[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 ;)