Today I said “I like working there so much it’s not even funny” to someone and we both stopped and commented on what a verbal oddity “it’s not even funny” is. Anyone cough samclem have any ideas why really liking something wouldn’t be funny?
I think the implication is that the situation is so sad that it would be hurtful rather than funny to try to joke about it.
I’m pretty sure that the phrase was originally used much more selectively.
Now the phrase is just a general intensifier, but its origin is as an exclusively negative intensifier.
“He fell so hard, it’s not even funny,” makes sense, when you consider that painful things are often considered humourous. A pratfall can be funny – Someone falling thirty feet, face-first? Not funny. This phrase indicates that an action is beyond the threshold past which it would be indecorous to laugh at it.
It’s only through sloppy use that it has become common for people to say things like “I like working there so much it’s not even funny.”
If you say, “He was so flatulent it’s not even funny,” you’re effectively saying that you anticipate that the condition you’re speaking of might be expected to be laughed at, if it were less serious – but you’re emphasising that it’s serious enough that it ain’t funny.