machine language

A George Carlin stand-up bit from Doin' It Again about soft language and euphemism, showing how softened words hide uncomfortable facts. It touches on topics like shell shock and aging.

A sketch from the Norwegian NRK show Uti Var Hage poking fun at the Danish language and how hard it is to understand.

Finnish YouTuber Saara improvises gibberish that mimics how various languages sound to people who do not speak them. The sentences are mostly made up, and the clip went viral.

A clip from George Carlin's 1990 special 'Doin' It Again' in which he describes how American English has been sterilized with euphemisms, using examples such as shell shock becoming PTSD.

A Fry and Laurie sketch about language, full of absurd phrases and wordplay, which also plays on the distinction between langue and parole.

Finnish comedian Ismo does a stand-up routine on Conan about the many meanings of the English word 'ass'. He riffs on the confusing quirks of English as a second language.

A George Carlin stand-up bit on euphemisms, tracing how language gets softened, such as shell shock becoming PTSD, until it loses its emotional force.

Finnish comedian Ismo riffs on how the English word for shit is the most complicated word in the language, with its many meanings and uses. It is a four-minute comedy bit.

A George Carlin routine on euphemisms and political correctness, tracing how shell shock became PTSD. The uploader adds context about euphemism in political language.

A two-minute clip of comedian Bill Hicks doing his routine on marketing and advertising, with explicit language. He mocks marketers and urges them to get out of the business.

The Doomsday Machine scene from Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, in which the Soviet doomsday device is explained.

The opening scene of The Wire season 5, in which detectives use a copy machine as a fake lie detector to get a confession.

The 'Machine that goes PING!' sketch from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, in which hospital staff fuss over a machine while ignoring the patient.

A one-minute clip from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in which a computer refuses to reveal its results. It plays on machines giving unhelpful answers.

A Burnistoun sketch in which a voice-recognition elevator cannot understand two Scottish men saying the number eleven. It satirizes voice interfaces that fail on accents.

Tom Scott-style absurdist research by tom7 for SIGBOVIK 2021, using machine learning to discover letterforms that are 'uppercaser' than uppercase A and lowercaser than lowercase. It is a comedic, technically inventive deep dive with fonts and a paper.

A nine-minute Stewart Lee stand-up routine about political correctness and the claim that it has gone mad. It is dry, layered British comedy that takes the complaint apart.

'Skwerl' is a short film by Brian and Karl made entirely in fake English, imitating how English sounds to people who don't speak it. It was made for Kino Sydney and shown on QI.

A comedy segment where Eddie Izzard travels to Friesland to try speaking Old English, claiming English originated in Holland and buying a cow to prove it.

A short George Carlin routine on how the term shell shock was softened into combat fatigue and then PTSD. He argues that euphemism hides the reality of suffering.

A two-minute comedy sketch in which a foreigner speaking fluent Japanese is repeatedly not understood by Japanese people who refuse to process it.

A Burnistoun sketch from BBC Scotland in which two men try to use a voice-recognition elevator that cannot understand their Scottish accents.

A one-minute scene from the film Enemy of the State showing absurdly implausible image enhancement, with freezing, rotating, zooming and focusing on a video.

A one-minute clip from a CSI episode featuring the trope of zooming and enhancing low-resolution images. The uploader says it was the last CSI episode they watched.

An HBO clip from Silicon Valley season 4 in which the 'Not Hotdog' app is demoed. The app classifies food photos as hot dog or not hot dog.

A 2007 video of someone trying to write Perl code using Windows Vista's speech recognition, with hilariously bad results.

A two-minute supercut of film and TV characters ordering a computer to 'enhance' a blurry image into a perfectly sharp one. It is a remaster of an earlier 2009 version.

A 2007 video of someone trying to write Perl scripts using Windows Vista speech recognition, with comically bad results. The footage shows the recognizer repeatedly mangling commands.

A sketch from the Scottish comedy show Burnistoun in which two men cannot get a voice-recognition elevator to understand the word eleven in their accents.

Michael Reeves rigs up a camera and software that tracks a goldfish's movements to choose stock trades, tied to wallstreetbets sentiment. It is a comedic programming and electronics stunt.

A two-minute compilation of TV and film scenes where investigators say 'enhance' and a blurry image becomes sharp. It mocks the trope.

A stand-up routine by Stewart Lee on political correctness, offering a satirical defense of inclusive language.

A short 2010 parody sketch titled 'All The Cool Kids Use Ruby' about an absurd initial consultation. It is a spoof of tech-hype culture.

The Monty Python sketch "Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook", in which a faulty phrasebook yields lines like "My hovercraft is full of eels".

Neel Kolhatkar's satirical short film parodies modern education and political correctness. It shows how obsession with inclusive speech makes plain communication difficult.

A short comedy video of the Turbo Encabulator, a piece of technobabble nonsense describing an imaginary machine in deadpan engineering language.

A short, edited clip of Mark Zuckerberg talking about smoking meats at a barbecue. It circulates as a meme about his awkward persona.

A humorous 10-minute parody sequel to Erlang: The Movie, in which Erlang's creators discuss the aging language and meet a surprise helper. It plays on the Outlaw Techno Psychobitch joke for OTP.

The earliest filmed version of the Turbo Encabulator technical-jargon parody, shot in the late 1970s with narrator Bud Haggert. It deadpans a stream of meaningless engineering language.

Paul Taylor's first stand-up special, recorded in Paris in 2018, in which a British comedian living in France riffs on French culture, language and bureaucracy. It is the full 70-minute show.