Only Joking

Blog 5: Only Joking

Right off the pat it struck me that what this guy has to say might just be worth noting. He says on page one “jokes spread around the world and embed themselves in our shared culture”. From meeting with my conversation partner, I know that this holds some truth. Even though we grew up in different parts of the world, with completely different languages and cultures, we still find the same things funny and even know a few of the same jokes. It’s funny to think of how such a simple (and probably overused joke) such as “why did the chicken cross the road” could be known by people in such different locations.

The idea of dissecting a joke is true in my opinion. If you do try and talk about what makes it funny or look at the cultural undertones of a joke, you will probably come out thinking that it is not in fact funny. It reminds me of the friend we all have who thinks just doesn’t get the joke. When a room full of people are laughing about something someone just said they lean over and ask you why its so funny-if you try and explain it to them you find out that the joke is not actually that funny. It probably has to do with taking it out of the moment or out of context. Either way it’s just a bad idea to explain a joke. Let them figure it.

I never really gave much thought to the idea of other species laughing or having humor. It makes sense that humans would not be the only species with the ability to laugh, but it’s just not something I sit around pondering during my nights of studying. After reading the section about how apes laugh it made me think about what it would sound like for them to hear us laugh. While we interpret an ape laugh as a person sanding wood, what do you think they interpret our laughing as? We interpret the ape laugh as a human sound when it is not one, so what would they make our human laugh into as an ape sound? Probably something we would laugh at if we knew.

One thing I did not agree with in the reading was that the single funniest thing we can ever see is someone falling on his or her arse. I have never laughed when someone has fallen down because I feel sympathy for the person-for the pain they are feeling and the embarrassment they feel for everyone laughing at them. I don’t think it is right to laugh at someone’s embarrassment. They feel bad enough that they feel with other people around, and you are going to laugh at them and make it worse? Not me. I don’t think people should classify this as the funniest spectacle we could ever see. That is a bit of an overstatement in my opinion.

It was completely new to me to read that computer programs are creating jokes. I am not technical and cannot really understand how this is even possible, but apparently it is. While the few jokes that this book shared with us readers were not laugh-out-loud funny, some were funny in their puns. I was more impressed with the fact that a computer is making children laugh! They say that machines are going to take over the world one day and this just supports that theory. Since machines can tell jokes, what can we do that a machine can’t nowadays?

Overall, I found this reading enjoyable. Since it was primarily theories of humor mixed with examples of humor, it did a good job of keeping my interest. Compared to the book Comic Relief these authors were able to portray their meaning and definitions of humor without losing the humorous tone. Their writing style is much more in line with what I imagined when I thought of reading about humor instead of reading something humorous.