Do unmute? Don't Unmute? A "Definitive" Guide for Imgurians!

Hey there Imgur! Just your resident comment farmer here, and I've noticed over my years here that there are lots of posts where people don't seem to agree on when to mute or umute a post. While there is lots of "discussion" in the comments always, there's never been any formal guidelines.

WELL, that ends today. I've noticed a number of patterns over the years of when commenters seem to agree a post should be unmuted vs when it should, and I want to share some examples that I think illustrate those points the best. Let's get started!

WHEN TO UNMUTE:

This little guy here is a good example of when to unmute. An artist has taken the naturally rhythmic chirps of the frog and turned it into a jaunty tune. It is pleasant, cute, and obviously took some effort, so be sure to unmute and appreciate this artist's hard work!

Here's a good example of a video clip with the original sound worth unmuting! Sometimes, the real world sounds funny enough to listen to.

Now we start to get into the territory of videos with "added" sound or music. These are among the most debatable. Often I'll see in the comments that the sound or music "doesn't add anything" to the video, but never really explains or elaborates on why that is.

Sometimes song choice matters, and there are just certain pop songs that the collective majority seems to appreciate more than others (see above), but I think that we can go a bit further.

This is a song that is definitely NOT mainstream (or pop for that matter), but it's immediately obvious how it fits - it looks like the puppy is headbanging with the music. Also, a beagle puppy flopping its big dumb ears while thrasher music plays in the background is too cute to not appreciate.

13/10 would mosh with

This is another example of the same effect as above - taking what we see in the video and adding sound or music to completely change the context, while not effectively changing the action.

By the way, if you remember Whose Line Is It Anyway?, the game "Silent Replay" is also a really good example of this comedy technique.

This is a video that I think could have gone horribly wrong, and the creator made a good choice by choosing an instrumental westerny song, instead of something with lyrics (i.e. A Flock of Seagulls style).
The incredibly fast tempo of the song suits the frantic nature of the hamsters running, and it is timed so well that the natural break in the song comes exactly when the second hamster loses its footing and flies off. Perfect timing

Now for one with sound instead of music! The audio was taken from a viral video of a young boy greeting everyone he meets on the street, and was repurposed for this video of a meeting between a puppy and an older dog.

Timing is a recurring theme with "do unmute" posts, and when the puppy raises its little paw and squeaks out a "HOI", how can you not fall in love?

As I said, timing is everything.

Now we get into some murkier waters, and I'll do my best to explore why some may have hesitancy to unmute these posts.

Proving that timing isn't EVERYTHING, I picked this as a "maybe unmute" post mainly for its lost potential. Yes, the jazz song is timed perfectly well with the child yeet, but I honestly feel like there was so much more that could have been done here? Even just the original audio could possibly have been funnier.
Yeah, it's a kind of funny gag, but it could have been better, and ultimately I feel the same watching the clip with and without the audio.

This is more of a classic example of a "maybe unmute" moment. The audio is timed perfectly, is related to the video ("neko" means cat for the un-weaboo'd), and isn't offensively loud.
That being said, I can definitely see how the nasally chanting might be grating to some, and if you weren't aware of the context you might be wondering how the audio relates at all. Without the audio, it's still a cute clip of someone poking a pea until a cat pokes out.

This is another good example of the "disappointment" maybe unmute. I feel this is probably where I'll have the most amount of pushback since it is the original audio of the video AND the exact sound of concrete breaking. To me, though, it just felt like kind of a letdown, and I would have preferred a much larger "BANG" sound to make it worthy of unmuting. As it is now, you can go either way, and it is satisfying in some way I suppose.

When I see maybe unmute comments, they are most often put under videos like this: A popular song that is remixed in some way that is polarizing. "Slim Shady" itself is a good pick for a video demonstrating some top-tier Trailer Trash Swag, but the dance remix of the song is utterly confusing and perhaps blasphemous.
That being said, having NO audio really hurts this clip's potential, and at least the source song is fitting somehow.

Here's another good example of the actual audio from the video, however unlike the sound of crumbling concrete, I think we can all agree that the clanging of a robotic butter pressing machine isn't the most relaxing sound.

That being said, the monotonous metallic chugging does have some ASMR elements to it, and if you are into the sounds of industry, then unmuting would be a no-brainer. If that's not you, you can leave it unmuted and pretend there's some "How it's made" narration.

And, finally, we get to the DEFINITELY DO NOT UNMUTE category. Videos like these should be treated with the utmost caution, and approached only while wearing appropriate PPE.

When commenters say "the audio adds nothing" this is mostly what I think of. It is royalty-free song chosen seemingly at random by searching for tags, isn't timed to anything in particular in the video, and doesn't entirely replace the original audio anyway.

For me, the biggest crime with this song is that it was added ontop to evoke a certain emotion, but we're already feeling that, and so it just becomes a distraction.

Another example of timing being everything, and just adding a popular song onto a video clip not being enough. Yes, we all understand the "gangster" reference, but it's just lazily added to the video, and we don't get anything more than if we were to just watch the clip silently. Pass.

This one is just a mess, the audio of the song completely washed out by the audio of the clip to the point where you can't understand any of it. And we don't even need the song, the audio from the video is actually more desirable in this example since we can see people reacting with laughter and hear some commentary in the background, which would have been hilarious I'm sure.

No, just, no. Maybe I'm already trained to reject this sort of white background top-down corporate viral "hack" videos, but my God, who picked this song? It doesn't fit the tone of the video, the beat is distractingly off tempo with the actions.
Actually, looking at the video, this is also a "don't look". Just a no all around.

I'm sure this one needs no explanation

And that's that! I hope we learned something together. For you commenters out there wondering if a post should or shouldn't be unmuted, keep some of these guidelines in mind. If you're a creator, maybe think about if it's worth it to add that sound or song to the video.
Or don't, I'm not a cop.

Cat(s) tax