Jeff Rubin Rules a Mighty Comedy Empire, Dressed as a Swearing Frog A comedy article
by John Hargrave 128,123 71 03/09/2010 12:08 PM 1373 views
Those of us in the Web comedy business know the rags-to-riches story behind CollegeHumor.com: two buddies created a humor site targeted to college students, populated it every day with fresh content and links, built a massive following, and eventually sold to a huge media company (IAC/InterActiveCorp) for an even huger sum ($20 million, according to some media reports).
What you may not know is the guy who was there almost since the beginning, Employee #1 after the founders themselves. The guy who now manages this massive comedy site: Mr. Jeff Rubin.
"It was good luck and timing," Jeff recounts. "At Penn State, I wrote for the campus humor magazine, Phroth. But after I graduated, I was working a temp job at the corporate headquarters for Bed Bath and Beyond. Not exactly funny." He found a posting on Craigslist for an internship at CollegeHumor, and was the first outside employee to join the fledgling site.
"For the first four years, my main job was captioning pictures. People would send in wacky pictures, and I'd write captions. Again and again. It was like joke weightlifting. I did so many pictures that I can't even remember most of them anymore. Sometimes I'll read an old caption and laugh, because it appeals directly to what I find funny, since I wrote it. And I'll say, 'Good one, Jeff.'"
Having paid his comedy dues, Jeff is now Executive Editor of CollegeHumor.com, and oversees the writing, design, and user experience of one of the Web's top humor sites. He also writes and stars in many of CollegeHumor's original video shorts, such as this parody of Christian Bale's on-set freakout.
Jeff's most visible role is host and creator of CollegeHumor's videogame talk show, Bleep Bloop, a kind of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for videogames. "Gaming is very nerdy, but it's also a very social activity," says Jeff, a self-professed gaming geek. "I wanted to take that experience of screwing around with your friends while playing videogames, and make a show out of it." The crew usually invites a comedian to sit in with them as they play a new game and riff one-liners. "Sometimes the hardcore gamers get mad that it's not a review," he says. "We just like having fun with the game, whether or not we actually like it."
It's that kind of "having fun" that makes you wonder how the hell any work ever gets done at the CollegeHumor offices. "There's a high crossover between screwing around and working," Jeff admits. "But a lot of our most successful ideas come about that way. So everyone works very hard at screwing around." But the screwing around often produces brilliant results, like this parody of the Mario videogame series:
Jeff attributes the team's cross-media savvy as the key to producing so much good content. "Everyone here is a writer/actor/producer. Everyone knows how to use Photoshop, has some video editing capability, and knows how to shoot things. It's really a dream job for me in that respect."
If only his parents saw it the same way. "My mom keeps telling me I should be a lawyer. And I say, 'Oh, so I guess hosting a videogame talk show on the Internet isn't good enough for you!'"
One of Jeff's hallmark columns on CollegeHumor, in fact, is "Parents Just Don't Understand," where users send in their parents' most computer-unsavvy anecdotes. Jeff offers one of his own: "So my Dad just learned how to send text messages. And one day I get a voicemail from my mother. She says, 'Jeff, this is your mother. Text your Dad and tell him to call me.'" He pauses to let this sink in. "There are so many things wrong with this request that I don't know where to begin, so I just do as she asks.
"I send him a text message saying, 'Dad, this is Jeff, Mom asked ME to text YOU to call HER.' I figured that was as simple as I could make it. And about fifteen minutes later, I got a text message back from my Dad. It just said: HELLO."
It's a funny story about the cluelessness of parents, but as the senior staff of CollegeHumor moves ever farther away from college, one wonders how much longer they can keep it real with the college kids. "We get that question a lot," Jeff says, "but I think 'CollegeHumor' is more of a mindset. It's experimental comedy. If you look at the history of comedy, college students are always into the new, funny thing first: Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons, Conan O'Brien. As long as we keep trying new things, college students will always love good comedy."
That they will. Especially when it's being delivered by an angry, swearing frog.
Jeff is a finalist in our Funniest Person on the Web contest. Click here to vote!
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