HUMOR, What makes something funny??

"Being able to laugh in life reduces anxiety that, if anything, comedy may actually be good for your health."

                             Quirkology

Interesting HUMOR factoids I've collected over the years

“The top jokes all have one thing in common—they create a sense of superiority in the reader.”

 “The observation that people laugh when they feel superior to others dates back to around 400 BC and was described by Plato in the Republic.”

 "Because of the animalistic and primitive associations, Plato was not a fan of laughter. He thought that it was wrong to laugh at the misfortune of others and that hearty laughter involved a loss of control that made people appear to be less than fully human.  Plato was so concerned about this that he advised citizens to limit their attendance to comedies."

"The more superior a joke makes a person feel, the harder they laugh."

"Hitler was sufficiently concerned about the potential use of humor that he set up special “Third Reich Joke Courts” that punished people for many acts of inappropriate humor including naming their dogs, “Adolf”

"A year long study of 1,200 examples of laughing in everyday conversation revealed that 71 percent of women laugh when a man tells a joke and just 39 percent of men laugh when a woman tells a joke."

"People with high social status tend to tell more jokes than those lower down the pecking order."

  "Females are more likely to rely on self-disparaging humor"

"The animalistic release of a victorious roar at other people’s misfortune is still alive and well in the twenty-first century."

"According to Freud, jokes act as a kind of psychological release valve that help prevent the repressed pressure from becoming too great—in other words, a way of dealing with whatever it is that causes us to feel anxious."
 

"The most basic form of a joke is a simple pun—we find these jokes funny because of incongruity.  In many jokes there is incongruity between the set-up and the punch-line."
 

"People who have damage to their right hemisphere of their brain are less able to understand jokes."

"When people see or hear another person laugh they are far more likely to copy the behavior, start laughing themselves and therefore actually find the situation funny.  This is the reason why so many comedy programs carry laughter tracks."

"Professional comedians tend to come from relatively low income families and to have been unhappy children and thus their performances may represent an attempt to compensate for their difficult early experiences by gaining the afternoon of an audience. There is considerable anecdotal evidence to support this idea."

 "Woody Allen once said that the need to be accepted was one of his primary motivations for being funny."

"W.C. Fields once explained why he liked making people laugh: “At least for a short moment, they like me.”
 

"Some performers admitted that they were intensely curious about people and behavior how they would endlessly watch others go about their lives until they found some idiosyncrasy that could form the basis of a new joke or routine."

Seymour and Ronda Fisher noted that there were parallels between social scientists and comedians they argued that both groups are constantly on the prowl for novel perspectives on human behavior.
 

“Frame your mind on mirth and merriment which bars a thousand harms and lenghthens life.” William Shakespeare

My Turn:  I try to use humor while recounting a past event. 

"One time when I was 11 I was embarrassed to wear my glasses for the big family slide show. I already looked hideous at that age and wearing glasses only magnified the horror of my appearance. All of my Aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, brothers, great uncles, great ---aunts--you name it-- were present. Half-way through the slide show my grandfather happened to notice that I wasn’t wearing my glasses. Suddenly, he stops the slide show. Then he loudly announces to the large consanguineous group “The slide show is being stopped until Renee puts on her glasses.” He said this with the austerity and despotism that would have given Hitler an erection.

Every single Aunt, Uncle, cousin, brother, etc turned around and stared at me in silence. Then my Dad piped up, “You better listen to Papa and put your glasses on, he means it!”.  I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. For the slide show to continue I had to put on my glasses—but it was worse now because everyone in the room was staring at me. There was a growing impatience in the familial crowd—either because they wanted to see how terrible I looked in my glasses or because they were anxiously waiting to see more slides of the Grand Canyon and the evidence supporting Noah’s Global flood.

 At first I refused, but then I realize that I didn’t have any options so I put on my glasses.  My cousin, thin, blonde, and well developed for an 11 year old, starts laughing at my face. I feel terrible. Meanwhile, I’m sobbing like an abused duck and the slide show continues with my Grandfather describing the layers of the Grand Canyon, Noah’s flood and how this all relates to his personal relationship with Jesus"   

    --By Renee

"Humor is incongruity plus another amusement."

"Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were catholic."

“Why was the Amish girl stoned to death? Too Mennonite!”  Christopher Hitchens

“The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.”

There are two rednecks in a field:

Hey, you wanna play twenty questions?

Sure, lemme thinka something

Got it?
Yeah, got it. Ask me.

Is it a thing?

Yeah.

Can you fuck it?

Yeah.

Is it a goat?

Yeah.