Humor, Longer Me
I've had some thoughts about humor which I posted to Twitter at three in the morning, which means that no one has seen them. Here's longer me.
With the understanding that I am not describing every funny thing in the world, humor generally relies upon violated expectations. Frequently, this is done by juxtapositions of unlike things which, together, create a new picture. Much of humor relies upon radical reframing. Humor leverages our pattern-matching software and our startle response, jarring us out of an expectation to reveal something new and different, and hopefully funny. It is, in fact, a neurological hack. One of the reasons it works is because it by-passes social armor and practiced emotional defenses. That makes it an incredibly powerful tool to address issues that are hard to discuss. It is why it is a frequent tool of activists.
One of the easiest ways to create a jarring juxtaposition is to trivialize something that isn't trivial. That's why there are so many jokes about sex and death. But trivializing something doesn't make it trivial. In point of fact, the joke flat out doesn't work if the issue is actually trivial. This is one of the ways jokes fade away. When I was a child, the joke with the punchline "She leaves crumbs in the bed!" was a screamer. It isn't nearly so funny, these days, because the concept that a bride isn't a virgin is just not a big deal to most people. In subcultures where that still matters, the joke is probably still funny.
Because jokes are, by their very nature, a way to get past normal social defenses, and because the subject of many jokes is non-trivial, it is really important to understand that jokes can hurt people very badly, savage them on soft spots before they have a chance to defend themselves. That is the nature of humor. A joke can make you think, puncture your vanity, cause you to revisit long held beliefs. But it can also attack your essential sense of self. The defense "It was just a joke" is like ignoring the fact that the gun is loaded. Seriously, don't point that fucker at a target you don't want to hit. If the subject matter had no weight to it, it had no potential humor.
With the understanding that I am not describing every funny thing in the world, humor generally relies upon violated expectations. Frequently, this is done by juxtapositions of unlike things which, together, create a new picture. Much of humor relies upon radical reframing. Humor leverages our pattern-matching software and our startle response, jarring us out of an expectation to reveal something new and different, and hopefully funny. It is, in fact, a neurological hack. One of the reasons it works is because it by-passes social armor and practiced emotional defenses. That makes it an incredibly powerful tool to address issues that are hard to discuss. It is why it is a frequent tool of activists.
One of the easiest ways to create a jarring juxtaposition is to trivialize something that isn't trivial. That's why there are so many jokes about sex and death. But trivializing something doesn't make it trivial. In point of fact, the joke flat out doesn't work if the issue is actually trivial. This is one of the ways jokes fade away. When I was a child, the joke with the punchline "She leaves crumbs in the bed!" was a screamer. It isn't nearly so funny, these days, because the concept that a bride isn't a virgin is just not a big deal to most people. In subcultures where that still matters, the joke is probably still funny.
Because jokes are, by their very nature, a way to get past normal social defenses, and because the subject of many jokes is non-trivial, it is really important to understand that jokes can hurt people very badly, savage them on soft spots before they have a chance to defend themselves. That is the nature of humor. A joke can make you think, puncture your vanity, cause you to revisit long held beliefs. But it can also attack your essential sense of self. The defense "It was just a joke" is like ignoring the fact that the gun is loaded. Seriously, don't point that fucker at a target you don't want to hit. If the subject matter had no weight to it, it had no potential humor.