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Humor, according to me
7 months ago
General
I love laughing. And I love making people laugh. I guess that’s true for everyone, but few things give me the same satisfaction of making others laugh (intentionally, that is). Making others have fun, getting liked for that. I luckily know a lot of stuff that makes me able to often find a good reference that builds up to a clever joke – but there’s more to that, and most of a good joke is not much given by the joke itself, but by the way it’s told. My mother has always said that I have a typically British humor, and for long I couldn’t understand what she meant by that – then I figured out: it’s because I have this capacity of telling absurd jokes while keeping my state of mind absolutely serious. That’s pretty much where I shine (thanks, autism) and it let me reflect more about why something makes us laugh.
So, what is funny on first place? Pretty much all funny things are things that are not ordinary – word plays, weird scenes and clever jokes, they’re all things that subvert our expectations. In fact, rarely does a joke make us laugh twice, because at that point it no longer surprises us. And why this? Well, we are creatures that are deeply guided by an universal fear of the unknown – what we cannot describe, what we have never faced. It’s too much of an effort for our brain to try think about the unknown, and most of all we never know if said unknown is an actual threat that could lead us to the unknownest of all unknowns – that is, death. So, to take care of that, sometimes we feel fear, so that we stay out. Sometimes we get pumped with adrenaline or decide to study it to understand it rationally, if somehow we can face it and need to act. But sometimes, we just laugh, if that unknown can be tamed by making it ridiculous. So this is what humor is: a way our brain has to face a mild kind of unknown.
And here is the key. Who gets told a joke must not predict what is about to come, or they have no longer an unknown to fight. Not only the joke itself, but also the fact that they’re being told a joke. A funny situation may not be that funny if it’s been built on purpose, but make you laugh as hell if it comes in a supposedly regular situation. And that’s why saying jokes seriously is so efficient. If the tone is already humorous, you prepare your listener to the fact a joke is incoming, diminishing its unexpected-situation power.
There are other rules though, which all come from what said about humor being about the unknown. An important one is keeping things as minimalist as possible – that is, if a detail can be shown without saying it explicitly, omit it. A good amount of jokes in fact are based on this: an example would be “What is the difference between a battery and [something to denigrate]? The battery at least has one positive side.” If the joke continued by saying “But [something to denigrate] has none”, the unknown would be revealed, and the joke destroyed. (I’m sure there are other rules, but I can’t think of any of them right now. If I do, I’ll just expand this journal.)
For all this, in my opinion writing comedy is much harder than writing tragedy. We all agree on what is tragic, right? Death, death, and more death. Well, also war, depression, violence and so on, but they can all by summed up by death anyway. But humor? It depends extremely on everyone’s experience, on the set of what they know already, and on their sensitiveness, so that we all laugh for different things. Worse, jokes work only once, because the second time they have entered the realm of what is known – you may still laugh a bit, but never like the first time. So you have only one chance to make your audience laugh.
Well, usually I would end up with a conclusive line, but right now I have none. Have a good life everyone.
So, what is funny on first place? Pretty much all funny things are things that are not ordinary – word plays, weird scenes and clever jokes, they’re all things that subvert our expectations. In fact, rarely does a joke make us laugh twice, because at that point it no longer surprises us. And why this? Well, we are creatures that are deeply guided by an universal fear of the unknown – what we cannot describe, what we have never faced. It’s too much of an effort for our brain to try think about the unknown, and most of all we never know if said unknown is an actual threat that could lead us to the unknownest of all unknowns – that is, death. So, to take care of that, sometimes we feel fear, so that we stay out. Sometimes we get pumped with adrenaline or decide to study it to understand it rationally, if somehow we can face it and need to act. But sometimes, we just laugh, if that unknown can be tamed by making it ridiculous. So this is what humor is: a way our brain has to face a mild kind of unknown.
And here is the key. Who gets told a joke must not predict what is about to come, or they have no longer an unknown to fight. Not only the joke itself, but also the fact that they’re being told a joke. A funny situation may not be that funny if it’s been built on purpose, but make you laugh as hell if it comes in a supposedly regular situation. And that’s why saying jokes seriously is so efficient. If the tone is already humorous, you prepare your listener to the fact a joke is incoming, diminishing its unexpected-situation power.
There are other rules though, which all come from what said about humor being about the unknown. An important one is keeping things as minimalist as possible – that is, if a detail can be shown without saying it explicitly, omit it. A good amount of jokes in fact are based on this: an example would be “What is the difference between a battery and [something to denigrate]? The battery at least has one positive side.” If the joke continued by saying “But [something to denigrate] has none”, the unknown would be revealed, and the joke destroyed. (I’m sure there are other rules, but I can’t think of any of them right now. If I do, I’ll just expand this journal.)
For all this, in my opinion writing comedy is much harder than writing tragedy. We all agree on what is tragic, right? Death, death, and more death. Well, also war, depression, violence and so on, but they can all by summed up by death anyway. But humor? It depends extremely on everyone’s experience, on the set of what they know already, and on their sensitiveness, so that we all laugh for different things. Worse, jokes work only once, because the second time they have entered the realm of what is known – you may still laugh a bit, but never like the first time. So you have only one chance to make your audience laugh.
Well, usually I would end up with a conclusive line, but right now I have none. Have a good life everyone.
1. Things that I love putting on loop so much I laugh out loud.
2. Something that I didn't expect at all and came out of left field that was funny on my end.
3. A reference or material that I am familiar PRIOR to the comedy/joke.
4. Taking a source and pitching it up/pitching it down, or sentence mixing/messing with audio and visuals that I can't help but laugh at simply because it's a ton of noise to my ears.
Other than that, it's hard to get the jokes unless if I wasn't there. But this goes to show that when someone does it through text, it is 95 percent harder to understand it just by reading it than hearing it in a voice/video call or in person.
As for the "Fear of the unknown", my guess is that it's due to if we can travel to it and come back alive to tell the story. The reason why death is brought up very often is in a similar vein to when people have nightmares. It's to remind us that we are still mortal beings, and we could die at any point in history, even if we didn't ask for it. Plus, dreams and nightmares are gateways to alternative timelines/dimensions that we would either like/hate to experience rather than what we're living in which is reality/earth.
You'd be surprise that I would laugh at a joke twice or three times if it's a really good one, come back to it years later, and it's still just as funny as the first time I hear it. It's also why I love it in audio/video format, so I can laugh for the next ten minutes to make myself feel better and such. I do believe without humor, our lives will either become exciting, dull, or mesmerizing, but that's about it.