Disagreements are Fun

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[[div class="blockquote"]]
At approximately 19:09 on 7/27/2025, Site-19 received a frequency of 2.4 GHz originating from an unknown source. After obtaining approval from the site director, the site’s Technical Research Department accessed the frequency through a standard Foundation Terminal which had been subject to a factory reset. Upon interpretation of the signal, footage from [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-8412 SCP-8412-1] was recovered, despite the loss of power to the Foundation’s embedded audiovisual device. The footage did not appear to be from the device, however, and has been determined to be broadcasted from a third party. The research team assigned to SCP-8412 was quickly called to the scene. Analysis is ongoing.
[[/div]]

A portly, rough looking man sat at the north chair in the middle of a white room. He looked into the camera. “Hello! My name is George Actinokis! And today, I’ll be debating eight people who think that beating your best friend to death with a hammer is not okay!”

A man wearing a three-piece suit stood right behind the camera. If anyone was capable of looking at his face, they might be greeted with a frown. Looking at the doughy man mouth off and mumble nonsense in the middle of the room, he clung on to a hope that he had retained his good eye for television. Although if his wit was sharp as his creased suit and loose tie, that hope was a vain one.

The past few years had not been kind to his show, and it didn’t look like it was going to get any better. Sure, he hadn’t been at number one since ‘07, but he could live with that, competitive market and all. Number two and three would be just fine. But it seemed he underestimated just how competitive it could get.

Now he was stuck behind that [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-993 stupid clown show] and “The Real Housewives of Three Portlands”. Seriously? Who even watches “The Real Housewives” anymore?

A man in all grey walked up to the table that George was seated at. He looked at the camera and introduced himself.

“My name is Cole Chang, and my cousin was beaten to death with a hammer.”

He sat down, and proceeded to interrogate George on his views, who got really defensive really quick.

Hence, the reason why he even entertained the idea of filming in this blinding white void in the first place. At first he wanted nothing to do with it, but his agent wouldn’t stop insisting on the deal. “This is a once in-a-lifetime opportunity!”, he said.

“This should boost our ratings back to at //least// number eleven.”

“The execs barely greenlit your next season, they need something fresh and new!”

“Times are changing, and you gotta keep up.”

The faceless man gave a sigh of disapproval. His agent was right about one thing. Times were changing. For too long, he thought that his simple formula was the golden goose. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. So why change?

Although the world would always have a market for laughs, it was becoming a less funny place. As people looked to their screens for more and more of their information needs, not just entertainment, they got a better look at the pretty sorry state of it all. Laughy didn't exactly get it at first. Wars, poverty, recession, random acts of violence- in any normal world, these would be //excellent// comedy!

Unfortunately, the talking heads on those screens didn’t seem interested in capitalizing on that, or even bringing up news of the less macabre. Outrage was the order of the day, and it looks like they had gotten quite worked up over everything that's been going on. Perhaps they needed to work on their improv.

George, indignant on the attacks on his philosophy, retorted: “Again, I’m very //sorry// about what happened to your cousin, but you have to understand that morality is //relative//-”

Now all you hear is about the bombing in whatsitsname, the shooting in wherevertown, or the scandal about how Joe Schmo likes to run over orphans with an oil tanker. And of course, everyone is at each other’s throats over it all.

The man had hoped this very civil discourse would stay between those who made a habit out of arguing such things, but it seems like him and his program had caught a couple strays in the crossfire. Nobody had time for his silly little show, and besides, haven’t you heard about what Andy Angryman said about Sally Sadwoman? There are more important things going on right now!

And maybe they were right. The simple euphoria of somebody’s epidermis splitting open to reveal a ridiculous volume of tomato juice with himself surfing right on out was old news, an artifact from a simpler time. It wasn’t real, it wasn’t //relatable// enough for this new audience.

Cole attempted to approach his argument from a more understandable place. “Just because your best friend keeps drinking orange juice out of the carton doesn’t mean-”

George cut him off. “I never said it was about the orange juice, you keep pivoting to this moral high ground argument-”

People want to be known, they want their struggles heard, and apparently simple escapism wasn’t good enough anymore.

