Funny people, tell us how you do it. Are there conscious techniques you use? Where does it come from? How did you realize you were funny?
And how does humor work, anyways? Is it a skill that can be learned, or are you simply born with it? What things are funny - meaning not what topics, but what methods, what skills, what manners?
To get the conversation started, a quote from a New Yorkerprofile of George Meyer (a writer for The Simpsons):
I think he’s right. If you tell someone something in a roundabout way such that they have to “jump a step” to understand you, they’ll often laugh. What else? Thoughts?
Things that have worked for me involve setting up expectations and breaking them. Then there are rules like the rule of 3. If you’ve ever watched “Get Smart” you’ll notice that all the “would you believe” jokes have three parts. 1. The outlandish claim. “Would you believe it, the entire US Navy is surrounding this ship.” Then backing off “How about a Coast Guard launch” and then the punch line “How about two cops in a rowboat.” (More or less from the pilot, from memory. Funnier when Don Adams did it.)
There are whole books on writing comedy. I understand that comedians almost never laugh at jokes, because they are too busy breaking down the structure.
I’m not one, but I have gotten enough laughs in large audiences to be able to appreciate the appeal.
I think there’re two different things here. I’ll call them “planned funny” and “spontaneous funny”.
What Rodgers01 and Voyager are discussing is “planned funny” - jokes, scripts, cartoons. These are things you can analyze and plan for.
“Spontaneous funny” is the off the cuff remark that spontaneoulsy comes to you during conversation at work, school, dinner, whatever. I don’t think that you can analyze or plan that. I seem to have a knack for occasionally doing this. I think it’s because I’ve always been kind of a rebel (everyone else would probably say misfit, but I’ll stick with rebel, even if it is inaccurate :D). Large parts of society just seem absurd to me most of the time and sometimes I see a chance to point it out in ways that make people laugh.
I think when I was younger I also pointed it out in ways that just made people uncomfortable but I’ve learned to reign that in over the years (at least I hope I have).
Well, I kinda meant both. I’m less interested in the processes of a stand-up comedian or how to write a funny short story or speech, than in the thought processes of those people we all know who can reliably enliven a party and get everyone laughing at a moment’s notice. You know the types I mean.
I imagine there’s some crossover in there, though, which is why I’m interested in both. While the guy who cracks up his friends on the fly is basically improving, are there principles he uses that can be learned? For example, it seems to me that this archetypal funny guy is often good at being blatantly honest - he’s the one who points out the elephant in the room, for example, and gets laughs by defusing the tension and taking the lead in pointing out the obvious. It’s almost like people laugh because they’re relieved.
Another (silly) example I noticed from my days substitute teaching: if there are any middle-schoolers reading this, a sure-fire way to get laughs from your friends is to claim that someone in a movie or TV show you’re watching “looks just like so-and-so!!” It never fails! I used to watch with amazement as class after class of 7th graders would run through this same routine, always to a big response. It’s gold, I tell ya!
Pointing out the “elephant in the room” is exactly what I was talking about in reference to myself. You need to know when it is and isn’t appropriate, meaning that you have to know your crowd.
You also have to know what’s never appropriate. You don’t make a joke about the bad toupee on a cancer patient, for example (unless you’re Seth MacFarlane who seemingly can get away with anything).
You also have to be able to see that elephant. Whether that ability has to be inborn or can be learned I can’t say, but I think that nearly everyone sees the elephant at least occasionally.
I have my own little theory of humour, which may verge a bit on the crackpotty, but here goes: Basically, humour is a sort of aborted fear (‘fight or flight’) response. You are confronted with an unforeseen situation, and, just to be sure, you ramp up everything on a moment’s notice (it might be something dangerous, best to be prepared!), before conscious processing of the situation has even started. Once you get around to doing that, however, the realisation that there’s no danger to the situation is imminent; at that point, though, you have ramped up a lot of tension, which is relieved through laughter. This is the reason laughter and amusement feel so good: it is a signal that a previously ambiguous situation has turned out to be completely safe. Laughter also has the additional advantage of communicating this relief to others, defusing social tension.
