Everything is funnier when you have people to laugh out loud with. So, on Tuesday night UMass Boston’s student-run Harbor Gallery teamed up with co-creator of The Internet Cat Video Festival, Scott Stulen, to sponsor a free event that shows 78 Internet cat videos on a large screen.

Students and other attendees brought chairs and blankets to UMass Boston’s Campus Center lawn for a night run by cats – or videos of them anyway.

Similar to a film festival, the cat videos were divided into categories of comedy, drama, foreign, documentary and musical.

YouTube cat videos gone spiral like “Kittens in Bowls,” “The OMG Cat,” and “Kitten Freaks Himself Out,” generated waves of chatter and laughter.

Kevin Benisky, the director of the Harbor Gallery and student studying art history at UMass Boston, told UMass office of communications that this event was a chance to turn an online and solitary social media experience into a social event.

The festival launched in August at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The site roared as 10,000 people laughed in unison at videos of talking cats, barking cats and vacuum-riding kittens. The festival continued its success at UMass Boston.

10,000 people at the original #catvidfest. I count 54 here at umass Boston. Still amazing.

—
Adam Michael Noska (@amnoska) October 23, 2012

Seriously LOLing at the #catvidfest

—
Breez (@breeezyfosheezy) October 23, 2012

The success of the tour thus far shows us that our bizarre humor and strange digital culture can be combined with social media and translated into a group interaction of worth.

Boston was the festival tour’s first stop on a list of cities nationally. Follow them on twitter @catvidfest.