I read the Human Guinea Pig entries, and while amusing, I find myself laughing at how inept and useless she comes to find she is at practically everything she attempts. Sure, I get it, self-deprecation, ha ha, look at me, I’m an idiot. Sadly, adolescents often do this as an attention-seeking measure. Ms. Yoffe must have very low self esteem. While this passes as comedy, I’m not sure it’s really funny. It’s like laughing at the retarded kid.

Fail.

You must not be a very big fan of Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs either. Adolescents do stupid crap for attention. Folks like Rowe and Yoffe do their thing out of the utmost respect for the people who do it for a living---they both celebrate the professionals in their work.

Actually, there is a very big difference between Mike Rowe and Poor Emily. Mike actually does get the job done. He's never outright clumsy, klutzy or tries to look foolish doing a job he's not good at. He makes great throwup faces. OTOH, the whole point of Emily's schtick is to show you how clumsy, klutzy and foolish she looks and feels doing jobs she's not good at. You laugh with Mike, you laugh at Emily. That's a big difference.

DvB

OK, I'll grant that. But part of it is the angle. Emily revels in every screwup, while Mike tends to show the screwups as part of a greater narrative in which the job gets done, usually by the trained professionals, or after an excuse is created to show producer Dave Barsky in a pratfall. But both vehicles are basically "let's give a shout-out to the professionals who do this job every day."

I won't contest your assertion, however, that indeed we laugh with Mike and at Emily. But fundamentally they're more similar than different---look at the last couple paragraphs of this article, in which Emily feels no small bit of pride at the beauty of a baseball field before the players run onto it.