The Science of Humor 344
Hugh Pickens writes "The sense of humor is a ubiquitous human trait, yet rare or non-existent in the rest of the animal kingdom. But why do humans have a sense of humor in the first place? Cognitive scientist (and former programmer) Matthew Hurley says humor (or mirth, in research-speak) is intimately linked to thinking and is a critical task in human cognition because a sense of humor keeps our brains alert for the gaps between our quick-fire assumptions and reality. 'We think the pleasure of humor, the emotion of mirth, is the brain's reward for discovering its mistaken inferences,' says Hurley, co-author of Inside Jokes: Using Humor to Reverse-Engineer the Mind. With humor, the brain doesn't just discover a false inference — it almost simultaneously recovers and corrects itself. For example, read the gag that's been voted the funniest joke in the world by American men. So why is this joke funny? Because it is misleading, containing a small, faulty assumption that opens the door to a costly mistake. Humor is 'when you catch yourself in an error, like looking for the glasses that happen to be on the top of your head. You've made an assumption about the state of the world, and you're behaving based on that assumption, but that assumption doesn't hold at all, and you get a little chuckle.'"
That joke's not funny! (Score:5, Funny)
Now, this is funny: Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!
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rst, this has to have been written by someone who has either never lived with dogs and/or cats and/or parrots ...
In particular, they've obviously never lived with cockatiels or budgies. Those critters' senses of humor stand out to even casual observers. We have two cockatiels and a blue-crowned conure. The conure shows little humor, and considers the cockatiels pests who should be attacked at any opportunity. She has a scary beak that we were afraid of for her first month in our house. The 'tiels figured out early on that they can easily outfly her, and they torment her relentlessly. This includes picking up f
Re:Two things (Score:5, Funny)
My mother-in-law's African grey likes to sound the fire alarm when she's cooking, and calls the dog a "good boy" then laugh when the dog is in trouble. He also likes to memorize a telephone's ring and some of the sound effects from casual Flash games (to make you go looking at your screen). The last dog he used to call by name, sometimes in what I could only call by an impersonation of my wife's voice, often when the dog was on the other side of a latched door or when he had just been told to stay.
Re:Two things (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a famous story about the African Grey parrot Alex. One of the researchers was cooking a Cornish Hen, at which Alex exclaimed "Oh No, Paco!" (Paco being another parrot). Upon being told it wasn't Paco, Alex then laughed in a very human style.
Re:Two things (Score:5, Funny)
We would play a game with my grey where we would touch his tail and say "Got yer tail!"
On day my wife walks past him and he pecks her butt and says "got yer tail!" and cracks up laughing.
Mostly they are like living with a 3 year old. One with a very sharp beak that likes to chew things.
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First, this has to have been written by someone who has either never lived with dogs and/or cats and/or parrots and/dolphins, or else is emotionally retarded; second, humor is much simpler: as far as I can tell, it is predatory -- there is always a loser in an expression of humor. Making someone, or something, the butt of a joke engenders social ordering, or status. To put it another way, at a certain basic level, humor seems to me to range from mildly to extreme dominating behavior. Try to find a joke that doesn't have a victim, or a "butt"; that's the source of even calling someone the "butt of a joke."
I'll agree about animals (sometimes) appearing to have a sense of humour. But you're wrong about jokes.
There are only three jokes - what you describe is one, or maybe two, of the jokes. You don't find it funny (and it's probably not that funny for the audience either) - but slapstick "works" not because someone is being made fun of, but because the audience either identifies with the victim and gets a shock, then relief, when they recognise the victim is not them - or they find the wordplay amusing. The f
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Re:Two things (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Two things (Score:5, Informative)
Well, let's see.
Do you mean this joke:
Q: Two goldfish are in a tank.
A: One says, "Do you know how to drive this thing?"
That definitely has a loser: The person being told the joke is made to think "fish tank" by the context presented by the teller of the joke, and then is ambushed by the teller of the joke specifically by being made to know they were thinking incorrectly -- it's a military tank. The laughter comes from the listener when they realize they were wrong; from the teller at the realization of the listener they've been had. Dominance and submission, both.
Or did you have another "two goldfish" joke?
I just gave you one (abbreviated, but pretty obvious.)
Ever see a cat hide from another cat or dog, smack it on the head when it wanders by, and then "run away", but using very high leaps that aren't effective at distancing instead of the ground covering-speed they are actually capable of? That's an ambush, with a victim, delivered as social one-uppance, but clearly below the threshold of actual violence. Dominance. That's humor, straight up. The laughter *is* the "run."
