Most of what’s been said here (especially humiliation humor, which is the antithesis of humor to me), plus any kind of joke that is founded on something that’s factually wrong. This is a terrible example, but say you crack a joke about koalas and somehow imply that koalas are bears in the grizzly bear sense. The joke might actually be witty, but all I’ll see is how incorrect your statement is and I won’t laugh. I won’t be offended or anything, I just won’t find it funny because I’ll be too busy biting my tongue to keep from saying, “Well, actually…”
But the worst are jokes that are founded on people’s pain, physical or emotional (includes dead baby jokes, slapstick, jokes about recent deaths or natural disasters, etc).
I work at a public defender’s office. Nothing is off limits. If you don’t laugh at some of the horrific shit we have to deal with on a daily basis, you simply can’t deal with it. That said, I am fairly certain that we are all going to a very special place in hell.
I find Larry the Cable Guy extrememly not funny. At one point my husband kept saying after every joke, “c’mon, now that’s funny,” ala Larry. He did not get laid often during that particular phase.
I know, I know, but why else would anyone make them up and then insistently pass them along? Stern couldn’t control himself, they were all giggling like schoolgirls, to the extent that he got in trouble with the FCC.
Nothing. Some things may be in bad taste, or solicit a groaning response, but I can see the humor in anything. Granted, I’ve come across a lot of stuff that was alleged to be funny that didn’t strike me as funny, but those come in all genres but there’s not a genre in particular that’s off limits.
Anyone know of any joke sensibility testers online? I’d actually kind of like to gauge myself now, in order to see if I’m just full of bullshit.
Every Jackass movie ever made. I just can’t watch them - they’re not funny at all.
Also, movies a la Quentin Tarantino like Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill where the violence is so casual and, for many people, funny and cool. It’s disgusting and cruel and it scares me that so many people think it’s hilarious.
Bigotry: Racial, misogynistic, homophobic, and fat jokes. Anything that plays on the degradation or humiliation of someone else, especially those video clip shows where some poor guy gets popped in the nuts. Watching men’s balls get racked is not funny to me. I like men. I like their balls. I don’t wanna see some dude writhing in pain.
That and cruelty in general. I’m not a fan of practical jokes. I don’t like mean-spirited-embarrass-people humor. I’m fine with self-deprecating humor, but I think if I had to boil this down to a single idea, I could say I don’t find jokes or situations funny where someone is victimized. If you choose to victimize yourself – crack a joke at your own expense – that’s fine; you get to choose that. But when you crack a joke at someone else’s expense, you remove the choice from them whether to be the butt of the joke or not.
I know a guy who was heavily involved in the making of the movie* Borat*, he couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t watch the movie. I tried to explain that watching people being made fun of just wasn’t funny to me, he really didn’t understand.
Absolutely. Jokes about my mom are off limits. Jokes about your mom are hilarious.
If I was a billionaire I would start my own cable channel and it would be nothing but America’s Funniest Home Videos, Wipe Out, World’s Dumbest Criminals and Ow, My Balls.
I don’t like jokes about handicapped people when a single person is the target. Jokes about the handicapped in general don’t bother me. Actually jokes about any single person I don’t like but any group is fair game.
Ventriloquists. From Willie and Lester, to Jeff Dunham, to the guy from America’s Got Talent, I have never found a ventriloquist funny, and I never will.
Yeah, same here. A few years ago when I had a long commute I used to listen to morning radio, and I would almost always have to turn it off on the days when the jocks were doing some sort of “call up a random person and prank them into thinking their car was stolen or their kid was in jail or whatever” kind of thing. I hate those. If one of my friends ever set me up for something like that, they’d be my ex-friend.
I think the “jokes at other people’s expense” thing pretty much covers it for me. If you combine that genre with the “I’m so dumb I can barely manage to find my feet, so therefore I’m lovable” genre, that would cover most of the humor I don’t find funny.
Oh. And “nervy person” humor–you know, where somebody takes advantage of somebody else and they have to put up with it because they’re polite? From what I’ve seen from commercials, I doubt I would be able to sit through “You, Me and Dupree.”
Lest you think I’m totally humorless, this Frazz strip (the March 11 one if for some reason the link doesn’t work right) had me grinning like an idiot. All the moreso for the fact that I had to look it up. Any comic strip that makes me look up the punch line is okay with me.
