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I make a lot of jokes and incongruous juxtapositions and things like that, I hope not anywhere close to 'disinhibition' mentioned in the paper. But it makes me wonder how much laughing at a joke is appreciation of a witty idea vs how much of it is a social contract where you say something mildly interesting, laugh, and other conversation participants laugh. It's still a genuine social exchange, but the point is that humor has empathy as a key component, and it helps us bond. If you were to convey the same concept in a tone of anger or disappointment, most listeners won't laugh. So maybe humor and rants are two sides of the same coin: socialized salience. But like any other social contract, it can be abused. If you frame a sentence in the cadence of a joke or rant, you're expecting the listener to respond. If you rant for a very long time, people stop listening. If you make jokes 24/7, the social activity of joke-telling is no longer a two-way street, and people stop laughing. If you deliver nonsense like a joke, you may get the knee-jerk social laugh, but not the witty-idea laugh (unless nonsense is the witty idea). If it's inappropriate to bond in a situation, and you tell a joke, you might not get a laugh, let alone an acknowledgment. For various reasons, patients described in the article only have pieces of this whole system, and struggle with the social aspect or the witty-idea aspect. |