Dolphins not only ambush and prank, they laugh at the victim's discomfort, too. Ask any dolphin handler. It can be pretty rough humor, too. Like, broken-bone rough. That's more of a reflection of just how powerful an animal they are as compared to humans, I think -- the same jokes on other dolphins wouldn't result in that kind of damage. They'll pull you under when you're swimming, spit water in your face, all kinds of dominating pranks.
Parrots... those are considerably harder to explain, as the behavior is, in fact, linked with their use of language, and that varies enormously by the individual parrot. I'm going to punt and say you need to live with one. They're bloody hilarious, though, believe me.
Dogs... they exhibit a wide range of intelligent behaviors (as do cats, for that matter), but as far as humor goes, just play "throw the stick" with one that hasn't been trained to fetch, and see how easy it isn't to get the stick back, and how the dog will tease in the manner of "I have the stick, here, it's almost in your reach, whoops, you're too slow, aren't you?" Straight up dominance, you're the victim, sub-violent. If you enjoy being teased, then we have submission as well (though note how quickly being teased gets old... submission is a hard place to maintain cheerfully.) It's humor.
Re:Two things (Score:5, Insightful)
Q: Two goldfish are in a tank.
A: One says, "Do you know how to drive this thing?"
Well, I understood the joke differently. I thought the fish was wondering how to drive the fish tank, and found that funny. Never thought of a military tank.
Maybe that is because I'm from Europe, and according to the article, we have a penchant for surreal jokes?
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Are those european goldfish or american goldfish?
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I read it like that too. But I'm from Belgium that might explain it .
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That's just the victim's failure to understand the joke even after it's been made obvious. Making them all the more the victim. " Did you tell so-and-so the joke?" "yeah, but he didn't get it. Sad."
There's no humor in the idea that they're in a bowl. You can't drive a bowl. There's no alternate cognitive mapping. It's pure linear thinking; not funny at all. But there is dominance in relating a joke someone doesn't get. That's part of what jok
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Re:That joke's not funny! (Score:5, Funny)
This is consistent with what TFA says:
One intriguing result was that Germans -- not renowned for their sense of humour -- found just about everything funny and did not express a strong preference for any type of joke.
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Not true. Germans only find jokes that contain the word "ass" to be funny.
Re:That joke's not funny! (Score:5, Funny)
There were zwei peanuts, walking down the strasse, und one was 'assaulted'... peanut.
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heh
hehehe
hehehehehehe
argh! *dies*
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Laugh while you still can. (Score:2, Insightful)
Big Brother is Watching You.
Re:Laugh while you still can. (Score:5, Insightful)
and laughing
Minsky 1980 (Score:5, Informative)
Python 1969 (Score:4, Informative)
Errors are universal, humour is cultural (Score:5, Interesting)
Humor is when you catch yourself in an error
But The Funniest joke in the (english speaking?) World reckons that people from different cultures find different styles of humour to be more/less funny.
So there appears to be a conflict here. You'd expect everyone's brain to be wired to catch the same sorts of errors or false inferences, yet if there's a cultural component to humour that contradicts the "error" theory.
Making fun of a group (Score:5, Interesting)
yet if there's a cultural component to humour that contradicts the "error" theory.
Indeed. Vast categories of jokes make fun of a group (different race, different cultural background, certain hobbies, certain lifestyles, etc.), including this one by the way. The stereotype this plays on is "hunters are stupid rednecks who shoot first and think later". Hunters would probably find the joke less funny but probably the "researchers" didn't define a category for them, so it didn't how up on their stats...
Re:Making fun of a group (Score:5, Insightful)
The stereotype this plays on is "hunters are stupid rednecks who shoot first and think later". [...] Hunters would probably find the joke less funny but probably the "researchers" didn't define a category for them, so it didn't how up on their stats...
Those stupid redneck hunters often have an enormous ability to laugh at themselves that shouldn't be discounted. I haven't hunted in a while (but my NRA membership is still current) and I found the joke quite funny.
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I immediately thought the same thing, then I realized that racist potty humor doesn't really challenge the brain that much, so therefore really isn't that funny. I'm looking at you Jeff Dunham.
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From TFA:
If a sense of humor is part of our basic, human thinking machinery, then why can’t we agree about what’s funny?
