandrells pie scene which has long running set up, an expectation a sudden reversal and then an extra joke at the end for good measure also unexpected.

Also I've tended to notice these mainstream scenes have the live studio audiences screaming if it happens to the stars they know and love. Probs a variety of reasons for that but you do notices difference between something like Threes Company and some dogshit show.

Everyone has their own take on it. I chose "sometimes" because for me, it really does depend on the context. CAN it be done and just be "fun" or "funny"? Sure. Not EVERYTHING about seeing someone get dirty (or even getting dirty with them) has to be sexualized. I guess that makes me fall more into the "kink" than the purist "fetish" side of things? But that's alright. I also totally find the erotic side of it a turn-on (especially a beautiful woman all dressed up and playing in the mud having a blast while trashing the outfit, hair, make-up, etc.) and while there are of course some things that aren't purely a sexual situation (like a trash the dress photo shoot, for example, where you are going to be focused more on getting the images on film to capture the moment to not have time to focus on the arousal part, and not with someone who is not there for the sexual aspect with you in the first place) so in THAT regard, then yes. SOMETIMES WAM can be done for just fun and laughs, and other times it can also be a very erotic experience with a willing partner. But for 99% of the "regular" media? While the writers and the producers probably at least grasp the sexual undertones of the imagery to their audience, the actual product is typically played off as being comedic in nature and if it is going to "work" in the script, then it needs to at the VERY least work in some degree of humor into the situation as well- typically, anyway.

God no. In fact, when I see a pieing or a pie fight being set up in a show, I can tell the writer's room is running on fumes.It's mostly crappy sitcoms that have flung the desserts around in my experience.

Not for me. The closest genre of comedy that comedic wam usually falls under is slapstick, which is hard to get right at the best of times. I'll admit I'm a bit of a snob about the kind of humor I like seeing, I prefer absurdist surrealism or witty wordplay or just entertaining, charismatic actors. Slapstick I generally only like when it's in animated form, because animation can just do so much live action can't - the timing, the exaggeration, the speed, real humans just can't compare. Real life slapstick almost never works for me.

Even growing up, seeing things like someone get messy (same goes with the Schnieder feet/bondage thing) it didn't ever make me laugh. It just felt like a weird detour that added nothing. And looking at it now with an adult lens (and admittedly also a fetishist's lens) it's hard not to see it as just someone's thinly disguised fetish. I could count the number of times I've found live action slapstick funny on one hand, and could count the amount of comedic wam scenes I've found funny as an amputee.

Not funny. Never laughed at WAM in regular media that I can recall. Comedy is hard.

It depends on the presentation. If it's a gameshow where hosts or contestants are getting messy with a little warning first, then it's not really slapstick comedy at all. In those scenarios, you're seeing people get messy for the fun of it, very much like in wam videos, but without sexualizing it. In those scenarios, whether it's regular media or wam content, I don't laugh or particularly enjoy it because there's no prank element to laugh at. The exception being the rare occasion that the target is acting as if they don't see it coming or they're an audience member that legitimately thought that they couldn't become a target.

In media with characters and stories, I do laugh at a good slapstick prank where the character reacts in indignant humiliation. I'm more likely to enjoy regular media that does this over wam content, as regular media tends to focus more or the believability of the prank, the quality of the acting, and the pacing of the reaction. When wam content fails to consider any of those three elements, then the humor suffers.

I voted "sometimes," but only in the sense of nervous laughter at "This is weirdly arousing," not due to actual comedic effect.

Not really. It started for me because for some reason I felt sorry for people getting slimed? Like when I was around 11-12 I was watching a show on Nick and they pulled some random girl from the audience and she got slimed and I just remember feeling bad because I thought she was gonna have to go home all slimy and cold. She didn't even really get slimed that much compared to the Kids Choice Awards.

I also got Pavloved by the Kids Choice Awards when I was like 8 or so, two people got an award and to get them slimed someone made them pose like they were taking a picture with the award with their heads touching and in the promos all it showed was two people getting slimed while hugging with their heads touching and for a loooong time after I hated seeing pictures of people hugging with their heads touching because I semi associated it with that.

Well, like all humor really, it depends on context and the delivery of the punchline. It's hard to laugh at a WAM-type gag if there is no joke or setup for it. Typically, messy humor is done as a form of humiliation or lowering of stature, hence why its funny (subjectively) to see a bunch of dressed-up pompous rich people at a party get pied in a Three Stooges gag.

I haven't looked mush into mainstream stuff lately, but I've found some internet videos/memes in compilations on YouTube that I laugh at with my roommates despite the content containing messy stuff that you'd think would trigger my fetish (that they don't know about), but in the context of laughing at memes, I find a lot of them funny as shit!

