Web Video / KRAZAM

KRAZAM is a comedy duo based in Brooklyn, New York, consisting of Shiva Kilaru and Benjamin Burke. Their sporadically-updated YouTube channel consists of sketches combining grotesque, absurdist humor with technological anxiety to produce a pointed satire of the tech industry, modern alienation and corporate life in general.

Their channel provides examples of:

• Absurdism: Absurdist themes recur in many of the sketches ("The Hustle", "Microservices", "Notifications" or "I Have Delivered Value... But At What Cost?"), but by far the most explicit is the GIF with an alternative version of a fragment of their "Notifications" sketch pinned on their Twitter feed; the GIF has Ben’s character cheerfully dismiss a notification reading "EXISTENCE IS MEANINGLESS".
• Achievement Mockery: Gamification of non-gaming spaces is ridiculed for all it’s worth in "Virtual Coachella": after the protagonist’s account is terminated, we see a list of achievements he has managed to earn, most of which relate to being subjected to advertising in one way or another: "Meme God" (consenting to using his personal data for some vaguely-defined data mining, then looking at memes that disparage privacy and promote advertising technology), "DoorDash Superstar" (participating in an interactive advertisement), "Hookup Zone Heartthrob" (being approached by a spambot promoting the product of the Hookup Zone’s sponsor).
• Actor Allusion: "AI Boyfriend" mentions that Ben's Racist Grandpa character used to work at Amazon. This is actually true of Ben himself.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • "Developer Platform Update", a parody of corporate ‘developer relations’ content, has Shiva’s visibly uncomfortable Ross LeFontaine try to talk about his accomplishment of slowing down an API. It’s up to interpretation whether it was genuinely being presented as a good thing and his anxiety was just a personal issue, or whether he was actually being punished (by public shaming) for causing the performance degradation.
  • "Designer's Table" has a number of characters speculate on what Gianni Roberto, the eponymous designer of Picchi, a standing desk mat, is up to, and whether he’d be willing to create a successor to Picchi. At the end, the long-awaited product is delivered to the doorstep of Shiva’s character Sajib, with a note reading "A man who sits for something stands for nothing", and is revealed to be a sack of pretty ordinary-looking soil. Does that mean that Gianni is a Trolling Creator, or is he just as crazy as the rest of them?
  • "Content Moderation" has Ben’s character Tim being flagged as a potential future offender based on a seemingly innocuous social media post about getting mustard on his pants. He spends the rest of the video obsessing over what exactly was wrong with the post, and trying to run away from a smear campaign and ostracism against people covered in mustard. Whether that last one was real or just in his head is not made very clear.
  • The same sketch also raises the question of where the association of mustard with (presumably) far-right extremism ultimately came from. Was the AI just that impossibly good at spotting trends or was it flagging mustard as extremist content spuriously, which led to it being noticed by extremists, then to mustard stains becoming an extremist shibboleth, ultimately making the AI prediction a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?
• Black Comedy: "Notifications" has Ben’s character take Shiva’s character Gary to a bridge and throw him far away. And then disable all notifications about Gary.
• Bland-Name Product: Completely Averted in "Virtual Coachella", which references existing brands and services; this actually got the duo in some legal trouble, from which they got defended by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. For the most part averted in "Content Moderation" as well (which name-drops real media publications like Vox and The New York Times); however, the protagonist is identified as working for ‘FaceGoog’ in 2024.
• Call-Back:
  • In the first MAKRO sketch, the protagonist has a framed Richard Stallman picture just like Gooch Lawrence. "Videochat" also has Shiva’s character looking at pictures of Stallman on his laptop.
  • In "Virtual Coachella", a BallmerCon advertisement is visible in the background, referencing MAKRO.
• Captain Oblivious: Ben’s character in "The Hustle" leads a pretty boring and lonely existence, from which he distracts himself by social media and obsessing over productivity. His obliviousness is probably the only thing preventing him from breaking down in despair over his life.
• Catchphrase: The turn-of-phrase "[take it to the] next level" recurs in a number of otherwise-unrelated sketches: "Developer Platform Update", both MAKRO sketches and "Microservices".
• Comedy Horror: The "Computer Time" series, and the "Paranormal Hardware" sketch.
• Cyberpunk: Downplayed. A number of sketches ("Videochat", "Virtual Coachella", "Content Moderation", "The Hustle", but most visibly "AI Boyfriend") explore themes familiar from cyberpunk works (alienation, corporate overreach, Techno Dystopia), without necessarily falling into all the aesthetic and worldbuilding trappings of the genre. The whole channel could be summarized as "the world as if about to become cyberpunk, except done as comedy-drama instead of a thriller".
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: Particularly visible in "I Have Delivered Value... But At What Cost?"
• Downer Ending: pretty much every sketch end either in this, or in a Gainax Ending.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • When the protagonist of "Virtual Coachella" receives a notification about being matched with a date, he is standing in a queue for a free iPhone.
  • When he later purchases an energy drink by the spambot he matched with, at the bottom of the order form there is a marked checkbox labelled "YES! Make this a recurring purchase every month"
