Oh, man, was that funny! :D:D:D:D How many hours a day do you cruise the Internet for videos? You always find the good ones! <envy>
Wiki has this to say about the Humor Styles Questionaire which is one measurement of healthy social adjustment:
“The Humor Styles Questionnaire (HSQ) has emerged as a robust model for understanding the individual differences in humor styles. Humor can be used to enhance the self or enhance one’s relationship with others. Humor can be relatively benevolent or potentially detrimental (either to the self or others).[2] The combination of these factors creates four distinct humor styles: affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-defeating. Some styles of humor promote health and well-being, while other styles can be potentially detrimental to mental and physical health.”
In discussing this, also please keep in mind my qualifiers. There’s plenty of sweet, gentle things that might bring a smile or half-chuckle. Puns and wordplay fall into that category. I’m talking about FUNNY. Things that will make people really laugh (people with a not-too-easy, not-too-tough laughter threshold. Mine is much too tough as a measure, to my never-ending sorrow, since I love to laugh)
How about irony?
I find surprise to be belly laugh inducing.
We have a silly joke going in our house at the moment (I was throwing away a roll of tin foil but the box keeps appearing places). My husband and I were talking about how silly this game was, when I reached under my pillow to adjust them and pulled out the foil (where he had hidden it). We both burst out laughing at the joke itself and the coincidence. We laughed so hard our daughter had to come find out what was going on.
Not sure what category that’d fall into- but to me it’s the surprise of it.
Some people actually bust a gut laughing over puns and “cutsie” stuff, while the meaner stuff doesn’t do much for them.
Surprise is definitely hilarious.
Hardest I’ve laughed this year was watching this commercial with a buddy. The commercial’s kind of lame, but at the end, my friend turned to me and said, scornfully, “That guy’s a fag.”
Couldn’t breath for a couple minutes on that one.
Wow, this really sucks–that’s a terrific joke, but being American I had to ponder for a minute what “fag” signified. :smack:
I don’t agree with it, but he is a highly respected expert on the subject:
That would be a perfect example of mean-surprise. And really funny.
That is an EXCELLENT commercial…that was the thing that I was most happy about when I quit, and it hardly ever gets talked about…
Improv isn’t mean
Several people have mentioned pain, suffering, and discomfort as being essential components of humor. Is it possible that these elements contribute to “funniness” only when they lead to a feeling of superiority?
By that I mean:
[ul]
[li]it’s Funny when the society matron gets a pie in the face (causing her discomfort, at the least) because we enjoy feeling superior to her (we haven’t been humiliated the way she’s just been humiliated!) Watching someone (particularly someone we resent) being injured or shamed or made to look foolish is probably the least sophisticated form of humor–but it’s an evergreen.[/li]
[li]it’s Funny when the punchline of a joke skewers the driving abilities of Asian people or the stupidity of blondes or the stinginess of Scots or the greed of lawyers, because we enjoy the chance to feel superior to particular demographic groups (which will differ by listener, of course: Know Your Audience is essential for tellers of anti-ethnic/gender/other-group jokes). Even if we’re ‘above’ ethnic humor, we do tend to enjoy anti-group humor without feeling ashamed of ourselves if the group in question is universally disliked (for example, Politicians or Used-Car Salesmen).[/li]
[li]it’s Funny when Jack Benny alluded to his own cheapness, or when Louis C. K. discusses his physique, or when Joan Rivers refers to her facelifts, or when Jon Stewart mentions his non-hit movie acting roles. We get a rather complex pleasure, here: we get to feel superior to these people while still admiring their skill in making us laugh (and while reflecting that whatever it is they’re being self-deprecating about, probably isn’t really as serious or negative as they’re making it out to be).[/li]
[li]it’s Funny when wordplay lets us experience that superior feeling of “getting it.” This is fairly sophisticated (at least as compared with laughing when the snooty banker slips on a banana peel). For example, the Mitch Hedberg quips quoted earlier let us feel smart when we realize the incongruity or absurdity of looking at things a certain way: “Rice is great when you’re hungry and want 2,000 of something.” Few of us will ever have thought of rice in this ridiculous way–but when we understand, we feel smart for having understood. Similarly with “People either loved us or they hated us, or they thought we were okay”…I’d argue that this is funny because it lets us “get” that the cliché “either loved us or hated us” had been subverted (with the ‘middle ground’ alternative). We feel smart because we understand that a subversion has taken place. Hence: the pleasure of feeling superior.[/li][/ul]
“Superiority” as the essential basis of humor isn’t a new idea, of course. Plato believed indulging in laughter to be bad for us, given humor’s roots in disdain and self-inflation. Our feelings of superiority over the targets of humor are immoral:
(Protarchus and Socrates, of course, are mouthpieces for Plato in his Philebus:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1744/1744-h/1744-h.htm
One might argue that farts are embarrassing, and so we’re laughing at the social discomfort of the guy who farted.
But they’re funny even among a group of people who aren’t in the least embarrassed by them!
?? Improv is simply a means of getting to the humor, it isn’t a category of humor itself, and t can be incredibly mean. It can be just about everything we’ve talked about.
And I’m sure rednecks laugh at them harder than anybody.
What does a redneck say right before he dies?
“Hey! Watch this!”
Only because they know that farting is “forbidden”.
Ellen DeGeneres is the master of being hilarious while never being mean.