Okay, so I am now officially an intern at CollegeHumor. Not now as I am writing this, but now as if I am continuing my story right where I left off. It’s a literary technique.
Anyways, being an intern at CollegeHumor was both one of the best and worst experience of my life. It was the best because of all the reasons you would think. I’m feeling like a list of things in no particular order, so that is what you are going to get.
- Lunches were comp’d. That meant that I could, and did, eat Chipotle every pretty much every day. Actually, there were a bunch of great places to eat lunch, plus nobody really cared when you took your lunch break. All of us interns who were there that summer got along really well. Many pleasant lunches in the park were had.
- The commute was long. It took me about 2 hours to get there. I had to take a bus, to a subway, to another subway, and then walk a couple of blocks to get from my house to the CollegHumor office. I only went in three days a week though, so it wasn’t too bad. However, when there was a Mets game it meant that the already crowded 7 train became the ‘borderline molest strangers’ train.
- Nobody cared if you got to work on time (within reason). It didn’t matter if you were 20 or 30 minutes late. I was always on time though.
- I came to the realization that CollegeHumor is basically the internet version of America’s Funniest Home Videos. At least the videos section of the site. My responsibility, along with two of the other interns, was to scour the internet for the 10 funniest viral videos of the day. Then, twice a day we would have “video parties” with Jeff and Amir to decide what would make the cut. Amir had/has an incredibly impressive encyclopedic knowledge of every video to ever be featured on the site. If any of us every brought up an old video, he recognized it in an instant. Also, when it comes to viral videos, the key ingredients are people getting hurt, nostalgia, impressive stunts, and brevity. It got to the point where if a video didn’t engage me within the first 5 seconds I wouldn’t give it a second thought.
- All of the people at CollegeHumor are every bit as amazingly cool, smart, and funny as you think they are, assuming that you think that they are those things (which they are).
- Streeter reminds me a lot of my friend Jesse Diasparra.
- One time I got to use Ricky Van Veen’s (Editor-in-Chief/Co-founder) American Express card to buy headphones.
- Patrick Cassels and I started as interns around the same time. I am still in college, struggling to figure out what I want to do with my life, and he is now one of the stars of a show on MTV. Just something to think about. He is awesome and deserves it.
- During my summer there, I met BJ Novak and was in close proximity to David Wain and Mark Zuckerberg.
- There is a small part of the CollegeHumor office where the floor is sectioned off, because apparently it is not supported properly and standing on it would cause you to fall through to the floor below.
- I was on TV in France. Video Editor David Fishel does this thing called Davey’s dance blog where he goes to different places/landmarks and dances in front of them. He asked a bunch of people to be in one that took place on a New York City subway. I was in it. Davey’s Dance Blog was later featured on some French TV show, and one of the clips they used was from that subway dance and I am in it. Hence, I was on TV in France. Proof.
- My favorite thing was the BustedTees brainstorms. The editors and interns would just get together and toss around ideas for new shirts. One of my shirts even got made. I also had the idea for a shirt that would have had Batman and Robin with the caption ‘no homo,’ but they couldn’t use Batman and Robin so it was adapted into this shirt.
I’m tired, so that’s all for now. I bet you are thinking: “Hey Jeremy, you said that it was one of the best and worst experiences of your life, but you only mentioned good things. What about it was bad?” Well, the answer to that question will have to wait just a little bit longer. Thanks for reading.
