Jokes that are harder to get, tend to be funnier.
Example:
If I try to grind that pipe, I will become infertile.
Vs
If I try to grind that pipe, I will fall and I will hurt my balls.
The first one is funnier. Why?
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Jokes that are harder to get, tend to be funnier.
Example:
If I try to grind that pipe, I will become infertile.
Vs
If I try to grind that pipe, I will fall and I will hurt my balls.
The first one is funnier. Why?
For me to answer this I would have to find one, or other, or both funny. Since this condition is not met I am unable to supply an answer.
Last edited by zinjanthropos; February 17th, 2014 at 10:40 PM.
Well, hurting your balls is funny if you have a video of it, isn't it?
I find neither of the examples humorous. What a more obscure and/or complex joke is to me, isn't funnier per se, but an acknowledgment and appreciation of the difficulty in making said joke.
It also depends on the skill with which the joke is told, there is nothing worse than a poor comedian trying to tell an involved joke and screwing it up, it is painful to watch.
Nah, some of them have loads of money (especially those like Jimmy Carr who don't pay their taxes).
To answer the OP. I think the added cleverness, which makes the audience think for a second, adds to the humor.
(steps on a rake and gives his future son a black eye)
This guy is good at that style of humour:
Milton Jones Live At The Apollo - YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FopcSCMIXY
Last edited by PhDemon; February 18th, 2014 at 10:07 AM.
I enjoy the kind of joke that sets up like a regular joke, then ends with a very blunt, serious answer.
For example...
What would Shakespeare do if he were alive today?
Scream and frantically scratch at the lid of his coffin.
I don't know about those particular jokes, but humor seems to involve an element of surprise, something unexpected.
Another thing I notice living in a bi-lingal country is that humour often doesn't translate well, since it often involves understatement, exageration, and words that have humourous but unstated associations that aren't always picked up by a non-native speaker. Or just funny sounds.
For the just "funny sounds comedy" this is a good example. Rowan Atkinson as a teacher just reading out a list of random words as a role call of pupils names.
Rowan Atkinson - The School Master - YouTube
Another thing is, jokes usually go stale if they are told too often.
If somebody says a joke you told is a good old joke the important part of "good old" is old.
What might have been funny when you were a 10year old tends to get a bit stale by the time you are in your 20s.
Some of the humor of more subtle jokes comes from having a chuckle at those who 'don't get it'. Humor is but one of life's many little games of one-upmanship. Appropriate humor for each situation is a skill. One does not tell the same type of jokes at the office as one does at a stag party, as example. The double entendre is one of my favorite types of humor, where the words can have more than one meaning, with one of them bordering on the naughty.![]()
A Priest, a Rabbi, and an Imam walk into a bar.
The bartender looks at them and says, "What is this, some kind of a joke?"
Double Entendre
1 fresh apricot (plus 1 for garnish)
2 sugar cubes (brown)
2 oz / 56 ml bourbon
Dash apricot brandy
Soda
Muddle the apricot with the sugar in a shaker. Add the bourbon and the brandy, and shake with ice. Strain the mix into a glass filled with crushed ice. Top with soda. To garnish, slice the remaining apricot into 6 pieces and add to the drink.
It's hard to explain, most Brits of my age and older find it funny (judging by people I know), it's possibly due to the fact that people in their late 30s up in the UK remember teachers like this from their own school days, the headmaster of my secondary (high) school could have been in the room and it's partly "nostalgia humour" with added funny sounds and great comic timing.
more mental power needed to get it?
a perception that getting a harder joke means one is smarter, or the joke is more intelligent?
Don't give up your dayjob.
So glad you posted that. One of my all-time favourites.For the just "funny sounds comedy" this is a good example. Rowan Atkinson as a teacher just reading out a list of random words as a role call of pupils names.
Rowan Atkinson - The School Master - YouTube
(And no. I never was a schoolboy and I certainly never went to an English public school, but it's still uproariously funny.)
He's only a teenager so no actual women are in danger of his attentions or his conversation.
But my suspicion is that teenage girls also have enough sense to stay away from that sort of silliness.
I consider it quite entertaining to sport with the young bloods as long as they retain at least a modicum of propriety, lol. A great number of them are quite intimidated by women so I consider teaching them a bit of refinement to be similar to doing community service work.![]()
Step 1. If you've heard or made up a joke about anyone's genitalia, don't try it out on any girl or woman you've just met.DEFINE REFINEMENT!!!
Step 2. Personal hygiene is very important.
Step 3. Anything really.
I've been helping to teach a class of 10 year olds this week, my witty banter often went unnoticed, when reading to them from a story book a lot of the "jokes" went unregarded. Biggest laugh of the week? When one kid in the front row farted really loudly and hid under his desk in embarrassment. Sophisticated humour![]()
No one has said Punch line - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia yet?
I think Freud wrote a book: wit and it's relation to the subconcious
Gotta' go eat, didn't read wiki... only used the "find" function on the browser.
if you read this whole thread you wll become infertile...
er.. humour is relative. isn't that common knowledge? lol..
Last edited by PumaMan; March 9th, 2014 at 11:08 PM.
Humor doesn't have to be funny. Humor can be lots of things. Funny is only one of them.
Well the definition of humor from Wikipedia points to laughter.
What were you thinking of?Humour or humor (see spelling differences) is the tendency of particular cognitive experiences to provoke laughter and provide amusement. The term derives from the humoral medicineof the ancient Greeks, which taught that the balance of fluids in the human body, known as humours (Latin: humor, "body fluid"), control human health and emotion.
I can't recall the source, but someone said, "comedy is tragedy that happens to somebody else. ". I suspect the first human laugh happened when someone observed someone else suffer a pratfall. America's Funniest Videos is mostly about the same reflex.
