Hmm, maybe I should have modified my question to “Witty people have a dark sense of humor?” AND don’t know when to keep their mouths shut? 
I think all of my intelligent friends would qualify.
Well, I laughed in a thread about someone’s cat dieing. Then made a joke about the time I accidently stepped on a kitten. I guess I really deserved that pitting.
I, like everyone here, consider myself intelligent. I mean, obviously. I wouldn’t say I have a “dark” sense of humor, because jokes like dead baby jokes that are basically just obscene for the sake of being obscene don’t make me laugh (though I don’t really get offended by them). Bathroom humor I dislike, unless it’s well told or clever, or parodying itself.
What really makes me laugh hysterically is the really absurd. Stuff that doesn’t make sense. Stuff that someone would normally say “That’s wierd” or “Huh?” to. It’s sometimes awkward in social situations when someone will be telling jokes and I’ll lightly chuckle or smile, and later start laughing hysterically at something else while everyone else just looks at me strangely.
Damn straight you did. That was a while back, DreadCthulhu - I’m sure you’ve adopted kitties since then. 
The best way to walk on the dark side can be found in the literature of Edgar Allen Poe - Woody Allen or George Carlin for the witty stuff.
What kind of truck is it?
1920s style sorority girls?
I once took this IQ test on the internet, and it told me I had me a 131 IQ. Then it attempted to introdce me to some ladies of about my age with similar IQs. From that experience I decided I shouldn’t go around bragging about my 131…especially since I noticed the moron in the cube next to mine had exactly the same IQ score from the same test…and was REAL excited about his blossoming social life.
I equate high intelligence with the ability to view a situation or object with reference to increasingly higher numbers of concepts or memories. For instance, if you see a bit of roadkill and the only way you can relate to it is “ewww,” that’s only one link so, probably not a whole lot of brain power. Thus the conclusion that people without a sense of humor are stupid (I subscribe to this opinion). But if you can look at the roadkill and relate to it as, “ewwww” + “Frisbee” + “Awesome Possum for the RK Cafe” + “Possum pie” + … then the potential to hit on something funny is much greater.
As for dark humor, I love it because it rubs shit in the blue noses of the mentally single-level prudes who insist on imposing taboos on the rest of society. “You can’t laugh at killing big eyed kittens because they’re so sweet and their death is a tragic loss of cuteness.” Which is true, but if you can get over the unfortunate demise of the kitten and link the action to say, slipping on dog crap or a banana peel, well, the link is unexpected and just damn funny.
I DO have the depression thing going on, but I don’t consider my outlook on life as particularly negative. I just have no time for people who can’t find humor in life. I believe they must be limiting their intelligence on purpose in order to adhere to someone else’s rules, and I get mad at them because, hey, we’ve enough problems in this world that could be solved by a little extra thought effort on everybody’s part. I feel the need to persecute them somehow, and feel best when I can do it in the presence of another smarty pants, in the presence of the victim, and without the victim’s knowledge. And I don’t do this to be mean or to build myself up by tearing someone down, I do it to see if I can awaken the victim and get him thinking again. If my victim hears my remark, and sees someone else laugh, then the victim has to engage the old noodle and try & figure out the joke.
Or maybe I’m just a dick.
**Cervaise[B/], EXACTLY!
Matchka - there is a major difference between having a dark sense of humor and being sadistic.
Who doesn’t consider themselves intelligent? C’mon!
That’s what makes life so funny. Everyone thinks they’re smart.
Ohhhhh, that makes me laugh just thinking about it.
Or, if you’re like my friend. You look at the road kill and think to drive over it, back up on it, do a burn out on it, and then the reaction from on lookers is “ewwww”. Here the situation is, my friend was being a sadistic bastard, but the reaction from the people watching was funnier than hell!
Well, I haven’t read the entire thread, but…
The last time I took an IQ test was… Well, let’s just say it was in Omni magazine. Quite a while ago. I scored 142. I’m fairly well-read, and have lots of interests. I consider myself intelligent, and friends and co-workers have often been amazed at the things I know. I also have a rather morbid sense of humour.
The Oscar Meyer Weinermobile.
I wouldn’t say I was bitter and I’m not overly sarcastic but black comedy is my absolute favourite (and I remember that thread about the kitten… I’m quite ashamed to say that I also found it funnier than i perhaps should have).
About a year ago a fluffy white bunny rabbit got ran over by a lawnmower outside my English room and i didn’t stop laughing for about a week, there was fur everywhere (heehee)
I wouldn’t say i was morbid though.
100th post!
Actually, I have adopted several kittens from the local shelter. I mean, how else am I supposed to make kitten stew?
I think that Dr. Spooner would refer to all of us as shining wits!
I find this very interesting, because I find myself kinda caught on the fence in this situation. Upon reading the OP, I realized that it rang true in a very real way; plenty of the people I know who are above-average in the IQ dept. do indeed have very dark senses of humour. I myself, however, while generally testing in the 134-142 range, don’t consider myself to have the requisite darkness needed to fit the description. My sense of humor is concurrent with many of the assumptions drawn in this thread; that people of above average intelligence are able to see the world in a funnier light because they can penetrate the veneer of everyday life and see something real there; something the “big-eyed kitten greeting cards” crowd isn’t able to see. In my case, though, rather than translating to a love of all things dark and humorous, it has translated into a love for the zany, weird, off-beat things, the things that can make human interaction into the world-class comedy it often is.
I’m much more likely to laugh at the fact that Bob’s relatives didn’t quite know how to behave with Bob’s gay lover and his friends at the funeral than I am to laugh at the fact that Bob died before his time, even though it’s implicit that since I’m laughing at something that took place at the funeral, I’m laughing, in a sense, at Bob’s tragedy. I think the question here may lie in distinctions. Smart people aren’t necessarily more eager to laugh at the nasty, dark things; maybe they’re just less eager to let the “taboo”-ness of the nasty dark things dissuade them from laughing at situations that arise in their wake.