Perch420 said:
Intelligence is skill of thought. The video requires a high skill of thought to comprehend. Most people don't have a high skill of thought, so they didn't comprehend it.
let's look at the premises of your experiment.
(1) the video requires advanced skill to understand
it would be hard to correlate this video with IQ within minutes, but i think we can analyze it in terms of complexity well enough. from the perspective of gardner's multiple intelligences:
intrapersonal -
pictures/video of people in pain/sad/upset, but the video does not encourage us to relate with them
interpersonal -
insulting language directed at political groups - again, though, there is not much depth encouraged
linguistic -
heavy use of obscenity, "foreign"/ borat-style grammar. one needs to pick up on this not being normal language.
logical/mathematical -
perhaps logic, in understanding the humor (see below)
naturalistic -
no
visual/spatial -
not much, the graphics are pretty simplistic
bodily/kinesthetic -
a dancer every once in a while, but the dancing doesn't actually match the music or pertain much to the point, besides adding to the sense of incongruity
musical -
looped electronic background, not much complexity there
the skill required to understand the video as a parody seems almost purely rooted in seeing the disconnect between the very random, not particularly advanced visual aspects and the intentionally unskilled language, versus the serious pictures of people being upset and the interpersonal insults in the language. what one has to pick up on is the difference in qualities. incidentally, that's a very Ti/Fi sort of comparison - checking things for internal consistency.
regardless, that's not what you asked in the thread - not do you understand the humor in this video?, but do you find this funny?
so let's go to a second premise:
(2) finding the video funny relies on understanding it
let's face it, it's not like you have to do much to reach a conclusion that it's funny. you sit on your butt and notice that there are some incongruities, which strike you as odd, which make you laugh. you don't really even have to understand it to find it funny. you said yourself that it didn't take very long for you to pick up on it being a parody. in fact, i imagine that after a certain point, the more of it you do understand, the less you would find funny, because it would be
too personally significant.
and a third premise:
(3) the people in this thread didn't understand and/or enjoy this video because they are unintelligent
so this video is rooted in a lot of things that are culturally obscure - the kebab meme - or elements that rely on you discounting their seriousness to understand the humor. the humor is based on
not interpreting things. not taking them seriously, instead of diving into them. basically you either have to be familiar with the cultural references, or automatically assume you're supposed to discount the whole thing to find it funny. it doesn't really require much skill at all, beyond either remembering/recognizing familiar aspects or realizing that you're not supposed to take it seriously (which should be pretty clear from the randomness) - in which case a lot of people are going to stop and wonder why they even bother to watch this, especially because a lot of the elements are really just unpleasant. personally, i didn't bother watching it all the way through the first time because the graphics are painful and the music is obnoxious, and there really doesn't seem to be a
point to the video, besides mockery. i've watched it quite a few times since... find it kind of amusing, but remove kebab is so much funnier.
conclusion:
while i do agree with you that there will tend to be an increased facility in
understanding humor with greater intelligence, that is no guarantee of someone actually
enjoying the humor. even with understanding the humor, i tend to doubt that there will be any correlation with this particular video because it is so reliant on finding random things inherently humorous, and so simplistic in many aspects as to be unappealing. plus, the people on this forum are probably so closely matched in terms of general intelligence, in the big scope of things, that there will be little discernible difference in skill that cannot be explained by personal preference.
in other words, after isolating all these other variables, i think what you've really tested for is whether others' sense of humor matches up with your own.