Without a Traceroute

For reasons that are beyond me, the Dutch find this comedy sketch absolutely hysterical. I mean, it’s sort of funny, I guess. I’ve seen this comedian Dunham before, and I even have friends who really enjoy his act. Humor is naturally a subjective thing, and far be it from me to criticize your taste in ventriloquist prop-comics. What’s really weird to me is that the Dutch don’t seem to be big Jeff Dunham fans in general, it’s something about this particular character that they find really uproarious.

I was at a birthday party last night, and somebody asked me, “So do you know ‘Achmed the dead terrorist’?” and when I confessed that I was only familiar with Achmed from the TV commercials advertising his ringtone (we’ll get to those), they turned off the music, loaded up youtube and watched the entire 10-minute Achmed bit. I found it kind of funny on the first viewing; the Dutch kids LOVED it on what was surely a repeat viewing for most, if not all, of them.

The worst part is the catchphrase, “SILENCE! I kill you!” which was “heh”-worthy exactly once, but which Dunham repeats about a half-dozen times in the span of a ten-minute set until it’s like nails on a chalkboard.

Now, lest you think I am overgeneralizing from a small, Achmed-loving sample, I need to tell you that I first became aware of the existence of Achmed from a series of TV commercials inviting viewers to download his catchphrase as a (video?) ringtone for their phone. These commercials air seemingly continuously on Dutch TV, and are probably the most annoying adverts since the Jamba/Jamster “Crazy Frog” mysteriously became wildly popular. For added measure, the commercial impressively works in the catchphrase twice in the space of a 15 second spot.

However, Achmed is also a star of the Dutch intarwebs. When browsing with a Dutch ISP, at least every third site you visit will bring you face to face with a banner ad like this one:

If you want to be annoyed, the ads point here.

Why any sane human being would consent to having the Achmed catchphrase repeated endlessly as the ringtone on their mobile phone is beyond me. Evidently, it’s popular enough in the Netherlands that it’s worth not just creating such a ringtone, but spending a lot of money to promote it as a “gratis” (free) download, which presumably ropes the unfortunate downloader into direct marketing or some sort of paid subscription.

Suffice it to say, I don’t get it. The Achmed bit is kind of funny once, and perhaps interesting as a mildly racist cultural relic of the early 21th century, but nothing more than that. Anyone else want to take a crack at this? Tell me why the Achmed bit is really funny? Or why you love Jeff Dunham? Or psychoanalyze an entire nation, why do the Dutch love Achmed so much?

UPDATE: Less than 24 hours after I made this post, I noticed in my server log that I got a hit from somebody searching for “download achmed videoringtone” on google.nl and finding my page. Wow.