One example I remember was something with a girl going through a drivethrough ordering a drink and driving up to the window and the drink just being CHUCKED at her, getting EVERYWHERE, and you see her expression for just a split second and then the video cuts (it was a "perfectly cut" meme compilation). It did look staged, but I think it still genuinly surprised her how hard the person threw it, and the perfect cut and unexpected randomness is why I found it funny.

So despite the content containing elements of WAM, that one fits inside the Funny filing cabinet in of my brain and not the Sexual one.

Then again, would internet videos made by everyday people fit into the same category as "regular media?" Because I also find it funnier when something like that is done more spontaneously or by accident rather than staged or written in a script.

I'm not sure if I would say this is triggering it but there are times where I've seen like a TikTok or something where somebody gets wet and I wish I could have seen the aftermath. Like this one where a girl in a dress did a trust fall with her boyfriend on the bank of a river but she fell the wrong way and got soaked.

I think a big part of the fetish for me is people getting messy in situations where they're not supposed to. A few years back there was rain all weekend for one of the Triple Crown races to the point where the field where everyone tailgates was effectively a giant mud pit and there were people literally doing belly flops into the mud. There's a maybe five second clip of some girl in what looks like a dress covered head to toe in mud pushing a guy away and I wish so bad that I could have seen what all happened with that. Another example I can recall if there's a basketball team whose mascot will take a giant birthday cake and slam it into the face of opposing "fans". There's a video on YouTube of what looks like two people on a date with courtside seats and the mascot "trips" and dumps the cake on the lady and her dress gets absolutely covered.

But also I'm not sure if I could ever get off to something from a show vs something from real life. There's a scene in Parks and Rec where Leslie Knope gets in a jacuzzi with a dress on but there's no way I could ever get off to that. On the contrary, there's a video on YouTube of a reporter jumping in a pool fully clothed, it doesn't even show much after she jumps in but I've used that in a pinch a few times before. There's also a video from the Australian version of The Bachelor of one of the contestants jumping in the pool in a gown, I guess to make a statement or something, and I would love to see the after pics of her in the dress after getting out of the pool.

Apologies for the novel, I've kind of kept all this suppressed in my head for years and at some point recently it's like a switch flipped in my head and suddenly I just have all of these thoughts pouring out.

I will say this: it's almost always funnier when it's real life or videos of real people rather than scripted. Not saying it's impossible to write and deliver good slapstick in scripted media, but I'll always find it funnier when it happens unscripted.

I feel the same way about falling down gags or someone getting hit in the balls. Put it in a movie, and's kinda lame because you know it's staged and just being acted out. But watching someone actually hurt themselves as a result of their own or their friend's stupidity: comedy gold!

'Fascinted' ' envious' and 'embarrassed' - oh god yeah, so much this!!! This nails how I felt seeing gunge on telly growing up.

In terms of finding humour in it...i can see the humour, but its not exactly laugh out loud. Weirdly, I would make an exception for some use of slosh in live theatre - maybe to do with the immediacy and intimacy. If it is eell executed, that has on occasion really made me laugh. Obviously don't see it very often, but can think of a couple of examples.

100%. For me it also hits more when it's real life rather than scripted. It's gonna sound super contradicting if you look at my other comments, but I almost like more when it's like "realtor in jumps into pool in dress" vs "Jane was on her way to a summer date with her bf when she decided to stop and play in a fountain, soaking her summer dress and jean jacket completely."

If anyone knows of some poor mom blogger who wore a maxi dress onto Popeye's at Universal and took an after pic with the dress plastered to her to spread warning to fellow travelers, let me know.

On the '90s show "Coach" the female lead's character was often the target of her costar's bumbling effort to do something. Overfilling a blender which then explodes or something along those lines. Her reaction and comic timing was amazing. Very funny.

It's probably a sign that I shouldn't be using scenes to get off, but there are four specific videos on YouTube that have done the trick much more for me than any like scripted scenario-

- news anchor gets slimed and pied in a dress and windbreaker, total coverage.

- video from the water balloon game on Ellen where it's a lady in a t shirt dress and a lady in a sweater and jeans and they're both like drenched by the end

- some reporter pulling her dress down and then jumping in a pool in it

- Christina Tosi getting frosted on Masterchef Junior, although this one doesn't do as much for me anymore because it doesn't show as much frosted dress as I thought it did.

1-2 and 4 are genuinely making me wonder if I have a thing for public humiliation on top of the messy fetish. There's also a video/article of Sophie Monk going down a slip n slide in a maxi dress and I'm actually surprised that there's not as many videos with how common both are in the summer but then again I don't know how film worthy that is. It also turns out that getting slimed for a gender reveal has been done before but most people also have common sense and are going to just wear old clothes rather than ruining a dress just for that.