It definitely detracts from the enjoyment in Big Bang Theory. I used to think the laughter was all "on box", but apparantly there is a real life audience, and they think every single sentence in the show is equally funny.

I prefer them removed. Doesn't fit in shows which aren't funny at all.

I hate laugh tracks with a fiery passion. Live audiences where you can actually see the audience don't bother me as much (things like Whose Line is it Anyways?) but laugh tracks are an unceasing source of pure agony. One of these days I am going to sit down and strip the laugh track out of all the Addams Family episodes even if I have to do it one second at a time using I don't know, iMovie, or Garageband, or Audacity, or something, anything!

I am just fine with laugh tracks, I even enjoy them from time to time... so long as they are live recordings of an actual studio audience.

Few things on TV make me feel more insulted than a laugh track artificially added after the fact. Hanna Barbera cartoons of old in particular probably played a part in making me a bitter, cynical adult, as the laugh tracks there turned my otherways apathetic view of their shows into blind, seething hatred.

What's wrong with laugh tracks? What if you just want to zone out, but don't want to offend your girlfriend that you're not watching TV with her?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So, trust me, laugh tracks save marriages...or otherwise, at least you'll have your mistress!

OOOOooooOOOOooooOOOOooooOOOOooooOOOoOO

But no, seriously, don't cheat on your girlfriend

AAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW

Ping-Pong balls? I thought you said "King Kong's balls!"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I have never liked laugh tracks on any pre-recorded shows. It just seems out of place.

I don't mind laughter from a live audience, though.

I never noticed it in Seinfield. That being said that show was really good to the point it didn't need a laugh track. Laugh track is just used to subconsciously point out what should be funny, which speaks loudly about how the show producers feel about their audience. Sometimes it can't be helped for a genuine live show like Saturday Night Live, but if a show is artificially inserting it, that seems like the shows producers didn't feel the jokes would stand on their own.

It is 2014 and most daytime TV shows seem feature effeminate men and "free-spirited" air headed women spouting forced references to other media and dated stereotypes with carefully cued laugh tracks. The Big Bang Theory has PERFECTED the formula and even my mother and sister are hooked on it, even though seemingly 95% of the jokes are just nerdy guys making nerdy references and the bimbo getting science wrong all the time because ha-ha-silly-woman.

TV would be so awkward without laugh tracks. Awkward silence kind of awkward. What do you expect? Writers to actually have time for creativity every week? It is all garbage for a paycheck.

That sir, was brilliant.
They have them in some European shows, the prime example for me being The IT Crowd. It oddly works for that show.

What shenanigans!

GUFFAWGUFFAWGUFFAW

I used to dislike them at some point, but these days I kinda love laugh tracks. They are an art form as such.

I mean, just think what happens when, let's say, Al Bundy or Kramer enters the scene for the first time in the episode.
The acting stops, and the audience goes "WOOOOOOOOOO" and gives a round of applause.

Brilliant!!!

When done right, it is an essential part of the show, just like a guy with a red shirt dying in Star Trek. But of course this requires the show to be designed and timed right for laugh tracks.
If you simply add laugh tracks, when the show doesn't have that element as a core element from the starting point, it simply sucks.

Of course you can have fantastic comedy shows without laugh tracks.

And some shows would be totally ruined by that. Police Squad for instance.
There's so many different jokes going on simultaneously that a laugh track simply would not do justice to that brilliant multilayering.

What is surprising is that very few, if any, DVDs offer alternative soundtracks with/without laugh track, so each viewer could choose what he likes the best.

I wonder if anyone has ever made a game with a laugh track?
Not even Al Lowe came up with that idea...


EDIT:

I must be getting old... Few moments after I posted this, I remembered that Al Lowe actually DID use that idea in Torin's Passage, although it was just one room in that game, and not throughout the game.

pretty much this. even then tough sometimes its too loud. it crowd for example. i cannot get into it because of how obnoxious the audience is.

but QI, Mrs. Brown and boys.... without the audience, shows would be much worse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Qz2PvbLHqs
friends without laugh track

Most people will claim that they don't like laugh tracks, yet they work. People laugh more and find the show more funny (and yes, that probably means that they work on you as well). You need to enjoy the jokes to begin with, but you'll enjoy them more with the laugh tracks on.
And people who claim that laugh tracks don't work on them are fooling themselves as much as people who claim that advertisement don't work on them (which would be most people).

Being completely immune to psychological manipulation makes you a special snowflake. People generally like being special snowflakes :D