They want the talking head on the screen to be talking to //them//, to agree with them, or maybe even to disagree with them, even if only so that they could wax moral righteousness and replicate the disagreement with some poor soul. And if that was taken care of, then maybe a little laugh could be snuck in there.

One of the grey figures hunched over, and began to vomit out a cascade of red, signaling their disapproval of the current debate. This was expected. What was a little less expected, however, was an entire bagpipe falling out of their mouth.

He had heard of these guys before, and had never been a fan of their stuff. All this arguing and yelling and this and that, who needs any more of it? Like it or not, however, this was the new “thing”. The people need their experiences reflected in the media they watch. They want whatever the “bad thing” is to be defeated and ridiculed in front of their eyes. And Laughy McLaugherson was going to be just the talking head to give it to them.

More like a talking torso.

Six out of the eight grey figures were now displaying red in some capacity, but curiously enough, it was with a Scottish flair. One was juggling red golf balls, the other was helping itself to some red spotted dick. That one was British, but it was close enough.

Either which way, it was time for Cole to step down, and for another faceless grey entity to continue the debate. The next one introduced itself as Cassandra, and continued on.

“How would you feel if I beat //you// to death with a hammer?”

Despite all of this, McLaugherson still couldn’t shake the feeling of something being off. Yes, he was still in charge of the scripting, casting, and direction of the episode, (as per contract), but he still didn’t feel like this episode was really //his//. It wasn’t something that in his heart of hearts, he could say that he was truly proud of.

The people might eat stuff like this up, but it wasn’t what he wanted to give to the world. His catchphrase was “Laugh is Fun”, after all, not “Frustration is Fun”. All the same, he made his bed, and now he had to lie in it.

Cassandra tried her best, but George remained stalwart in his beliefs. A few faceless grey debates later, and he was no closer to capitulation than when they began. The room did get more Scottish though, not that anyone seemed to notice. None of the grey, faceless debators batted an eye when George suddenly donned a kilt and a beret.

George began to tire eventually, since even he knew that his bandwagoning and cherry-picked arguments were soon becoming old hat. This might've explained why he did what he did when it all came full circle, and Cole came back around.

“George, even by your own admitted moral compass, you agree that beating your best friend to death with a hammer is simply evil. There’s no two ways about it. And yet you’ve continued to retain this cognitive dissonance-”

George's reply was as simple as it was stupid.

“No.”

“Excuse me?” For the first time in the debate, Cole was caught off guard.

“I think you’re projecting.”

“Why-”

“Womp womp.”

Cole shook with anger, but soon cooled down. It wasn’t the first time this sort of thing happened here. He simply scooted his chair a bit away from the table, and waited for exactly five seconds.

George exploded in a fantastic show of blood and guts, showering the table with bits of his small intestine with a colossal downpour of blood. Cole was hit with a bit of the runoff despite his best attempts, and his teammates in the back were sprinkled as well.

Usually this sort of thing might’ve made McLaugherson crack a smile, but he simply took a step back and checked the time. It looks like he forgot to put a clause against exploding people. This was bad. He wasn’t supposed to explode for at least the next ten minutes. He sighed, and put his arm back down. Looks like this was gonna be a short pilot. He turned around and went to walk into the wall behind him.

“Are you sure about this?", his cameraman inquired.

McLaugherson responded dismissively. “It’s fine Trey, just keep filming.”

As Cole prepared to get up and walk back with the debates’ end, he suddenly stopped, feeling an acute pain in his stomach. As he bent down to clutch it, he suddenly felt the skin in his lower intestine bubble and wave, like water.

Soon, his stomach appeared to expand rapidly, soon becoming twice the size of his head. Its growth quickly slowed to a crawl, almost as if it was struggling against something. That would be the elasticity of his skin, which was at a breaking point. It finally burst, sending a veritable stream of haggis cascading towards the other end of the table. It was quickly engulfed, along with what used to be George’s chair until it finally stopped at the opposite wall.

The giant pile of haggis stayed still for a while, until a spot somewhere around the middle began to stir.

Slowly yet surely, this disruption followed along the horizontal width of the haggis pile until it came out the side entirely. A man in a hastily buttoned two-piece suit and loose tie slowly emerged, miraculously entirely unsoiled by the giant pile of sheep organs.

