Bleh, Wednesday. It’s like the weekday equivalent of this terrible date I once went on with a guy who said he “took a year off to find himself in Utah,” which my friend, Google, later told me meant he was in prison for setting fire to an empty school bus.
But fear not, midweek moaners, because I have just the thing to cheer you up and that thing is not a thing at all—ha, tricked you!—but a website called WhoHaha. A self-proclaimed “place for users to spend hours laughing until they pee,” WhoHaha is the weeks-old, digital brainchild of cofounder/actress Elizabeth Banks, who turned a skeptical eye toward all the LOLs the Internet had to offer and found them seriously lacking the female funny.
“Our job at WhoHaha is to find the world’s funniest women and deliver them to you everywhere,” Banks explained in the YouTube promo for the site. The (what else?) hilarious video features Banks in a knee-length, floral dress, looking every inch the modern-day Lucille Ball. Except Banks’ version of Ball is as a digital media feminist icon who does deadpan comedy like no other, directs mega-million movie franchises like a boss and also happened to play Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games. (“May the chocolate candy conveyer belt be ever in your favor.”)
Banks said she draws inspiration from comediennes of times past and even credits them with helping her imagine the site. “I think about when I was young and sneaking up late to watch ‘Saturday Night Live’ on Saturday nights or ‘The Carol Burnett Show’ or ‘Murphy Brown,'” she told AdAge in an interview last month. “I had to seek out and find role models for myself, funny, charming women. And now, it’s everywhere. I just want to curate it and make it easier for those young girls looking for role models.”
It makes sense Banks would see WhoHaha as an online home for the unabashedly female brand of comedy brought into the Hollywood spotlight by movies like Kristen Wiig and Amy Mumolo’s Bridesmaids or Amy Schumer’s Trainwreck, or by shows like Mindy Kaling’s The Mindy Show, Chelsea Handler’s Chelsea Lately and Lena Dunham’s Girls. Banks’ body of work fits squarely within this comedic compendium. No limits, no apologies.
And that brings us back to the aptly named, WhoHaha. The content on the site is kind of like if an arts & crafts Pinterest board had a baby with a Drake meme: at once weird, absurd, pointed, smart and effortlessly hilarious. Some WhoHaha videos, as Banks explained to Adage, are curated from major networks like Comedy Central but the majority of the short-form content features up-and-coming YouTubers and comedy writers suddenly given a huge platform to show the world what they can do. Observe such gems as “If Dance Moms Starred Dogs” or “1 Mom + 5 Honest Hairstyles.”
Adorable puppies and lack of motivation to do my hair in the morning? Yep, WhoHaha totally gets me. But with a site created by and for badass ladies, I wouldn’t expect anything less. And neither would Reese Witherspoon, who in a tweet sent Monday, declared she’s a WhoHaha fan:
I am loving your new site, @ElizabethBanks!! You're always cracking me up, & @whohahadotcom does not disappoint! 💖👯 pic.twitter.com/fmAt96B3jn
— Reese Witherspoon (@ReeseW) May 9, 2016
Now excuse me while I discover which pair of over-plucked eyebrows I am and watch a video about a hair-washing robot because it’s Wednesday and I who what I want. (Get it? Instead of “do” it’s “who” like the website? Oh, never mind …)
[MELISSA MARNI is a Southern California-based writer and the founder of little word studio. You can follow her musings on Instagram here.]
