Perplexing <em>New Yorker</em> Ad Features Lena Dunham, Jon Hamm, Alex Karpovsky

We’re not sure what this video, uploaded by the New Yorker, is intended to do: it appears to be a five-minute

We’re not sure what this video, uploaded by the New Yorker, is intended to do: it appears to be a five-minute parody of an old talk show, as hosted by Jon Hamm, with Girls‘s Lena Dunham playing “Lanny Donhom” (spelled phonetically), a rising starlet. What is this making fun of? Why would a Johnny Carson-era talk show feature an actress talking about texting and using apps? Why are there so many pauses? Was Lena Dunham’s New Yorker piece this week commissioned before or after she made a “comedy” video wherein she called the magazine “a real tastemaker” featuring writing by “some of the most important minds of our time”? In the era where “virality” is king, your guess is as good as ours (this’ll be passed around, very likely, among people trying to figure it out)–but we’re now excited for The New Yorker app, and we don’t know why!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTiCulvL-lA]

Perplexing <em>New Yorker</em> Ad Features Lena Dunham, Jon Hamm, Alex Karpovsky