On the emergence & popularity of FAIL-based humor

How many of you guys frequent the FAILblog and sites like it? (One of my new favorites is probablybadnews.com)

When I catch up on one of these, it frequently induces the sort of uncontrollable laughter that makes me feel like I'm getting strange looks from my neighbors in the library; occasionally makes my day; and always gives me one thing or another to bring up in later conversation: "Did you see (insert funny picture or video)???"

I started thinking about how these sites sort of came into existence, and I came to the conclusion that this sort of humor has been around in one form or another throughout modern and post-modern cultural history -- but, with the advent of public forums such as these websites which specifically traffic in this brand of humor, what might, in decades past, have remained an in-joke -- or a story told amongst the few who came across the source of humor in real life -- has the potential to be widely disseminated or even to become an internet meme...

LOVE failblog. The internet has definitely opened us up to the world of the daily hilarity people encounter but never had a vehicle for sharing before.

I think the failblogs are cool but I prefer my internet humor in the form of fmylife.com or textsfromlastnight.com.....