People differ in what they find humorous, depending on gender, age, culture and experience, just to name a few factors. Below are 20 recognized forms of humor to illustrate my comment.
Consider this your 'homework', lol...
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/20-t...orms-of-humor/Humor comes in many flavors, any of which may appeal to one person but not to another, and which may be enjoyed in alternation or in combination. Here are names and descriptions of the varieties of comic expression:
1. Anecdotal: Named after the word anecdote (which stems from the Greek term meaning “unpublished”); refers to comic personal stories that may be true or partly true but embellished.
2. Blue: Also called off-color, or risque (from the French word for “to risk”); relies on impropriety or indecency for comic effect. (The name probably derives from the eighteenth-century use of the word blue to refer to morally strict standards — hence the phrase “blue laws” to refer to ordinances restricting certain behavior on the Sabbath).
A related type is broad humor, which refers to unrestrained, unsubtle humor often marked by coarse jokes and sexual situations.
3. Burlesque: Ridicules by imitating with caricature, or exaggerated characterization. The association with striptease is that in a bygone era, mocking skits and ecdysiastic displays were often on the same playbills in certain venues.
4. Dark/Gallows/Morbid: Grim or depressing humor dealing with misfortune and/or death and with a pessimistic outlook.
5. Deadpan/Dry: Delivered with an impassive, expressionless, matter-of-fact presentation.
6. Droll: From the Dutch word meaning “imp”; utilizes capricious or eccentric humor.
7. Epigrammatic: Humor consisting of a witty saying such as “Too many people run out of ideas long before they run out of words.” (Not all epigrams are humorous, however.) Two masters of epigrammatic humor are Benjamin Franklin (as the author of Poor Richard’s Almanackand Oscar Wilde.
8. Farcical: Comedy based on improbable coincidences and with satirical elements, punctuated at times with overwrought, frantic action. (It, like screwball comedy — see below — shares many elements with a comedy of errors.) Movies and plays featuring the Marx Brothers are epitomes of farce. The adjective also refers to incidents or proceedings that seem too ridiculous to be true.
9. High/highbrow: Humor pertaining to cultured, sophisticated themes.
10. Hyperbolic: Comic presentation marked by extravagant exaggeration and outsized characterization.
11. Ironic: Humor involving incongruity and discordance with norms, in which the intended meaning is opposite, or nearly opposite, to the literal meaning. (Not all irony is humorous, however.)
12. Juvenile/sophomoric: Humor involving childish themes such as pranks, name-calling, and other immature behavior.
13. Mordant: Caustic or biting humor (the word stems from a Latin word meaning “to bite”). Not to be confused with morbid humor (see above).
14. Parodic: Comic imitation often intended to ridicule an author, an artistic endeavor, or a genre.
15. Satirical: Humor that mocks human weaknesses or aspects of society.
16. Screwball: Akin to farce in that it deals with unlikely situations and responses to those situations; distinguished, like farcical humor, by exaggerated characterizations and episodes of fast-paced action.
17. Self-deprecating: Humor in which performers target themselves and their foibles or misfortunes for comic effect. Stand-up comedian Rodney Dangerfield was a practitioner of self-deprecating humor.
18. Situational: Humor arising out of quotidian situations; it is the basis of sitcoms, or situation comedies. Situational comedies employ elements of farce, screwball, slapstick, and other types of humor.
19. Slapstick: Comedy in which mock violence and simulated bodily harm are staged for comic effect; also called physical comedy. The name derives from a prop consisting of a stick with an attached piece of wood that slapped loudly against it when one comedian struck another with it, enhancing the effect. The Three Stooges were renowned for their slapstick comedy.
20. Stand-up: A form of comedy delivery in which a comic entertains an audience with jokes and humorous stories. A stand-up comedian may employ one or more of the types of humor described here.
Thanks, sheherasade. I like all of these. Humor is subjective, as many have said. But not without value. The ability to find the absurd in life is important to our sanity. Maybe this is why humans have the capacity for it ? I tell my dog jokes all the time, but he never seems to get them. People are better at getting them, but only some people. Also, I may not be very funny.
Some of those videos really make me cringe because people very often do get hurt by some of the stunts they contrive or mishaps experienced.
I suppose this is just 'natural selection' at work but I really do not care to watch some of the more serious wrecks. There is a gag show as well, "Just for Laughs', I believe it is called, which stages funny events on hidden camera. Some of them are pretty good, based on real life possibilities of silly circumstances but some of them could probably be hazardous to anyone with a weak heart.
Cute critter videos are okay as long as the animal initiates the event, does not come to harm and it is not something that humans have contrived simply to get ratings.![]()
Yes, it's hard for me to watch very much of Reality T.V., as well. I don't want reality; I thought that was why T.V. was invented. To help us escape reality. And much of it is obviously contrived for the reason you've stated. Cute critters are fun to see. And kids. These are genuine.
If less obvious jokes are funnier, then why was friends so popular? After all its jokes were the most obvious jokes in the history of obvious jokes.
There is quite a difference between a joke that is told verbally and a visual sitcom or slapstick form of humor. With a less obvious joke, at least half of the humor lies in observing others who are present that 'don't get it'.
Humor is a very interesting medium and can be used both to make others feel included and comfortable, or conversely, it can also be depreciating, offensive and divisive. One must choose their jokes very carefully when one advances into a position of authority, lest one undermines their own credibility among their supporters.
Why did the condom fly across the room?
People tend to feel accomplishing something by understanding a joke that is hard to get, well that's my conclusion at least
please if you think the same or other wise, post itlove to hear your opinions.
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