[everdrive]

I've yet to see a theory of comedy which actually addresses that there are multiple kinds of comedy:

- Bullying, where the joke is not particularly funny, but instead relies on attacking someone's status in front of a crowd. The crowd laughs in recognition of the successful attack, not because the joke is clever.

- Epiphany humor -- the joke relies on some new thought, connection, or idea, and the "joke" is the leap your mind needs to make in order to comprehend the novel idea. eg. "Otis Elevators: They'll never let you down!" In this case, you must take the familiar phrase "let you down [emotionally]" and realize the second meaning "elevators move up and down [physically]."

- Story-based humor, which probably needs a better name, but is mostly what stand-up comedy is. Other kinds of humor can be mixed in here, but often the "joke" relies on something of a straw man -- setting up a character in the story where the audience can readily recognize that at least one character being related is a fool, and worthy to be laughed at. Often this is perspective-based, and is based around relating to the characters in the stand-up comedian's story. For instance, take Bill Burr's joke about women: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s1GY-yr-BM -- the "joke" here is mostly whether or not you agree with Bill's characterization of the situation. The joke is not universally funny, but relies on the audience's perspective. If you've never seen the world from the same perspective as Bill, the joke may not hit the mark, or might even seem rude.

- Tone-of-voice humor. This is a joke where there's no real joke, but the tone of voice is really doing 90% of the work. It's just retelling a relatively benign event, except the tone of voice exaggerates the emotions attached to the words. I don't have an example ready for this one because I really dislike this "style" of humor, but imagine some of the less creative or talented stand-up artists.

- SNL humor. "What if an unusual or annoying thing happened?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfE93xON8jk

- Social awkwardness humor / Dramatic irony. See all / most of Arrested Development.

[sweezyjeezy]

I think "incongruity theory", that the article is alluding to, does actually apply to most of these. You're focusing on the context rather than the actual underlying mechanism driving the joke. e.g. the first one "bullying, where the joke is not particularly funny..." Consider that the incongruity of a comedian laying into someone verbally, compared to the way we're primed for them to talk in polite-society interactions, may be part of the reason why this works. Similarly example two - "Otis Elevators: They'll never let you down!" - there is an incongruity in the usual usage of the expression 'they'll never let you down' to here, that could be what makes this work as a joke.

I agree there are examples that incongruity doesn't cover, e.g. slapstick I personally believe is something a bit different, but generally I do think it's a pretty compelling explanation for a lot of modern comedy.

[jimmaswell]

One gift of my flavor of ADHD - the instant branching to a multitude of interpretations of some series of inputs and multiple degrees of related ideas - is always being primed to make stupid jokes where I intentionally misinterpret or make you misinterpret something obvious.

Like the other day my friend read "shrimp cargot" off a menu. I said "They taught a shrimp how to drive??" The other friend present thought it was the funniest thing ever while the first friend was in pain from it, which just made it funnier. We had the same 50% split relaying it to two more people later.

(It also relies a bit on knowing the "a shrimp fried this rice?" joke to be funniest but it's not required)

[082349872349872]

> "a shrimp fried this rice?"

There was an italian phrase book I once ran across and have never seen since: its schtick was that all of the phrases were things one might find in a normal phrase book ("the lobster makes a good salad"), but the accompanying illustrations were of abnormal interpretations (in this case, the lobster in a toque tossing a salad).

[sweezyjeezy]

Yeah I can relate! I've also heard Conan O'Brien say this before, he thinks that a big source of his comedy is just his brain outright not understanding things correctly.

[patcon]

YES. This is how I explain my brain. It doesn't understand correctly, and so it gets really great at exploring and making legible all the hidden dimensions and edges of thought. And from there, creativity is just taking those discovered dimensions and applying rote transformations: inversions or attenuations or extrapolations to absurd extremes ;)

[cheschire]

The most comprehensive theory I have seen is that laughter, and therefore humor, is primarily a fear response.

It starts as an infant when you laugh by having your surface nerves rapidly engaged through tickling. Even peakaboo is a fear game due to the child’s lack of object permanence.

When you examine all funny things through the lens of fear, it becomes an interesting logic exercise to draw a connection between the humor you see and how it may or may not be connected to fear.

Consider all of your examples through that lens.

[josephg]

> The most comprehensive theory I have seen is that laughter, and therefore humor, is primarily a fear response.

