Funny Mic

About

Funny Mic refers to a voice-recording technique that intentionally lowers the audio quality of the speaker for comedic purposes, similar to an ear rape effect. The effect is commonly achieved through using a poor quality microphone, such as a webcam microphone, and speaking and blowing loudly directly into it, but can also be achieved by purposefully changing settings to achieve the same result.

Origin

Sometime in early-to-mid 2019, YouTuber jschlatt began using an ear rape mic sound effect as a running gag on his Minecraft livestreams. One such example was uploaded to his YouTube^[1] channel on March 19th, 2019, which received over 1.6 million views, 85,000 likes and 3,000 comments in a year and a half (seen below).

On April 15, 2019, in response to a question on the subreddit /r/jschlatt asking "What mic or thing does jschlatt use that sounds awful," jschlatt replied that it was a "retrofitted Xbox 360 chat headset taped directly to [his] face and mouth area."^[2]

Spread

A compilation of jschlatt using the funny mic was uploaded by YouTuber^[3] aunos on June 28th, 2019 (shown below, left). It received over 750,000 views in a year. On July 20th, YouTuber^[4] SiIvaGunner uploaded a rip for the Minecraft music disc "Stal" that included jschlatt using the funny mic, accumulating more than 520,000 views in a year (shown below, right). jschlatt had previously stated in one of his livestreams that Stal is his least favorite Minecraft music disc.

On December 4th, 2019, YouTuber^[5] Jester Jones posted a tutorial video on how to use the funny mic effect, receiving over 700,000 views, 62,000 likes and 1,600 comments in 10 months (shown below, left). On April 21st, 2020, YouTuber^[6] Luxxy uploaded a video of Twomad using the funny mic during one of his livestreams, receiving over 146,000 views, 5,500 likes and 280 comments in six months (shown below, right).

Related Memes

Hey, Shitass

Hey, Shitass refers to a series of videos and memes centered around a Minecraft player using the nickname "shitass." Originating from a viral TikTok video, the memes gained popularity in late October 2020, primarily in the form of video edits in which players demonstrate their Minecraft skills to players nicknamed "shitass." The intentionally poor quality of voice recording in many of the videos uses the Funny Mic technique.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References