Make Carousels Funny Again

Psst. Want to write funny carousels?

Let me help you by breaking down an article I wrote on Medium which broke down a Part 2 of my funny carousel series (which broke down Part 1).

We are so many levels deep, I'm half expecting a lawsuit from Christopher Nolan for ripping off the plot to Inception.

In this slideshow on being funny, I examine my previous post on being funny. Let’s get meta.

Slides 1–3

I have a mascot (lazily borrowed from a childhood TV show I loved). He appeared in one of my carousels, and now I can’t get rid of him.

Slides 4–6

We begin with a visual pun and a cat picture. Then we follow with another cat picture and a story about a hamster. Are you sensing a theme here? Animals are funny, but not all animals (Rocky Mountain Elk, for example, are notoriously serious).

Slides 7–9

OK, so you probably have to be British to find this one funny. Chris Tarrant (not Tangent) was the host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and other shows. The fact remains that surprising your readers with a huge face is usually hilarious. Play with their expectation of scale.

Slides 10–12

Keeping text consistent (placement, size, colour, font) is crucial to make the reading experience easier. The odd SURPRISE can be funny, but we can’t rely too much on visual gimmicks, so it’s best to return to the expected size pretty soon.

Slides 13–15

The pace of your jokes and story is another way to take control away from the reader. Just don’t make it so boring or frustrating that they actually stop reading!

Slides 16–18

Using a callback so soon is hard to do in audible or written comedy. But in the horizontal slideshow format, readers expect 100% new images and words. They are so focused on swiping from right to left and getting to the ‘point’, it’s easy to ambush them with an early callback.

Slides 19–21

Slide 19 is particularly dastardly. It’s a still image from a funny reaction GIF, which requires the reader to create the animation in their mind. When the reader does the work, the payoff is twice as good. Another thing I like to do is hide jokes in the footer for the more careful readers. I was disappointed only one of my 57 comments on this post was ‘Operation Pineapple’.

Slides 22–24

Using combinations is another winning method. Slide 22 is a mashup of a meme and a quote. These are recognisable formats that readers appreciate trying to decode. As mentioned, straight-up jokes usually bomb.

Slides 25–27

Yes, it is infantile, but fart jokes, butts, and toilet humour will always be funny (to me). Using it ‘tongue in cheek’ (tongue in butt?) works well on LinkedIn. It’s such a stuffy B2B platform that occasional childishness offers a beautiful escape from ‘we are delighted to announce our announcement’.

Finally, always remember, that the goal of a funny post on LinkedIn is not to get likes and shares, but to deliver value, earn trust, and win business!

Maybe these stuffy office types are wearing me down…

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Thanks for reading. See you next month.

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