I’ve been practicing / performing improv comedy for about 5 years now. Keith Johnson style, not UCB style.

Newbies always try to be clever, but being clever is a total trap. The moments that always get the biggest laughs are when you acknowledge something that was already in the room. The audience had a thought - or a proto thought - “where did the umbrella go?” “I thought his name was Fred?” “But why is the duck talking?”. When you acknowledge it on stage, with lightness and connection, you get mad laughter.

I think you’re right about the fear thing. I think doing this acknowledges some deep fear of being alone, or stupid, or something. As a performer, when we make you whole, and do it in a way that feels easy and comfortable, I think, just for a moment, it makes that fear go away. And that’s what the audience is responding to when they laugh. There’s an old line from clowning: “When the performer breathes, the audience breathes.” I think it’s deeper than that. When the performer demonstrates being deeply ok with themselves, the audience believes it might be possible for them too.

[emnudge]

This is a very interesting way of putting it.

The way I’ve explained it is “unserious surprise” which also fits with this.

https://emnudge.dev/blog/a-grand-theory-of-humor/

[nfin]

I’ve had some thoughts in that direction.

Super interesting!

I thought about it for jokes, as the reaction is quick (just system 1 and very maybe for more complex jokes it’s system 2 understanding the joke and then system 1 laughing… but then it might not spontenous enough to lough out loud), didn’t though about that for “all funny things”.

Do you have some sources detailng this more?

[cheschire]

Oh I couldn’t tell you the original source, it was well over a decade ago that I first heard it. Briefly searching though gave some interesting results.

Here’s a study that identified an unintended consequence of an antismoking fear campaign:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5844502/

Here’s a study that looks at this relationship from a therapeutic perspective:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38840335/

And of course dozens of blog posts exist trying to explain it in a more accessible way.

[theultdev]

It's common knowledge (or used to be) that humor is a healthy coping mechanism for fear and dark/uncomfortable situations.

In other words; comical relief.

[patcon]

Really love your thoughts here. Very thought-provoking to someone like myself who has spent quite a bit of time thinking about and researching the evolutionary origins of laughter and its relation to surprise/play

To respond to just one part:

> Bullying, where the joke is not particularly funny, but instead relies on attacking someone's status in front of a crowd. The crowd laughs in recognition of the successful attack, not because the joke is clever

I think you might have it inverted. The crowd doesn't laugh bc it's a successful attack. It's a successful attack bc they laugh.

The audience is largely voting with their choice of where they deploy their "social" laugh. Laughter used to be an involuntary hardwired animal sound (like a "moo"), that signaled a space of learning and safety, to explore and play. It attracted other primates to join on that merit. but along the way it became rewired into the software level of social context. Humans started deploying laughter to shape their social context: to flatter, to flirt, to charm, and yes, to hurt. This is why we laugh more and differently around other humans. (Some of this was discovered via dissecting muscles around the eyes, that activate most readily in more "true" involuntary Duchenne laughter, but not the contrived social laughter.)

So the laughing audience is complicit in the bullying. They are creating the weapon, and the attack. If it's actually funny, it just takes less work to get the audience on your side. That's the performance of bullying -- whether you can carry either a willing or unwilling audience along for the weaponising of the laughter.

[everdrive]

That's a great distinction, and I definitely think it's the better characterization. Similarly, the class clown will often fare _worse_ from the teacher if the joke doesn't land. The whole class laughing really turns the tide against the teacher. (although sometimes that just yields a more aggressive response)

[TheBruceHimself]

I agree but i'd go even fruther and say the categories of comedy seem so damned plentify that almost any theory, or even set of theories, fails to capture all cases. Some people say it's about a twist in what one would expect, but in which case why is something happening repeatedly sometimes more funny, even when it begins to annoy you? And why is the buildup to an obvious punchline somehow funny (say a character you just know will fall off a ladder but waiting for it somehow is funny in and of itself). If it's about making witty connections then why is it genuinely just funny if someone shits themselves in a serious moment or just has a weird accent. Why are impressions funny? I laugh because part of me is saying "oh yeah, George Bush does squint his eyes like that a lot". it's funny to see... but why? Then you have anti-comedy: why is being unfunny funny? People say comedy comes from others pain: like cringe comedy or slapstick but there's times where someone really enjoying something obsessively is funny.