He left behind a person-shaped hole in the pile, minus the head, which was cut off by the camera, of course.

“Well, well, well folks, there’s logical fallacies, and then there’s //logical fallacies// if you know what I mean! In the age of televisions and telemarketing and telephones and telescreens, people can now find each other from all over the world, which means they’re bound to get at each other a little! But just as we find anger and indignation at our words sometimes, there is also a bit of laugh to find there as well! I hope you enjoyed the discussion! I hope you enjoyed the laugh. Come laugh with us! And remember: LAUGH. IS. F-”

Cole coughed a bit, a giant tear still present across the length of his torso. It wasn’t loud enough to be audible on the mic, but loud enough for Laughy McLaugherson to hear, and derail his line of thought.

“Excuse me. LAUGH. IS-”

Cole coughed a bit louder, and more purposefully. McLaugherson turned his body a sharp 90 degrees to the left to face the faceless grey nuisance, and gave him some very choice words.

“Hey pal, what's the problem? You got an allergy or something? Didn't think so. Quit doing that, unless you wanna reshoot this entire episode. You know how hard it was to smuggle a DVD into a prison?”

In the blink of an eye, the entire mess of the haggis pile, George’s remains, and all the red that was spread around by the grey masked men all vanished. McLaugherson was confused and a little frustrated. Not that he was unfamiliar with this particular property of the room, but that they had done it so early. He soon felt himself shaking with anger. Now they were definitely going to have to reshoot. Before he could say anything else, Cole finally decided to speak up.

“Yeah, sorry. I just don’t really vibe with your whole deal.”

“Pardon?”

“Yeah, sorry, I mean that I kinda disagree. I mean, I’m allowed to. Free country and all that.”

“You disagree with me? On what?”

“Just- the whole sorta strategy you have going on here, I don’t like it.”

“What-”

“You’re free to debate me on it, if you disagree. Come find out, smart guy.”

McLaugherson’s initial immediate reaction was to storm off stage and take five before reshooting the episode they just ruined, but a peculiar emotion flooded his body and made him plant his feet where he stood.

He felt something that was quite unbecoming of him, something that was the antithesis of his slogan, of his entire brand- rage. In fact, he really wanted to hear this guy out. What //didn't// he vibe with, exactly? If this asshole's so smart, then surely he'd be able to spit it out!

McLaugherson presumably smirked, suppressing his homicidal rage, taking a seat at the north end of the table. He put one arm on the table, feigning hospitality, and looked at the grey void of a face that Cole had. Cole looked at his right back, which //did// surprise McLaugherson, although he just barely managed to conceal it.

“So Cole, what about my strategy don’t you like? To be honest, I don’t even know if I have-”

“I don’t like that you’re trying to present this veneer of intellectualism to mask your shoddy programming.”

“What? I can assure you, I am doing no such-”

“Sure you are. You’ve noticed that your series isn’t doing so well, mostly because you reuse the same shock humor and bizarre imagery that did so well due to being controversial in the 80’s and 90’s on television. But with the popularization of the internet, people don’t care, it's old news. They’ve seen videos with the same amount of gore and vitriol yesterday."

Cole cleared his throat.

"You can only throw the stick so many times before the dog realizes you’re just gonna throw it again. And instead of getting new jokes, or leaving off on a high note, you’ve put a bandaid on the bleeding artery that is the sorry state of your writing by just wrapping it up in current events-”

“First of all,” McLaugherson was resisting the urge to pummel Cole’s face into pulp. “my show is //far// more nuanced and multifaceted than you give it credit for. The jokes aren’t just shock humor, and //second// of all-”

“That might be true, to some extent,” Cole interrupted, “but it wasn’t anything new or ground breaking than the media that was coming out of the time. It wasn’t any deeper than “Taxi Driver”, or “Fight Club”, so you can’t say it rose to prominence by that alone. Surely you aren’t so naive, or blind as to completely dissuade the notion that the shock of a guy growing eighteen heads, or a flesh homunculus Margret Thatcher-thing assaulting a random lady draws viewers in. That’s what they come for, that’s what separates it from the rest-

“I never said that I didn’t believe that, you just-”

“And the problem that I have with your programming as of late, besides the staleness of it all, is that you’re trying to be something you’re not. You’re wrapping up your programmings with the dressings of intellectual discussion, but you’re not actually-

McLaugherson dropped any veneer of a respectful discussion, and waved both his arms around indignantly. He raised his voice in passionate defense of his craft. “I’m not trying to be smart! I never said I was trying to be National Geographic or something, all I want to do, all I’ve ever wanted to do was to spread lau-”

Cole seemed to run out of patience for being interrupted, and took on a more terse tone.