What’s universal about humor is the process, not the content. Everybody faces every situation with different beliefs, knowledge, and understandings about the world. And different understandings lead to different assumptions and therefore different false assumptions.
So there's not necessarily a conflict - you'd expect different cultures to have different assumptions about the world (for geographical and linguistic reasons, perhaps), and therefore have a different sense of humor.
Hay Pete! All the guys down at the pub... (Score:2)
... say your girl is a lousy lay, but I want you to know that that's not my experience at all.
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... say your girl is a lousy lay, but I want you to know that that's not my experience at all.
They're probably right. I know your wife thinks that too!
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a really pretty waitress once found me attractive and asked me if I wanted some super sex.
but at my age, I opted for the soup.
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That would only be the case if everybody made the same errors and false inferences in the first place, but our view of the world and the inferences we make are very much influenced by our culture.
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For example, I offer the double-entendre.
An attractive young women goes into a bar and asks for a double-entendre. So the barman gives her one.
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Oh, believe me, I know how important phrasing is in comedy. "Gives her one" works very well in British English:
An attractive young women goes into a bar and asks for a double brandy. So the barman gives her one.
An attractive young women goes into a bar and asks for a pint of beer. So the barman gives her one.
An attractive young women goes into a bar and asks for a double-entendre. So the barman gives her one.
"I'd give him/her one" is a common way to express the desire for sexual congress in colloquial Briti
The real joke (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideologue Comedians (Score:5, Insightful)
This makes sense in the context of something I've noticed: the more extreme and deeply-held your views, the less likely you are to have a functioning sense of humour. In particular, hard-core religious people seem to have none whatsoever. If your dogma is so entrenched and rigid, then you aren't going to make self-correction and ambiguity a strong part of your mental tool-kit.
Never trust someone without a sense of humour, kids.
(Of course, too much can be a bad thing, too, at least insofar as maniacal giggling whilst ripping your still-living victims organs out can be considered humorous...)
Stereotype jokes? (Score:2)
Sadly, I don't have any deeply religious friends to experiment on.
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That feels like a different kind of humour - not at one's own expectations being subverted, but at an Other's perceived shortcomings being exploited in a status re-affirming way.
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That fits with my view that laughter is an interrupted defense mechanism. Ideologues have no other running tasks to interrupt the foreground process.
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That isn't funny!
Re:Ideologue Comedians (Score:4, Interesting)
Then there's the question of what my girlfriend thinks is funny when she gets hyper. Answer: everything, pretty much; it's like she's on laughing gas and she usually just ends up repeating a word (or corrupted variation of it) over and over while giggling uncontrollably. It's like a short-circuit to the funny circuits of her brain, and perhaps could reveal something about the neurology of humour if analysed.
PS if you're reading this, sorry, I love you :D
Re:Ideologue Comedians (Score:5, Informative)
--
.nosig
Re:Ideologue Comedians (Score:5, Interesting)
In particular, hard-core religious people seem to have none whatsoever.
Try walking into a Christian bookstore and asking for their humour section (often there isn't one, or it's pretty sparse, or it's in the children's section). If there isn't one, you can make remarks like "What? Christians have no sense of humour?".
FWIW, I'm a Christian, and I was actually looking for this book: http://www.amazon.com/Fearfully-Wonderfully-Weird-Screwball-Wittenburg/dp/0310287316 [amazon.com]
Seriously though, it may be because those "hard core" ultrareligious sorts live in fear (which IMO is suboptimal). It's not funny if you feel unsafe.
Safe and secure. That's why good guy friends can slap each other on the back, throw insults and do all sorts of other stuff - they know they are safe, genuinely no harm is ever intended. And that's why children are laughing if daddy throws them up in the air, and of course catches them. That's often the difference between a funny prank and a malicious act. If the victim feels safe and is safe, it's funny. If it's not, it's not funny.
maniacal giggling whilst ripping your still-living victims organs out can be considered humorous.
They say beauty is only skin deep, but I love you from the bottom of your heart. Hey be thankful I didn't I "love" you from the heart of your bottom... What's the matter, cat got your tongue? Ooops, looks like she did.
Bwahahaha.
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Try walking into a Christian bookstore and asking for their section with cook books... What? Christians don't eat?
Store: Cornerstone Christian Supply (First Google result on "Christian cookbook")
Viewing a total of 530 items in Cookbooks [cornerston...supply.com]
oops :P
Of course, they do not actually have a Comedy section. Searching for Comedy only returns DVDs, not books.
