Laughter, the best medicine, but for marketing?

OK, I admit it. I am old as compared to many of the Internet gurus/wizards/ninjas of today. Trouble is, I can’t change that. I have looked, but there is not an app for that. Because I am a little older, I have reference points that many of the young whipper-snappers of the Internet age will simply shake their heads at, so that their cool eyeglasses will fall off their heads (whether they have lenses or not). I remember a magazine called The Reader’s Digest. I think it still exists, but in large print only ;-). Actually it does still exists in an online form and in a written format but I have no idea who reads it.

What I remember as a kid, though, when leafing through Reader’s Digest (it was actually a big deal to me way back then in the Stone Age) was one section of the magazine called “Laughter, the Best Medicine.” It was just a section of jokes. One-liners, short form jokes and more. It was a place to go and forget about the world. A place to chuckle and, for a youngster like me, it was sometimes a place to get confused because I didn’t get the joke. Interestingly enough, I always felt better after reading that section, because a good laugh is like a tonic or an elixir, and has therapeutic properties.
That’s why it is so funny to watch the Internet age whiz kids try to make each other laugh as if they were the ones that invented the very act itself. Viral videos of stupid human tricks and other things created for the sole purpose of giving people the same escape I sought as a boy.
Now, though, we make it a contest and while the volume of funny stuff has increased a gazillion fold it’s still there to do the same thing. To heal, to make us forget or to make us relate laughter and the feeling it elicits with a product or service.
We are doing the same thing we have always done, but just with more volume and more glitz. Maybe we should all just step back from the manic pace of creating a good vibe and just let it happen at a more real pace. That’s when someone really gets healed. That’s where connections are made.
We need to stop forcing good feelings on people to sell things. It’s not what laughter is really meant to be. It’s the best medicine, not the best marketing tool. If you can sell something along the way, then more power to you, but don’t force the issue. Medicine takes time to work.