This is supported by realisations like the one in the OP, that humour has to be startling, and that it has to subvert expectations. And not for nothing do we speak of ‘comic relief’. There’s little that is more bonding than shared laughter: you have confronted an ambiguous situation together, and come out on top.
But anyway, that’s just my own pet theory, as I said. I haven’t yet figured out how to use it to become funnier, though…
That’s not necessarily true, there’s an entire comedy trope built around Crossing the Line Twice. Generally for this to work it has to be really outlandish, but it also (like everything else) depends on the audience. Hell, I’ve heard of funerals where the entire thing was basically a roast of the dead person (all in good fun). Making fun of a cancer patient’s toupee is generally bad, yes, but if they’re the right person and the other people in the room are the right people it can still all be in good fun if done well enough.
Not that I recommend it unless you have experience with doing this sort of humor, but 2 cents and all.
If you are going to laugh at your own joke, just don’t be the first one.
My brother is terrible for this and typically hes laughing like an idiot before the joke has sunk in with anyone else(and his jokes are pretty lame). This spoils the fun of the cognitive dissonance critical to humor.
Puns are a good example of these. Bad puns have no revelation, no build and release of tension. Good puns however…
Whats the difference between a pick pocket and a peeping tom? A pick pocket snatches watches.
Did you expect a pun? Too bad, you get to meet my antimetabole instead.
To me, observing something or hearing a seemingly innocuous statement and making a spontaneous humorous comment involves stretching the situation to the absurd because humor can seldom pass the test of making logical sense if analyzed. If it make perfect sense, would it be funny?
It’s like singing in tune. Either you can do it or you can’t.
I use the shotgun approach to humour. In conversations I say lots of things which might get a laugh, but in such a way that if it fails, which is usually the case, people probably won’t notice it.
Sometimes though I get a laugh and I’ve been called funny. I’m not sure they still would call me that, if they knew what my hit to miss ratio was.
I don’t think it’s a complete theory of humor, but I do definitely agree with the “jump a step” thing. For instance, the bits in The Onion that make me laugh out loud are the ones that make me use my imagination to fill in a gap, to make a mental leap. The laughter is like the spark that jumps when two electrical wires are not quite touching.
Examples? Here are a couple randomly chosen from the Onion book I have handy: Date With Proctologist Ends Predictably Spelling-Bee Runner-Up Busts Into Tears Whenever Anyone Says 'Proprietor’
I also agree with people who say that humor involves the unexpected, startling, or absurd. And fart noises. Farts are comedy gold.
The brilliantly witty, insightful sarcasm that made me a very funny guy when I was 25 didn’t work at all when I was 40. I just seemed like an angry middle-aged guy. Now that I’m older I can be sarcastic again and be a curmudgeon.
The drier my humor and delivery, the bigger the laughs. It’s the Bob Newhart theory, or Stephen Wright. If I try to the be the zany life-of-the-party funny guy, like Jim Carrey or Dane Cook, it is obnoxious. Dry, cutting, and incisive is the ticket for me. Plus the pace is slower, so you can get by with coming up with far fewer witty remarks.
I agree with everything said so far, especially pointing out the (sometimes invisible) elephant in the room in a cognitively dissonant way, and the rule of 3s. I’ll also point out that humor very often – though not always – is at someone’s expense. There is often tragedy involved, like anything from a bad hairstyle to dead babies. It’s usually a good idea not to make it about someone you’re talking to at the moment, but there are exceptions even to that.
I’m considered a funny guy and I do it by using exaggeration for effect, parody and best of all innuendo.
The idea is to plant something in someone’s mind without saying it. This is why I love innuendo. I got a lot of this by listening to old time radio (OTR). With OTR radio shows they couldn’t be direct, so you had to figure out a way to plant the idea in the person’s head.
