Isn't that funny
Yes it is.
That’s it, that’s the newsletter.
Just kidding, there’s more. Humor is what keeps us going. Humor helps us bond, humor helps us get over our past. Humor is what keeps us from buckling and humour is what lifts us up in hard times. Humor plays so many roles that as easy as it is to laugh a clean joke, it is just as complex and nuanced to understand. What is funny to us is funny and when we don’t find the punchline funny, all nuances are void.
When the joke is about someone, you never know if they will be offended. I believe that people’s threshold for tolerating humor about themselves is directly correlated to their emotional security at that moment. Perhaps because emotional security solidifies confidence in oneself that no joke about us can shake who we are - they are all jokes after all. On the other hand, being in a turbulent emotional state makes it easy to push one over the edge. I’ve been there, one moment I’m laughing about my clumsiness, and at other times I decide to not speak to the person who made the same joke.
People also accept self-deprecating humor for other reasons, some do it out of generosity - “if it makes everyone happy, I’m happy to be the butt of the joke”, trying to win - “if I don’t someone else will and then I’ll look bad”, humility - “I accept my flaws” and so on.
Dolly Parton often said, “It takes a lot of money to look this cheap!”.
All this is more about how you can take a joke. But what makes funny funny?
For me, it is always one of these four kinds of settings:
When two things of different magnitudes and nature are superimposed.
In early July, Mark Zuckerberg launched Twitter’s clone Threads. This coincided with Kim and Kourtney’s wedding fight episode on Hulu (the episode of Kourtney accusing Kim of copying her wedding moodboard for her Dolce and Gabbana collection). In both cases, someone was copying someone. A wedding theme and a $44 billion company seem to be worlds apart, yet here is a meme melting them into one:
Someone riffing off our work is a common experience, it happened to all of us in school at some point and it continues to happen at work and in our personal lives. They’re all the same incidents irrespective of the stage or status of the people involved. You can Occam’s razor it to one word: copying. It happens to you, it happens to me, it happens to Kardashians and it happens to Elon Musk. In our minds, they’re four different worlds with four very different stakes involved. I find it hilarious that here is a little square melting all of them into one. It is fascinating to me that so many contradicting scenarios co-exist and are the same thing - this disappearance of boundaries is what is hilarious.
Turns out there is a formal term for it, it is called the cognitive dissonance theory:
The cognitive dissonance theory:
cognitive dissonance is the excessive mental stress and discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. And cognitive dissonance theory is that we laugh when we are forced to hold two contradictory thoughts in our minds at the same time.
More to watch on the Kardashian fight and Zuckerberg launch:
Hilarious.
It isn’t that serious
Another big chunk of my sense of humor is perhaps based on nihilism. I love situations that prove that at the end of the day, things are not as serious as they seem.
A line of humor can de-escalate an intense setting in the most satisfactory ways.
Here is John Mulaney talking about his drug problem intervention:
“ Now, listen, everyone there at the intervention is really worried about me. They’re all concerned about my physical well-being. But I stroll in there, I am cocaine-skinny, with a new haircut. They’ve all been in heavy quarantine for nine months. They looked like shit. I was the best-looking person at my intervention, by a mile.”
I figured for me, this sense of humour might come from the intense need to be serious and achieve great things while growing up. It is cathartic to realize nothing is great. There are things that are great to me, there are things that are great to you, and some things are great to a majority of the population. But nothing is objectively great.
This idea has a name for it: the relief theory
The relief theory holds that we laugh when we are released from pent-up tension or anxiety. For example, we might laugh at a funny movie after a stressful day at work, because it helps us to relax and forget about our problems.
We like things that unburden the issues we were holding on to for a long time. This is the same as, if you get fired and you find out all your friends got fired, you feel a little bit better because now you’re not alone. The humor ends up being a safe way to express our emotions. This is why we love jokes about being a bad parent, about doing something just for the recognition etc etc.
John Mulaney’s special is full of examples of relief theory.
For example when he says:
“Let me just call this out now, I don’t mean to be weird. It was a star-studded intervention. [laughs] It was like a good group. It was a good group. As mad as I was when I walked in there, I was like, “This is a good lineup. This is very…” “This is really flattering in its own way.” It was like a “We Are the World” of alternative comedians over the age of 40.”
You feel good that you’re not the only one with vanity.
Did you notice this?
Another broad category of humor that is particularly delightful is observational humor.
Observational humor could belong to both cognitive dissonance and relief. Seinfeld would do great observational humor while providing relief.
Here is an episode titled ‘The Deal’ where Elaine and Jerry mention all the minor reasons they ended relationships in the past:
"vegetarian with an attitude."
"loud talker with a bad laugh."
"too tall,"
"too religious,"
"too into The Grateful Dead."
"too hairy,"
“too cheap,"
"too into himself."
And in real life, you do decide not to date someone for reasons even more absurd. We just leave them implicit and someone saying them out loud makes us feel not alone.
Or when the car rental agency doesn’t have his car:
”Jerry : I don't understand. Do you have my reservation?
Rental Car Agent : We have your reservation, we just ran out of cars.
Jerry : But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservation.
Rental Car Agent : I think I know why we have reservations.
Jerry : I don't think you do. You see, you know how to *take* the reservation, you just don't know how to *hold* the reservation. And that's really the most important part of the reservation: the holding. Anybody can just take them.”
Dad jokes
Lastly, one of the other things that make me laugh are the “You didn’t see it coming“ jokes. Dad jokes are a version of it.
The incongruity theory: This theory states that we laugh when we experience a sudden and unexpected violation of our expectations. For example - a joke that has a surprising punchline that catches us off guard and makes us re-evaluate our understanding of the world. These examples of humor rely on the incongruity between what we expect to hear and what we actually hear.
“A man walks into a library, approaches the librarian, and asks for books about paranoia. The librarian whispers, ‘They're right behind you!’ ”
Humor is one of the main ways I remain sane, if you have your own favorite funny pieces, feel free to send them across!