Are "how to boil water" video clips joke or serious?
When I searched youtube, I was surprised how many results there were for "how to boil water."
One of my friends says they seem like jokes.
But I watched some, I noticed, in some of the videos, the people explaining how to boil water seemed serious.

My question is how I should react to them.
It may be a cultural difference.

Question

Are "how to boil water" video clips joke or serious?
When I searched youtube, I was surprised how many results there were for "how to boil water."
One of my friends says they seem like jokes.
But I watched some, I noticed, in some of the videos, the people explaining how to boil water seemed serious.

My question is how I should react to them.
It may be a cultural difference.

Answer

So this may be something unique to English speakers, but there's a type of humor called "sarcasm," where you deliberately say the opposite thing of what you mean, but your body language shows what you really mean.

For example:

Betty: "How do you feel about the new boss?"
Joanna [crosses arms, rolls eyes]: "She's great!"

What Joanna means here is that the boss is not great. This is a variant of that kind of humor: you make a video about something so obvious, and that itself is the joke. For example,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_j5S38m3wY

Almost every sentence of this video is sarcastic - the viewer show know everything in this video already, and they go overboard with the details as a joke. Hope this helps!
("A sink in a bathroom is like a sink in the morgue. Except it's in the kitchen." LOL oh my god that made me laugh really hard)

Answers · 2

Still haven’t found your answers?

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn a language from the comfort of your own home. Browse our selection of experienced language tutors and enroll in your first lesson now!