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0 pointsfalsedan9y ago0 comments

> the xkcd comics I find funny are the ones I relate to (the same with any joke).

lol good one

Wait, are you a chicken? Is the classic galline joke not funny to you because you can't relate to a bird?

When you talk about finding that xkcd funny because you could relate its situation to a personal experience, I feel that was evoked from the feeling of nostalgia/coincidence; that certainly can be funny, but it's definitely not a joke.

Take the "people under the orange sun/red sun" joke from My Three Suns[0] (Futurama S01E07, 1999): it's not funny just because it's a callback to the same joke in Homer and Apu[1] (The Simpsons S05E13, 1994); or because it's satirizing the derivative "white people/black people" comedy routines (e.g. Eddie Griffin[2]) inspired by the set from Richard Pryor: Live in Concert[3] (1979).

It's funny because the comedian walks in a funny way, and talks in a silly voice. Very few people I know would walk & talk like this, yet (even without being able to relate to it) I can enjoy its humour. The multi-layered reference make it a deep joke, and the timing/acting/context make it a good joke.

My issue with xkcd is that it only uses the reference part, seeing that many great jokes include callbacks to other jokes, but missing the "being funny" basic requirement of a joke.

[0]: https://youtu.be/EZe7z73jKj8 [1]: https://youtu.be/L104LViQeIw [2]: https://youtu.be/o_RZusRfuw4 [3]: https://youtu.be/RL8Rru-lFmg

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cyphar9y ago· 2 in thread

Again, people find things funny for different reasons. You prefer to focus on the _method_ of telling a joke (timing and so on). While I definitely enjoy such jokes, the jokes I find really funny are the ones that actually relate to my life (or contrast with it) -- or even more broadly the ones that make me think. That's just the kind of humour I'm into.

Here's some counter-examples:

* Most of Brazil is funny for many different reasons. Yes, it has references to 1984, and the style and acting are very necessary to make the jokes work. But everyone can relate (in some way) to the extremely over-blown life of the protagonist -- someone who is stuck in a system working a job they hate with endless bureaucracy. What makes it funny is how blown out-of-proportion it is and how transparent the internal inconsistencies are.

* Rick and Morty is a complicated subject to approach (it has many, many different layers of humour), but some of my favourite jokes come from cases where Rick or Morty reference things that I e with. For example, the whole "inception is so hard to understand" concept was part of a very funny quip where Rick tells Morty that "he doesn't have to impress him" when Morty says "inception wasn't hard to understand". There are many other instances of that.

Again, I don't understand your point. Why are you arguing about what's funny? I thought we concluded a long time ago that humour was subjective. Why are you telling me what should and shouldn't be funny?

For example, I don't think that clip was very funny. But that's just me.

falsedanOP9y ago

> You prefer to focus on the _method_ of telling a joke (timing and so on)

No, I don't. That's something I mentioned that makes a joke good, but you're ignoring what I said makes a joke a joke: the silliness leading to a catastrophic collapse of a pre-conceived understanding into a different but plausible model.

You seem determined to be right about this. Again, note that I do not claim that these kind of performances aren't funny (since that is a matter for the beholder); but that they are not jokes, and their barrier to understanding is exclusionary and elistist.

cyphar9y ago

> I'm not saying they aren't funny, but they are not jokes.

You might have a different definition of joke to me. Is a joke not something that is said or done to cause amusement or laughter in the audience?

> the silliness leading to a catastrophic collapse of a pre-conceived understanding into a different but plausible model.

That sounds like a _type_ of joke, but it's quite reductionist to claim that "all jokes must be like this".

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