Try walking into a music store and asking for their television section... What? Musicians don't watch TV?
One should not expect to find TVs in a music store.
One should however expect to find books in a bookstore, although I can see how you could be confused...
I think the parent posters point stands.
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"How to Serve Man" ?
Re:Ideologue Comedians (Score:4, Interesting)
I think maybe you're confusing the "Pharisees" of today with real followers. Most people who go to church stubbornly ignore the bulk of what Jesus said. I've probably read more religious philosophy than anything else, and in my study and personal experience I've found the opposite of what you're saying -- that the few people who really live The Way have a very active sense of humor. A few examples off the top of my head are CS Lewis, Ghandi, and Neem Karoli Baba.
FTFY (Score:2)
[...] He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, so now what?
Yet another piece of junk science ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason we don't see it so much in the animal kingdom is two-fold:
1. We're lousy observers, bringing our presumptions with us;
2. There's fewer opportunities.
To make the claim that it's rare or even non-existent (in other words, you don't even know) with zero proof (and something that's contradicted by observation of animals at play or interactions of animals and their owners) is just plain junk.
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I'm sure they conducted extension interviews with animals before announcing their findings. Honestly, when was the last time you heard an animal tell a joke?
Re:Yet another piece of junk science ... (Score:5, Interesting)
When's the last time you saw an animal do something just for fun? From squirrels teasing dogs (they do it in the wild all the time, and I used to have a pet squirrel that would jump on my Newfie's tail, then his head, then hop back to my shoulder or go running around my legs at the knee, just to tease him.
Sure, the dog could have just waited until the squirrel stopped and then killed him, but he never did.
Same squirrel - I'd be typing away, and every once in a while he'd quickly hop on the keyboard to insert a few extra characters. Then he'd stand there and look at me, and I'd poke him lightly in the nose trying to get him to understand "don't do that!" He understood - he also understood that he could get away with it.
The more intelligent birds do it too. Get yourself a pet crow - crows also are tool-makers, as are several other animals, so it's not surprising to see that they can also be intentionally funny. Humour, even slapstick, is the way we deal with aggressive impulses less destructively. All humour has an element of meanness in it, from teasing to outright "nasty show" stuff.
Re:Yet another piece of junk science ... (Score:5, Informative)
You're projecting. The squirrel didn't understand that it was inserting characters into your stream of text and annoying you. He didn't understand he was pranking you. All he understood was that you were just sitting there wiggling your fingers for some reason, and he could make you stop and pay attention to him for a bit by stepping on the clicky surface.
Animals play for some pretty well established reasons, reasons which are largely the same for (young) humans. It builds social skills, locomotive skills, and (where objects are involved) fine motor control. But for them to enjoy teasing and pranking each other, they'd need to have thoughts about another creature's thoughts. Humans are able to to take this out to the fourth or fifth order before getting confused ("I know that Bob knows that Sue knows that Bob knows that I know..."). With animals, great apes have been shown capable of second-order beliefs (but no further), and no other animals have demonstrated this capacity at all. This is unsurprising, since very few animals have even been able to demonstrate self-awareness with the well-known mirror test.
There is no doubt that some animals are smart and self-aware. Great apes, dolphins, corvids, and elephants have all demonstrated self-awareness, and I'm in no way suggesting that they are mindless automatons the way some philosophers once believed. But you're attributing a much higher level of thought to them, one which scientists have often tested for and never found (except in great apes).
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Dogs and cats pass the mirror test just fine. They know the difference, and they know its them and not some other dogs' image, since if it's a strange dog, they'll turn around to attack.
They also know the diff. between the TV and an image in a mirror, so you might want to rethink all that m- your so-called "science" is decades out of date.
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The squirrel was not aware that it bugged you, and dogs and cats do not pass the mirror test. That has been shown time and time again and I challenge you to cite a study showing otherwise. And I'm not talking about some pet owner with a youtube video that he declares to show his pet passing.
You are being irrational.
Re:Yet another piece of junk science ... (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly you don't read enough bash.org
http://bash.org/?334762 [bash.org]
I swear to god
I've just heard a duck tell a joke
there was as group of ducks on a pond near where i live
one of the ducks was quacking away looking straight at a group of like 10 ducks
then he stopped and all the other ducks went mental
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Yeah, some time back I was thinking that perhaps while creatures like amoebas and ants might not be smart, they might not actually be that stupid.
