I decided to take a stroll down memory lane for this blog post and rewatched an old video (linked above) by an Australian YouTube celebrity/comedienne named Natalie Tran, better known as "communitychannel."
In her video, Natalie, often affectionately called "Nat," addresses an annoyance that all of us (I would say women in particular) encounter regularly -- people fishing for compliments. As in most of her other videos, she satirizes real life situations by acting them out, usually using herself as the only actress.
The sketch begins with two girls (both portrayed by Nat), one (girl A, let's say) wearing a nice dress and dangling earrings and the other (girl B) dressed in a casual t-shirt. Girl A, in the typical and irritating fashion, whines, "Oh, you look so pretty tonight. I feel so ugly." (Yeah, I know. "Are you serious?") Now, in real life, the situation would've probably played out in reverse. However, Natalie satirizes compliment-seeking by exaggerating the situation and adding this element of irony, which is only magnified by the fact that the two characters are played by the same person.
Of course, girl B then feels obligated to respond with a stiff "oh, no, you look so pretty," thus commencing a string of sickeningly sweet "no, youuuu're pretty"s and half-hearted "no, don't be silly... you're much prettier"s. At this point, I was already laughing aloud. The entire scene definitely seemed familiar.
I feel that part of Nat's comedic appeal is that she lets us identify with the situation by letting us hear the thoughts of the protagonist (so to speak), whose thoughts she says aloud in a voice-over. After all, who among us has not been the victim of an aggressive yet tactless fisher?
On a even deeper level, more importantly, I felt myself examining my own behavior. I'm ashamed to admit that I've been guilty of fishing quite a bit as well. Now, if someone had tried to say that to me in complete seriousness, I might've gotten a bit offended. However, Nat didn't have to directly state this moral to anyone. She got the audience (or me, at least) to consider our own actions simply by suggesting their ridiculousness. Although Nat didn't use too many formal rhetorical devices, I feel that her video is highly persuasive as a satire simply because of that fact; never directly advising her viewers to watch what they say (and get some self-esteem, while they're at it), Nat still got her message across, loud and clear.
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