“You’re trying to become this weird, Looney Tunes version of 60 minutes or TLC, providing the illusion of education to excuse the terrible writing. But the thing is-

“No one SAID anything about educating-”

“Your pranks take all the air out of what used to be an interesting discussion-”

The two figures argued and shouted and cut each other off for the better part of eight minutes, with the discussion tossing and turning into all sorts of avenues that had nothing to do with “Laugh is Fun”. These side tangents included politics, climate change, sexism in the entertainment industry, and of course whether it's pronounced ████ or ████. These points were never really integrated back into the initial topic of discussion and only served as more reasons for the two to hate each other more.

Eventually they did get back to the initial point, which soon became the final nail in the coffin for the debate.

“Your show stopped being funny back in season 26, and you need to stop taking it out on everyone else-”

McLaugherson knew he didn’t just insult “Surgeries are Fun”. He knew he didn’t have the gall to make such an ignorant, pig-headed statement-

“Listen here, you FUCKING neanderthal-”

He regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth. Oh no. Oh nono. He wasn’t allowed to say that. He was contractually obligated not to swear on video. That goes against his image, the show, his brand- he signed a contract, for crying out loud! He signed it in silly string and everything.

Cole sat back, arms crossed, and although he didn’t have a face, he had the signature look of smug superiority off knowing that McLaugherson lost the argument.

McLaugherson immediately got up in a huff, before his breathing slowed down, and he took a second to parse his thoughts. He wasn’t allowed to swear on video. On //video//. Wait, was he even-

He looked back at Trey, who was holding a very real, and a very turned on camera.

[[div class="blockquote"]]
After the termination of the footage, the signal emitted to Site-19 ceased. Approximately seven hours later, the same unedited footage was uploaded to a YouTube channel titled “LAUGH IS ONLINE”, where it had accrued more than █████ views before being taken down by Foundation webcrawlers. Around █████ witnesses had to be detained and amnesticized by Foundation authorities as a result of the event. Research into the origins of the event is ongoing.
[[/div]]

----

A finely dressed, but poorly maintained individual sauntered through an office door. His arms hung limp at his sides, not bothering to rebutton his crinkled suit or to fasten his unraveling tie. He took off his shoes and slipped into his baby seal slippers (that is to say, slippers that //are// living baby seals) and lunged over to a slick, slim black couch, which promptly moaned in pain as he dropped himself on it and reclined.

The man’s office resembled that of the lobby of a pediatric clinic, one that he had made several adjustments of his own to suit his taste.

The paint job was left mostly untouched, with several cartoony splotches of color contrasting the plain, white walls. On the opposite wall to him was a little mural he had commissioned to liven up the place.

It was a realistic portraiture of himself, posed elegantly and king-like, with his head just out of view, of course. It took up most of that wall. Across his torso were the bold words “To 30 years of LAUGH IS FUN. AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH AND LAUGH”, the latter two words repeating themselves until they hit the end of the wall.

“Wow, thirty years of LAUGH IS FUN,” he thought to himself. “Dang, that was forever ago.”

Following the end of the chain of painted “AND LAUGH” to the adjacent wall, he saw a collection of kiddy cubbies, which fulfilled the role of file cabinets. Some might see it as unconventional, but he saw it as efficient. Besides, that elementary school was so happy that he decided to film “Learning is Fun” there, they were kind enough to let him have theirs. It’d be a bit of a slap in the face not to.

Next to the cubbies was your bog standard office desk and chair, with his prized “#1 LAUGH” coffee mug placed haphazardly on some papers. He remembered the night on set where he was given it, from that darling family of five which gifted it to him after he appeared emerging from the fireplace. The one where the little Krampus demons flew out of the stockings and stabbed little holes in all the family members, which became mouths which all harmonized “Carol of the Bells” in minor key. Christmas was fun.