But how are they going to show their intelligence given their limitations? You're not going to be able to communicate an IQ quiz to them.
Same goes for humour - they might find things funny, but what do you expect them to say to you?
I do know that at least some dogs have a sense of humour. I believe other animals have too. Especially animals that play. Even rats pl
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There's the big problem. Just as you're unlikely to see humor from human research subjects in a controlled environment (let's just think prison here) you won't see it from animals in the same situation, so most of the "animals have a sense of humor" stories will remain unverifiable anecdotes.
I have a few of my own. My old dog used to find it hilarious to throw her favorite ball under a wardrobe, and then stand there wagging like crazy while I was wiggling around on the floor trying to reach it. Did she want
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The cat jumping out at the kid didn't intend to kill and eat the child, but it's play hunting just the same. What do cats do for fun? Stalking, chasing, ambushing. It's all about improving skills needed for catching their next meal in the wild.
Re:Yet another piece of junk science ... (Score:5, Funny)
The only time I find animals funny is when their flavor is a bit "off". As in:
Two cannibals are eating a clown. One cannibal looks at the other and asks, "Does this taste funny to you?"
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Their reaction would be "Oh but were too sophisticated now to include slapstick as humour - get back to your black and white silent movies, you ignorant clod!"
Or "Tsk, tsk, you're just anthropomorphizing their behaviour ..."
Of course, they have no research data to back up their claim that animals don't have a sense of humour, but "that's obvious", just like it was "obvious" that the earth is flat and the center of the universe.
The article and the joke (Score:3)
Am I the only one who noticed that the 'funniest joke' wasn't all that funny... then read the rest of the article and wondered what they'd cut out to get the 102-word joke down to less than 80?
Just what could be in those 20-something words to make the joke so much funnier?
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I hadn't noticed the shortened word count. I also didn't find it funny.
Timing is everything and maybe those missing 20 words while not being necessary to the "joke" are essential to the timing.
This cartoon is my favourite joke:
http://svalko.org/data/2011_11_05_17_55_964161_1.jpeg [svalko.org]
Tim.
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It's that you're expecting the guy who calls 911 to come back and tell the operator, "Well, he's not breathing," rather than to "make sure he's dead" by finishing him off. That incongruity is what makes it funny. That, and the fact that the caller is an obvious idiot.
I think the grandparent poster won't ever see the humor in it being clouded with prejudices as he seems to be. After I laughed, I tried translating the joke to see if it might carry into another culture. *tries his stand-up Philosophy*
Time: Ancient Rome (say, Late Republic). And the audience would be Roman citizens of the time.
A physician is examining a patient in his house, when a slave comes running into the room "Doctor! I think my master's gardener is dead! What should I do?". "I'm busy here! Go make sure he's really dead." The slave runs out, and minutes later runs back in, breathless, his tunic now blood-spattered, carrying a shovel, "Yup! He's dead!"
And yeah, the joke still works. The vague instructions from the learned man, the idiot all-too-literal slave, destruction of property, the graphic twist at the end. It's a good j
This is one of my favorites (Score:5, Funny)
“We don't allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender.
A neutrino walks into a bar.
My dog watches Seinfeld (Score:2)
Humor in animals (Score:2)
If you think humor or "mirth" is rare or missing in animals you haven't been paying attention, or you're too concerned with your colleges accusations of anthropomorphism.
103 words (Score:2)
According to the funniest-joke-in-the-world article, jokes with 103 words were considered especially funny, however the winning joke has 102 words. That supports my opinion that the joke works a little better if you change the line to "First, let's make sure he's really dead." It's a more plausible phrasing that makes the emergency-services person's intention clearer (to the audience), but works equally well when misunderstood by the hunter.
I guess more animals have humour than one believes (Score:4, Insightful)
It is likely hard to test how humorous animals are as their mimic is hard to rate or nto at all. E.g. a raven who has just stolen the food of another raven, hiding behind a bush and watching the other raven upset jumping around the hiding place. If you see how the watching raven is behaving you get easy the impression he is laughing his ass off. However without a brain scan we can not "proof" this (providing we can figure where the humour center / laughing center in bird brain is).
I mean every few years we get surprised by some research that says: figured that a lizard can learn under wich cup the reward is, and that every mistake of choosing the cup leads to a longer waiting time for the next "test + reward". Doh, so an animal with a brain of the size of to rice corns can learn.
