Short videos of the tic-tic variety have become popular though much maligned. They have been said to   shorten attention span and create further degradation of general thinking. This sort of pop humor, a mixture of vulgarity, stupidity and stereotypes actually has a long history. George Orwell described the artist Donald McGill who produced postcards in the twenties, usually having a salacious, double entendre style of humor, with oversexualized women, acting out and feckless males, and much innuendo. Harmless enough in small doses, they do provide some low-brow entertainment, in the same way as modern tic toc videos. They were the humor of the working class then, and probably now as well trying to show as much intellectual noblesse oblige as possible.

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