• Funny Background Event: In the first MAKRO sketch, Ben’s eponymous character has a framed picture of Richard Stallman in the background. MAKRO’s whole shtick is basically based on promoting and supporting Microsoft Excel, while Stallman is well-known for being opposed to Microsoft’s office suite and promoting alternatives instead.
• Ineffectual Loner: Alienation is a recurring theme for Ben’s characters, though usually not for lack of trying; it is explicitly mentioned in "Microservices" (where his character speaks of Dying Alone), but also visible in "The Hustle" (where he plays a productivity-obsessed social media addict), the second MAKRO sketch (where he shows some mostly empty birthday party attendance spreadsheets) and "Content Moderation" (where he tries to strike up a casual conversation with remote workers to dead silence). The grandpa in "AI Boyfriend" also lives alone, and though he seems to be still on speaking terms with his granddaughter, their relationship is rapidly deteriorating.
• The Metaverse: "Virtual Coachella" presents a Deconstructive Parody version of virtual reality, full of underwhelming graphics, omnipresent sponsorships and advertising, corporate surveillance, unfunny memes, unreadably long terms of service, spambots pretending to be hot girls and excessively enforced, Kafkaesque moderation policies.
• Mind Screw: Though many sketches are pretty straightforward satire, some of them are fairly abstract and hard to interpret, balancing on the line between Surreal Horror or Surreal Humor (depending on your disposition); particularly "Notifications", "Senior Engineer" and the "Computer Time" series.
• Mood Dissonance: "The Hustle" portrays a pretty boring life of the main character with upbeat, rhythmic drums, dynamic cuts and fragmentary, stream-of-consciousness narration.
• Money, Dear Boy: In-universe in "Developer Platform Update": though he may appear cheerful on-screen, Ben’s character Orange DeLonge is not particularly happy to be shooting glorified corporate commercials, but he is at least satisfied with the pay.
• Mundane Made Awesome:
  • "The Hustle", a Deconstructive Parody of productivity culture, has the protagonist narrate his typical day in an excited, self-satisfied tone, despite apparently not accomplishing anything of substance.
  • "Designer's Table", a mini-mockumentary about a plastic standing mat (and also the mat’s designer and successor), talks about its subject as if it’s a work of high art.
• New Media Are Evil/Old Media Are Evil: One way of reading "Content Moderation" is that it doesn’t really make sense to pit old(-ish) news media against social media, as both reinforce each other’s biases and prejudices resulting in a Vicious Cycle of extremism that doesn’t care how many lives it ruins.
• No Name Given: Surprisingly often averted: in most sketches, at least the protagonist’s name is revealed, if only via a Freeze-Frame Bonus. However, in "Virtual Coachella", the protagonist is known only as "user #290066", and in sketches like "The Hustle" or "Microservices", the protagonist’s name is not revealed at all.
• Racist Grandpa: Parodied in "AI Boyfriend", where Ben's character is depicted as prejudiced against… an artificial intelligence dating his granddaughter.
• Rube Goldberg Device: "Microservices" gives us an IT version of one, satirizing the byzantine complexity of modern technology stacks.
• Shrinking Violet: Ross LeFontaine in "Developer Platform Update" is extremely shy, to the point of hiding his head behind a monstera plant. He doesn’t even bother correcting the host when the latter mispronounces his name as "Ross Elephant".
• Slice of Life: "The Hustle" is essentially a Deconstructive Parody.
• Smart People Wear Glasses: Parodied in "Designer's Table", where the furniture critic Sajib wears glass frames without any spectacles.
• Social Media Is Bad: Downplayed in "The Hustle", where it serves to blind the main character to his loneliness. More pronounced in "Posting Online", where the spread of social-media extremism drives Seattle to bankruptcy. Also visible in "Content Moderation".
• Sore Loser: The second MAKRO sketch has the protagonist (a parody of competititve gaming streamers), half-heartedly congratulate V1K4S, his opponent from the Ballmercon tournament, and then indirectly blame jet lag, flu, cramps, not having eaten, emotional disturbance from reading a news article, and later even Microsoft for his failure; anything to avoid admitting he failed at keeping up his skills at a competitive level.
• Special Guest: "AI Boyfriend" stars Alexis Gay as the granddaughter Alice, and Nikhil Krishnan (who previously appeared as the product manager in "Microservices", and cameo'd in "IETF Celebrates the Standards") as the eponymous boyfriend.
• Spiritual Antithesis: "Content Moderation" plays on similar themes as "Posting Online", but where the latter satirized what looks like grassroots, vaguely right-wing libertarian populist "MAGA" culture, "Content Moderation" focuses on institutional liberal cancel culture that constantly looks for dog whistles and targets to vilify, and if one is not found, makes one up from among their own ranks.
• Stepford Smiler: Quite a few of them: Gooch Lawrence from the "Computer Time" series, Orange DeLonge from "Developer Platform Update". The protagonist of "The Hustle" can be read as this, The Pollyanna, or Captain Oblivious.
• Techno Dystopia: Played for Laughs for the most part in "Virtual Coachella"; "Content Moderation" presents a more straightforward example.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Implied in the ending of "Content Moderation", in which the protagonist, now branded a pariah, looks at a distance with a smirk and a Kubrick Stare.
• What Were They Selling Again?: "We Made A Commercial" is a borderline Dada Ad: a string of logically disconnected feel-good slogans culimnating in a reveal of the advertised brand: Salesforce. With no explanation of what they actually do. Bonus points for the vaguely ominous slogan of "live forever".