With birds, especially doves, they made experiments about counting and simple arithmetic. You have two bowls with a few grains. And a switch that can be activated with the peak of the bird. The test is to let the bird peek on that switch as often as the sum of the two bowls of grains are. The birds learned that pretty fast. One particular case is this: the dove stopped in front of the switch. It had figured it either has miscounted or miscalculated. So it went back to the bowls (now empty) and repeated the pickings in each bowl and "calculated/counted" again. Then it activated the switch successful.
Or you now about this parrot, where a researcher taught a few hundred words? The parrot started to correct other parrots when they practiced "speech". He could understand and make simple english sentences, like "I want to go into the garden", "Give me apple".
My assumption is that most live is able to learn, a smaller amount is "intelligent" to a certain level, and a smaller part is so intelligent that it also has humour. The question is more: why is everyone neglecting this and assuming that we humans are unique?
Another story: a cat is proudly prancing on the top of a roof. It slipped and avalanched down the roof into the roof gutter/rain pipe. After it landed it hid in the gutter for a moment (5 - 6 seconds) then it carefully stuck its head out and watched around: "did someone see me?" was written on her forehead. When she was sure no one saw her she continued to "prance" along the rain pipe ... if she had no humour, how can she be felt ashamed of falling down the roof?
Duck jokes are particularly funny. This is my best (Score:3, Funny)
Put it in the microwave till it's Bill Withers.
Same ole, same ole. (Score:3)
wit (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry that I don't know the author, but I've found much wisdom in those few words. Perhaps it explains why puns and double entendre(sp?) are so popular?
We Laugh (Score:3)
"We laugh so we may not cry" - Roger Ebert
"So, in sum, what are we? We are the creatures that know and know too much. That leaves us with such a burden again we have a choice to laugh or cry. No animal does either. We do both, depending on the season and the need." - Ray Bradbury (Something Wicked This Way Comes)
This cognitive scientist seems to me to be only looking at a specific type of joke - the sleight of hand ones. He doesn't seem to account for the dark humorists - guys like Kurt Vonnegut, Danny DeVito, Bobcat Goldthwait or Woody Allen - who confront their audience with things that are so sad that all you can do is laugh so you don't cry. He also doesn't account for why people laugh for joy (or cry tears of joy). In Kurt Vonnegut's non-fiction A Man Without a Country, he does a great job of analyzing humor and it doesn't require cognitive science (I went to grab it but realized I loaned it to a friend).
Some other things that need to be accounted for: Why people with Asperger's syndrome tend to lack humor or have very strange senses of humor. Why does my friend's wife consider all my favorite comedians to be offensive and unfunny (how can anyone not enjoy Robin Williams' stand-up?) and I consider her sources of comedy to be banal and unfunny? We were watching Bobcat Goldthwait's World's Greatest Dad, for instance, and my friend and I were laughing so hard we had to pause the movie a couple times until we could compose ourselves. During that same scene his wife was on the verge of tears, calling us sick fucks for laughing. She thought the movie was a very sad drama! She couldn't even sit through Sleeping Dogs Lie.
Some questions are best left for philosophy and the question of humor is definitely one of them. Understanding what the brain does when a person is confronted with a humorous situation doesn't really explain why people have a sense of humor and what humor really is. All the examples here are the sleight of hand jokes, and his conclusion that they're funny because they're basically brain farts was something that Vonnegut already concluded about these jokes without studying the human brain. Then there's also toilet humor - completely unaccounted for in this guy's examples.
Vonnegut claimed this to be the funniest joke in the world, which is one of the sleight of hand type jokes this guy is focussing on:
"Last night I had this crazy dream where I was eating flannel cakes. When I woke up, the blanket was gone!"
The Germans have raised funny to a science (Score:3)
See:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e02-funnybot [southparkstudios.com]
How to make the world's funniest joke funnier (Score:5, Insightful)
According to the article the world's funniest joke is 102 words long. Also, it is claimed that jokes 103 words long are the "funniest" length. Finally jokes with the word "duck" in them also are funnier.
Therefore change "there were two hunters..." to:
"there were two DUCK hunters..."
(Not only have you now included the word "duck" but you've know made the joke the optimal length! Did I really have to explain that?)
Re:Be careful! (Score:4, Funny)
Don't expect any replies from the German readership.
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Except possibly the German fans of Monty Python.
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Vüsch.
