Lexi's Favorite POV: Trying to Fall Asleep

This POV video is a favorite of mine because it's hilarious, and it's a good example of a video that is slightly different than the others.  Mechanically, it is almost identical to the first POV we discussed, and all the others as well. But there are a few rhetorical differences.

I think this video was made in an attempt to expand the audience base beyond just college students. Naturally, it’s main audience will still be that group, but by portraying a situation like not being able to fall asleep that literally happens to everyone at some point, I think the creators were trying to reach out to a larger audience. They use really simple situations, such as the guy stubbing his toe in the dark and then running away from the scary kitchen, and they are funny for the simple fact that we’ve all done that before. Also, the fact that this video takes place in the family home with the guy’s parents as opposed to a dorm room or crappy apartment suggests that they are trying to reach a specifically high school aged audience instead of just college students.

To make this effective, the creators also had to limit their assumption of what the audience would know. If their goal was to reach high school aged kids kids, they had to leave out references to, say, a professor or a frat party. The situations and references in the video are all vague and nonspecific, so that almost any person could watch this video and understand it, although the crude humor is definitely leading it towards a much younger (and probably mostly male) audience.