Also, if there are any universal theory then how come my grandad just doesn't understand why comedy i like is funny and vice-versa? It's not that i don't get "his comedy". It's just I find it hard to believe anyone would ever really laugh at it like mine. Then there's jokes from acient times that you wouldn't even think of as jokes now, but we know people laughted. If there is a universal theory of comedy i suspect it would be flexible to the point of being usless as it'd covers almost all human activity.

[JoeAltmaier]

Agreed! I remember Jerry Louis (really!) playing a waiter just walking across an empty ballroom floor, a fifteen-twenty second take, and it was funnier the longer it lasted! He just did that on the spot, knew he could draw it out, knew how a walk could communicate everything about his mood, his attitude, what he thought of the person he was walking away from. Still don't understand how he did it.

[boogieknite]

> Tone-of-voice humor. This is a joke where there's no real joke, but the tone of voice is really doing 90% of the work. It's just retelling a relatively benign event, except the tone of voice exaggerates the emotions attached to the words. I don't have an example ready for this one because I really dislike this "style" of humor, but imagine some of the less creative or talented stand-up artists.

Glad you mentioned this. Watched stand up specials in groups where the set up for a story joke used mostly tone-of-voice and my friends laughed and I wondered why they found it funny. Maybe the anticipation of a joke combined with the tone-of-voice make people laugh? I struggle to get it.

An exception that comes to mind is SNL's REALLY segment. Pohler and Meyers beat the joke so deep into the dirt it comes back around as funny

[lyu07282]

Where does something like this fall into (story-based?):

> I don't stop eating when I'm full. The meal isn't over when I'm full. It's over when I hate myself. (Louis C.K.)

I think the best jokes of the greatest comedians that ever lived were jokes that don't even work when you write them down, its all in the greater context, delivery and timing. One of my favorite types of jokes are references to earlier parts of a show, it feels like more work for the setup intensifies the punch line.

[everdrive]

Yes, I think that's what I was intending with regard to the story-based jokes. This joke probably lands best if you can relate to Louis C.K., and in this scenario, Louis is the (self-effacing, charming, relatable) fool. He's the target of his own joke, but he's sharing a common and relatable story, and delivering it well. He could have easily told the same joke, but with another person as the target. The example I gave uses another person as the target, but some of the best comics makes themselves the target, which often plays better with the audience. I guess I think there are at least two notable points here:

- In this case, Louis' delivery is part of what makes it clear that this is a joke. I guess I might say it's an intermixture of tonal and story-telling delivery. It would be possibly to tell the same story, but it would only be depressing and not funny. Part of the delivery is how the humor is conveyed. ie, "I don't really hate myself, I'm being hyperbolic for the sake of humor."

- Separately, I think his joke would be much less relatable if he didn't make himself the target of the joke. He's volunteering himself as the target of the humor, and so not punching down at anyone. It's much harder to be offended when the speaker volunteers the topic and the target.

[isotropy]

Tone-of-voice example (not mine): "It. Just. Works." vs "It juuuuust works."

[laurentlassalle]

How would you call jokes that only work due to laugh tracks (sitcoms)? Bandwagon humor?

[everdrive]

I might bucket them in with the bulling humor, since that seems to be very bandwagon-y. I would definitely also say that I've arranged (what I believe to be) useful descriptions, but they're by no means hard scientific fact, nor the only types of humor possible. I actually forgot one of my favorite styles of humor: slapstick!

[gosub100]

-puns and word-play. Or does that fall under epiphany humor?

[yungporko]

to be fair, i've seen plenty of examples of the "bullying" one be genuinely hilarious too.

[duderific]

In a formal setting, I think this is called a "roast", when a famous person is the target of the bullying.

[everdrive]

For sure! Nothing _prevents_ a bully from being funny, it's just that often this is not the point. And most people do not strictly try to stay in any of the lanes I've defined -- they combine and interweave the different styles. I think the purest example of "bullying humor" might come from kids in the 90s. You're minding your own business, really not doing anything out of the ordinary, and some other kid yells in from of a group "Look how gay he is!" The group laughs, but there's no "joke," and the insult has been wholly invented out of thin air; there's no epiphany for the mind to connect because the insult isn't actually based on anything. That same scenario could easily play out with an actual clever joke attached. It just often is not the case, and the laughter does not depend on the the joke existing, but is related to the attack on status.