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der uber whoosh
Re:Be careful! (Score:5, Funny)
My German's a bit rusty, but so far I get that this joke includes a nun who is stuck in John Mayer in some fashion. Then a dog does something with pancakes.
I need to hear the rest of it so badly./p.
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Mod parent down it translates multiple words of the German version of the joke if you're not quick enough to realize whats happening you may have to spend several weeks in the hospital.
Re:Be careful! (Score:5, Funny)
According to Google, the translation is:
If nunstück is git and slotemeyer? Yes! Beiherhund or the gersput flipperwaldt!
Hilarious.
Re:Be careful! (Score:5, Funny)
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I didn't expect the Spanish inquisition!
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapon is surprise! Surprise and fear, fear and surprise. Our two main waepons are...
I'm sure you know the rest :)
All the same, I'm not surprised at the North Americans not enjoying puns. They seem to like "long" stories either. Too much phoenetic spelling gives rise to less attention on the basis of the words, although with the Canadians, it is a little surprising.
A comedian friend of mine has said that although Irish, UK and most European audiences will ta
Re:wow (Score:5, Funny)
Americans tend to vote their jokes into public office.
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I didn't expect the Spanish inquisition!
NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition. Our chief weapon is surprise! Surprise and fear, fear and surprise. Our two main waepons are...
Not so.
When the tribunal of the Inquisition arrived in a city, it proclaimed a time of grace of about a month, in the course of which the heretics could of their own volition confess their errors with the certitude of undergoing only light and secret spiritual penances. After this delay, the inquisitors would publish the edict of the faith which ordered all Christians, under penalty of excommunication, to denounce the heretics and those who protected them. The Inquisition did not have at its command a secret police or a network of spies. It counted upon the collaboration of the Catholic people, acting in this way more as a guardian of the social consensus than as an oppressive apparatus of the State.
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actually, someone put corn flakes in this guy's piss, today.
that's why he's a grouch.
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just because it mentions SQL injection,
You mean the famous "Bobbie Tables" one? Yeah, but that one is funny as hell, sorry if you didn't get the humor. And yes, it does not just drop the buzzwords "SQL injection", but actually constructs a small story around it. And I just checked, the strip doesn't even mention "SQL injection", it just shows the consequences of one...
Of course, a webmaster having been called from his weekend because a goat wandered on to his site might find SQL injection less funny, but the same is true of the hunter who just
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Forwarding/referencing/reposting xkcd comics is a way for a large minority of socially challenged people to express themselves in a way free of normal societal constraints. In other words, it's nerd humor, and there's nothing wrong with that. The Internet has given lots of small-but-passionate groups a voice.
anyone who has spent any time in an academic or laboratory setting would've seen years, or even decades, ago.
Oh, so you are a hipster of computer science. Interesting!
Apple users and xkcd are one in the same? Seriously? I'm in the first camp and don't get the second camp at all. I think the two are mutuall
Re:They should study hype-induced "humor". (Score:5, Funny)
I think the two are mutually exclusive, unless there's some sort of strange hybrid "I find SQL injection on my Mac to be funny" personas out there.
Speaking just for myself, I find an SQL injection on your Mac would be hilarious...
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Ah, you're no fun. You are no fun at all.
The rest of this is addressed to all readers except poster of parent, an intellectual whose greasemonkey filters will hack the hell out of these words and leave them bleeding all over his viewing screen.
My favorite xkcd is number 312 [xkcd.com] which needs no apology (sorry xkcd, but R.Frost would have approved of it). Of course you have to know a bit about an American Poet Laureate, have at least a nodding acquaintance with Lisp, and understand the role that DWIMNWIS has pl
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Load of fucking babba.
I'll admit I do find the occasional xkcd comic amusing. Sometimes, the corresponding xkcdsucks entry is also funny. Go figure.
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Likewise, sometime the Garfield is funny as well as the Garfield without Garfield.
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Plus words with K in them something something....
.
Re:A simple formula: (Score:5, Insightful)
If it bends its funny. If it breaks its not funny..
Baloney. The breaking is funny too, if it's broken well.
Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you fall into an open sewer and die. -- Mel Brooks
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It's true because it's funny.
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No, a rickroll would've been entertaining. Instead it was an SNL sketch.
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We ALL can imagine what is going on.
Really? And if someone has little/no imagination or can't hold a clear picture in their head without thinking about random things?
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All of your opinions are completely incorrect and mine reign supreme!