TV executives glommed onto fake laughter in the early years of TV comedies because research showed that laugh tracks made people laugh. It initially seemed that hearing other people laugh counted nearly as much as a joke’s actual humor. But the history of the laugh track is not a simple story about social influence. It is a history of an invention that created a trend, a trend that triggered a backlash, and a backlash that created a new mainstream. It is, in other words, a story about fashion.