Next to the desk was your standard printer that ate, and an eater that printed. [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1459 A tasteful arcade machine] was positioned right next to them.

But the thing which grabbed the man’s attention the most during his little jaunt down memory lane was the long shelf he had up, going across the whole length of the wall, severing what would be the head of his mural.

On the shelf was a record of the good ole’ days, represented through a series of gifts and acolades. From his first little participation certificates from the network, to the shining golden trophies he’d made a habit of winning year after year. //International Laugh Channel of the Year ‘95//. //#1 Laugh Channel for 10 Years in a Row//. Sprinkled in between were various gifts sent by very important people and pictures taken with those same people.

The man looked past the his prize chimpanzee and looked to the last accolade on the wall.

It was a dusty old gilded cup. It wasn’t as big or as impressive as the other trophies from the glory days, but he still valued it all the same. It read //Choice Laugh Show for Adults over 34 and Under 52//.

At least he won one of the categories that year. “Dr. Wondertainment’s Little Mister Adventure” was the talk of the town back then, he personally never really got into the whole ani-mation thing, but it seems like the people really ate it up. Too bad it never got a second season. The shelf continued on past the little cup, but there were no more trophies to be found.

He reminisce about the golden days forever, but he wasn’t here to do that. No, he unfortunately had to bring himself back to the present, and turned on the TV in the upper corner of his office.

“It can’t be //that// bad”, he assured himself.

He tiredly placed both his legs on his hot pink coffee table and grabbed [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-3238 a cold, probably off-brand soft drink] placed earlier on it and cracked it open. He didn’t really care for the taste much, as it was a far cry from the more [https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2107 mainstream beverages] he’d enjoyed in the past. Sponsors can be so picky these days.

His agent had been pestering him about his “public image” ever since that dumb debate video aired on YouTube. Apparently the debut of season 45 was received less than enthusiastically.

Although the suits were doing all they could do in terms of damage control, it would still mean a lot for McLaugherson himself to come on out and address the people’s concerns himself. That's what his agent said, at least.

“That guy’s nuts. Surely the whole thing’s just massively overblown. No way it was that bad”, he kept telling himself. The episode might’ve been a relatively weak start compared to others, but he ran it through analytics! They projected a seven point increase, //at least//. He was following the rules, changing with the changing times. Wasn’t this what the people wanted?

He put on “Debates are Fun” to see for himself. And although he started out optimistic and stoic, as he waited to be proven right about his initial assumption, his expression (presumably) dropped as he came to realize that it //was// that bad.

This wasn’t fun. There were hardly even any //laughs// at all. All this was was just two idiots arguing and talking over each other like this was a Thanksgiving dinner. And there wasn’t even any food. This was just a glorified argument with the dressings of an episode of Laugh is Fun, almost like he was presenting a veneer of intellectualism to cover-

He scrolled down to the comments. What they had to say was more important than what he thought, anyways. Unfortunately for him, it seemed like they were very much in agreement.

[[=image https://i.imgur.com/uSBN996.png]]

Oh boy. The suits are going to have his ass over this. He took a swig of his nondescript soft drink as the end of the episode played. Thankfully he had remembered to cut out that last segment, and hastily edit in some audio from a prior episode. Hopefully nobody noticed anything was up.

//Ding.//

The man fumbled around his pockets until he finally wrapped his fingers around his phone. That’s weird. He usually never personally received any sort of notification. Not since the whole McDonald’s incident back in 2013. This must be important. He took out his phone and almost dropped it, seeing how very right he was. Right there on his homescreen, clear as day was a notification from social media. And wouldn’t you know it, people did find out.

“@thereal_treyson_yagoaldibadonic says: Laughy McLaugherson FLIPS OUT on a RANDOM College Student! What the Mainstream Media WON’T Show You!

Attached to the inflammatory words was a link to a video that he didn’t need to click on to know what the contents were.

“Why, that little- stupid, it was that //worm//, of course it was Trey.”, He indignantly thought to himself. No wonder he had to remind that slacker to delete the footage several times. The Judas was busy saving it to his laptop!

