Everyday Humor (part 2)
At a wine tasting, I was chatting with two women who are friends.
Me (to one of them): How did your friend entice you to come to this event?
Woman: She told me I was coming.
Laughter.
Type of joke: ?. Actually, it was the truth. Even armed with my idea that laughter is caused by sudden pleasure I still find it very hard to say why we laughed. How odd this is! Laughter is a big and important part of life. Visible, common, highly desirable — yet mysterious.
December 11th, 2007 at 9:22 am
I think this is funny because using the word “entice” sets up the expectation that the first woman used persuasion to convince the second one to come. This is the kind of interaction we view as normal between friends. That expectation is violated when the second woman implied she was ordered to come, not persuaded. A lot of comedy seems to depend on setting expectations and then violating them. Now, why THAT is the case is mysterious.
December 11th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Good answer, David. I also think we find it funny when an adult is ordered around — treated like a child. It is another sort of incongruity.
December 11th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
[…] Everyday Humor (part 2) […]
December 11th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
In this case, it may not have been the quality of the joke, but the intended social interaction. See this article:
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/brain/laughter/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=
December 18th, 2007 at 7:53 am
To me it’s funny and clever because of the paradox:
1. I’ll be enticed to go to a party where cool people are coming.
2. I’m a cool person.
3. She tells me I’m coming, so I definitely want to go.
Sorry if my explanation isn’t funny, but this is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P6UU6m3cqk
December 18th, 2007 at 11:09 am
In keeping with my view that humor is a way of venting tension after being surprised with something that isn’t harmful, I’d say that the laugh comes from a sense that what she says has a certain shock because you don’t expect someone to say something like that. There’s confusion in you, and then you realize there’s nothing wrong with this situation.
I translate the interaction this way:
“She ordered me to come even though I didn’t want to, and I’m coming, even though I wouldn’t if not compelled, and am, surprisingly, not showing the normal desire to maintain a certain level of easygoinginess during a social event, or deference to the wishes of the authority, the person ordering me here, by calling attention to how I was ordered, and don’t want to be here.’
Your mind initially thinks this, but then ’says’ “Of course she’s not saying that. Why would she?” and laugh at how the surprise, which could have been unpleasant (uncomfortable social interaction, possibly an argument) turned out to be a friendly exchange. Laughing releases the anxiety that popped up at the initial remark.
Imagine if she had been serious about being ordered there! You might have laughed, then saw she wasn’t laughing, and felt uncomfortable. The initial judgment of taking her serious would be correct.
Laughing could be partially releasing tension, but also a means of signalling to others “I’m uncomfortable and really wish that whatever just happened that makes me uncomfortable be taken in the harmless way rather than in the unpleasant way.”
December 24th, 2007 at 9:43 pm
Here’s another theory of humor that might explain it — Link