A Yawn is Contagious?

I beg to challenge the old dictum that a yawn is contagious, or at the very least, add to it. A laugh! A laugh is a contagious thing. "viral", you might say.

(Makes you smile, right? If not, you just don't have enough fun.)

I was sitting backstage again tonight, awaiting my turn to act. Rather blankly, I stared across the dark black backstage area, highlighted by the soft blue glows of the assistant stage managers' laptops and a faint warmth seeping in from onstage. One of the assistant stage managers was apparently watching something extremely hilarious. He was silently cackling in his chair, hunched over and heaving with muffled laughs. Wrenching up, he wore a wide, snickering grin across his face, and I must say his laugh was absolutely contagious. Just to see him naturally laughing so heartily at something left in me the desire to laugh, too! Not at him or at the thought of what thing he might be watching, but simply laughing for the sake of it! For the sake of working out my guts with a good (but silent) laugh.

And then I made the connection with this notion to the new trend in "viral" ads! They're supposed to infect their audiences, catching on like a virus and spreading their influence far and wide! Laughing is a viral element as well! Imagine: if a ranting teenager decrying the media's treatment of Britney Spears can entice literally millions of people to take notice, imagine that many people grouped together when one person just starts howling with laughter! It's gonna catch on. I'm not seeing that we should get a couple million people together to have a good laugh, although that sounds like a great thing to me; I'm just noticing how laughter could potentially be really contagious tactic for future viral ads.