He knew he should’ve fired him when he had the chance, always with his head up in the clouds, always looking for his fifteen minutes of fame, and now it was coming around to bite him. Against his own better judgement, he opened up his phone and scrolled to social media to see what people were saying about him.

[[=image https://i.imgur.com/I3T7Brc.png]]

[[=image https://i.imgur.com/YRv4Son.png]]

[[=image https://i.imgur.com/qMnSaxF.png]]

This was bad. Terrible, even. Apocalyptic, almost. In a matter of minutes, ripping Trey a new one was a thought he had resigned to the very back of his head as the infinitely more pressing PR nightmare unfolded right in front of him. He almost made it worse, as well. Fortunately, he suppressed the urge to write up an impromptu defense of himself and of his show right off the bat, even though he really wanted to.

Well, that wasn’t true. What he really wanted to do was to call everyone a “dipfuck asshole who wouldn’t know good programming if it ripped open their spleen at a funeral”, but that probably wouldn’t fix anything.

He suppressed a weaker urge to write a bland corporate statement, saying that he heard their concerns and would work on making “Laugh is Fun” more accessible to a broader audience, blah blah blah, who cares.

Eventually he resigned himself to not saying anything at all. Not now, at least. He threw his phone onto the coffee table in defeat, gulped down the last of his soft drink, and crumpled up the can, getting up and tossing it behind him in a bin. He walked out of the room, not bothering to clean up after himself when the can bounced off the rim and onto the floor.

The man that was Laughy McLaugherson dejectedly emerged from his office and decided to take a stroll around the building. It would do him some good to try and get his thoughts in order. Unfortunately, the travesty that was the start to season 45 was all that he could think of right now.

For the first time in living memory, he felt himself dread the next day of filming. The spark, the drive that he had to show the world that Laugh is Fun, for almost fifty years now, was beginning to fade. If only a little, but it was just enough seeing as he never even conceived of the idea that that spark //could// even fade.

If the people hated what he had for the premiere, and his typical playbook was old hat, he was officially out of ideas for whatever the rest of the season was gonna look like. Dare to say, he didn't even care anymore. But, of course, he had to. No matter how burnt out he was feeling, a contract’s a contract, and the execs were expecting another season from him, since that’s what he promised. Right on schedule, as well.

He strolled the dark and empty hallways of his studio as he mentally prepared himself to wake up the next day. He stopped to face a lone mirror, right in the endless sea of nothing. It reflected his body from the neck down, which the man began to stare at, lost in thought.

“Was my tie loose this whole time?” The disheveled man thought to himself, seeing his tacky plaid tie no longer in a knot. Oh man. It probably got caught on camera and everything. Maybe he //was// losing his edge.

Not satisfied with feeling sorry for himself, the man cleared his throat and practiced some vocal exercises. He usually practiced those right before a shoot, but seeing as he had nothing better to do, he figured it wouldn’t hurt.

“Ahem. Laugh is Fun- wait, that’s no good.”

“//LAUGH iS-// jeez, what’s up with me today?”

“LAUGH. IS. FU-”

On his third attempt the last word of his catchphrase caught and tangled itself in his throat before he could utter it completely. He tried again, but no dice. He gave up and just tried to say the word “fun” in isolation, which produced garbled static not reminiscent of any word, or any language on earth for that matter.

Could it be? No, anything but that. But it sure seems like it. But he so desperately didn’t want for it to be true. But at the same time, reality doesn’t care about your feelings.

Maybe, just maybe the reason why he couldn’t bring himself to say “Laugh is Fun” was that he no longer believed that laugh //was// fun. After all these years of being on the top, creating hit after hit, he finally flew too close to the sun, and lived long enough to see it all collapse under him.

He felt that he could no longer recognize who it was in the mirror. Usually that was because the mirror was cut off at the neck, but today it was for an ephemeral, indescribable reason. He crossed his arms, almost as if to say something stern, but then put his hands on his hips. He finally gave up, and dropped both his arms down at his sides.

“What happened to you?”

[[div class="blockquote"]]
As of 8/27/2028, no new instances of SCP-2030 have been discovered by the Foundation since the recovery of several instances pertaining to a “season 45” in 2025. Reclassification to Euclid pending.
[[/div]]

Disagreements are Fun

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