I recall reading a book by George Burns and he describes fan dancer Sally Rand. He says you paid a “whole quarter” to see her dance. The he says she wore a flesh coverd suit and had these huge fans. When you left you were quite happy, till about 15 minutes later when you realize she didn’t show you anything. But you THOUGHT you saw it.
So you can often achieve funny results just by presenting a situation. I recall on SNL they had Gilda Radner play Lucy Ricardo. The have Lucy (Gilda), go infront of a conveyor belt and say something like “OK Mrs Ricardo, since this is your first day assembling nuclear bombs.” At that point the audience stops and roars laughing. They could’ve stopped the sketch at that point.
Let’s face it nukes and Lucy Ricardo? Anything in your mind is funnier than what could be actually done.
Spontaneous humor sometimes involves making a connection no one else sees until you bring it up. I also do cryptic puzzles, and the talent to see things in a bizarre way helps in both.
But you can also have a set of joke templates which you can fit in spontaneously. For instance when my daughter and her friend said they were going to WalMart, I said that WalMart was like the slums of Calcutta but not as picked up - which got a laugh. The template was stolen from S. J. Pereleman, who in one of his last essays for the New Yorker said that Martha’s Vineyard in the '30s was like the Garden of Eden, but not so crowded.
BTW I agree about insults. If I am going to insult anyone in a joke, it will be me. With Don Rickles as a noticeable exception, most Jewish comedians directly insult themselves, not others. Look at the contrasting styles of Jon Stewart and Colbert.
I think I’m pretty funny, but my humor is almost always in response to someone else’s comments. I find it extremely difficult to be funny without a “straight man” feeding me lines.
Basically, I pick a one or more words out, and choose to interpret it differently than they intended, and respond to the reinterpretation. Or I’ll suggest that what someone heard and repeated might not be what they think it is.
My favorite example: my friend’s husband called her from Europe. After the call she turns to me and says, “Dan is in the Baltic states. He says he’s riding the Riga ferry right now”, and my immediate response was, “I hope he’s talking about a boat”. Pretty much put her on the floor laughing.
My theory on humor: it’s fundamentally and only about confounding expectations.
This is the entire foundation of humor, but it can be broken down into many subsections - in order of sophistication:[ul][li]Continual ineptitude in, or confounding of, mundane tasks. (Slapstick, prat falls, Laurel and Hardy failing to get a piano up a flight of stairs.)[]Simple wordplay. (“No pun in ten did.”)[/li][li]The blurring or breaking of moral categories. (Surrealism, shock sexism. Chris Rock on “niggas”.)[]Deliberate misinterpretation of phenomena. (Examples above; Paul Merton is a genius at doing this.)[]Contravention of predicted outcomes. (“Why the long face?”)[/ul]*This latter category is the most complex, and can itself be broken down further. It can even work in contravention of already predicted contravened outcomes: in references back to previous jokes, which comedians like Eddie Izzard are superb at doing; but also in meta-jokery, where an already subverted predicted outcome becomes even more subverted.[/li]
An egg and a rasher of bacon are in a skillet, and the egg says “is it just me, or is it getting hot in here?” To which the bacon replies “fuck me, a talking egg”.
The outcome above is expected to be a humorous quip; perhaps wordplay or a pun. Instead it broke its own predicted subverted outcome to become even more surprising and humorous.
My favorite example of building contraventions (and breaking of moral categories) is illustrated in the following short series:
Most of my attempts to be funny like a stand up comic fail miserably.
But when I just be myself and react naturally, I get loads of laughs.
I used to be on a message board for clowns. We couldn’t agree on what was funny or how best to be funny. I’m of the opinion that while you can develop it through practice, you have to start with an inborn talent.
I’m also of the opinion that John Ritter was one of the funniest humans of all time. You should study his work.