'Realistic' High School Musical Edit Cuts The Music And Gets Deliciously Absurd

It could be argued absurdist humor has been around for well over a century, but the internet has truly perfected the art. Leave it to random people online to take a meme or some other piece of art, strip it of all meaning, and produce something that flies in the face of logic and reasoning. One of the best examples of this is the "High School Musical but it Sounds Realistic" video. 

Viewers must suspend their disbelief while watching any musical. Obviously, people don't just dance and sing to choreographed numbers in real life. That's what makes it so entertaining to see how a musical number from "High School Musical" would sound if the kids were actually doing what they're doing. The video takes the musical number "Work This Out," where the cast bangs against pots and pans in a kitchen to produce music, but if they were actually doing it, it would be so irritating. From shoes sliding against the floor to pinging glasses, the video draws humor from stripping away the standard musical number and showing how absurd the movements would be in reality.

It gets into the ridiculousness of actually having to film such a sequence, which is what many commenters pointed out, like one stating, "do u think if the cast watched this they would think 'yeah that's pretty much how it sounded filming it.'" But "High School Musical but it Sounds Realistic" is just one of many examples of absurdist humor online where someone removes a critical component from something to create something utterly bizarre. 

There's inherent humor in watching something missing a crucial piece of its puzzle. Numerous videos have materialized on YouTube of sitcoms without their laugh tracks. Not only is it funny watching a clip from "The Big Bang Theory" without a studio audience, but it serves a function. Many have done this to suggest the jokes don't stand on their own, and when the laughter is removed, it sounds just like a regular conversation with awkward pauses. 

A similar bit played out with "Dancing in the Street // Silent Music Video." The user took the music video for the Mick Jagger and David Bowie song, "Dancing in the Street," but took out the music and lyrics. What's left is similar to the "High School Musical" video, where it's mostly a bunch of shoe sounds scraping against the ground. Jagger and Bowie do sing a little bit, but it's in a manner to how they would sound if they were literally singing on the street. It ends up being a bunch of weird mouth noises and sounding out of breath. 

However, arguably the greatest example of internet absurdist humor comes from the famous "Garfield Minus Garfield" strip. It's an entire website where "Garfield" comics are featured without Garfield in them. What's left depicts Jon's descent into madness, as he's often featured talking nonsensically to himself. Sometimes Jon doesn't say anything; he merely stands there drinking coffee or looking out a window. It can get rather dark, but it's resulted in something with greater depth than a standard "Garfield" cartoon. It goes to show that wherever the internet goes, surrealism won't be far behind.