The Tyranny of Humour

i tend to use humor in most situations that have no particular gravity or need for seriousness. IRL, that's maybe half the time. on ILX, that's pretty much all the time.

xp

nah it is part of what i was getting at inbetween yelling at clouds

i'm only intermittenly jokey in my professional writing, and i used to be even more dry when i started out. one of the first places i wrote for had a habit of inserting terrible jokes into my pieces, which i really hated in a way that i generally don't resent other forms of editorial intervention, like if there's anything you should retain of a writer's style it should be their tone, their sense of humor or level of seriousness.

Does one insert humor into sentences or does it happen naturally? genuinely curious

So many people I know, especially coworkers, treat 'seriousness' as a negative

i just ... i don't have this problem! and i work with teenagers!

I'll introduce you to my workplace, late great

and i'll introduce you to mine!!

:D

ILX work exchange program wd be excellent

there are just so many counterexamples to everything on this thread!

i think i phrased the initial fuzzy thoughts as tentatively as i cd. i'm all for counter-examples, a few have occurred to me since i started. and i was thinking more of the sphere of public discourse than human interaction in general, i think.

Too many coworkers treat humor as a negative.

I've noticed a verrrrry slight shift change in the college students I work with or see: they'll use "hating" or "haters" if you insult a star, athlete, or other Beloved Person. There's a real scorn for what they call "negativity."

i think there's a big UK/US divide here

although, y'know, gawker, so maybe not, idk

Feed them shit, Alfred, and see whether they look askance at 'hating' that.

even in the sphere of public discourse, i find it hard to defend the claim that today's culture is somewhat "lighter" or less serious than that of the past.

it does seem like there's a big US/UK divide ... is it because in the past you guys basically only had paternalistic high-minded quality public programming on TV & radio and now you have the same wasteland of for-profit TV as the US?

so you're saying modern Yoo Kay culture has made them sour

my entire life philosophy boils down to "take things as seriously as you have to, but be as honest as painfully possible" so I don't really see the sincerity/humorous divide, either

on the other hand, irony/sarcasm for its own sake is really, really annoying

Ta-Nehisi Coates Rules, The Thread

FYI

Not a bad philosophy, Dan. Personally, I find it hard to take pretty much anything too seriously (even the things I'm generally quite serious about), and I see everything within the broad span of human endeavor as a source of both awe and guffaws, depending on the perspective one employs at a given time. And I think the best and most admirable humor has a healthy balance of both.

Seriousness should be reserved for subjects and situations where its application makes a material difference to your own life or the lives of people you come into contact with. However, this shouldn't be used as a license to treat everything else with frivolity. There is a middle ground, you know.

Also, anyone who cannot and does not aim humor at themselves should be disbarred from aiming it at anyone else.

(Now I will go back and read the whole thread.)

Earnestness/sincerity are perfectly fine in many ways, but as personality traits aren't they v close to the bottom of the list of 'positives' you'd ideally be looking for in ppl you've to spend time with?

No. When I married my wife she had very little idea of humor and was nearly incapable of saying anything funny, including not knowing how to tell a programmatic joke with a punchline. But I can make her laugh. We are still married after 28 years.

Her quality of earnestness is valuable to me, because it makes her extremely trustworthy and perservering. When things go wrong, she is deeply committed to finding out how to make them go right again. That has helped immeasurably over the decades.

Humor is a leaven in one's character, to keep it from too much density and heaviness of spirit, but humor as the basis of one's character can be a disaster, if there is no graivty to offset it.

I feel this way sometimes. We can't shut up, so we make stupid jokes. Maybe if we had religion we could be solemn over that. Otherwise the only occasions are funerals.

tbf and all, i noted sincerity as a positive trait, i acknowledge it as such. Personally speaking there're just loads of better ones, ymmv obv.

From Trayce's DFW quote:

Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval.

Paradox: the complete refusal of seriousness may emerge from the fear of being seen as ridiculous.

the complete refusal of humour can come from the same source

The complete refusal of either is rare, though

Humo(u)r is an unproductive emotion.

It produces laughter.

laughter is another tyrannical byproduct of human physiology that needs to be eliminated.

the thing makes a good point

what do funny things and painful things have in common? they both make it hard to speak. ever wonder about that?

also toffee

death to toffee

Did you hear about Agger, banaka? Not good.

From Trayce's DFW quote:

What? I have neither posted in this thread nor ever read any Foster Wallace.

In fact I was about to come in and express frustration that yet again, the conversation's moved on before I got a chance to comment on bits of it thanks to the stupid time difference :( most annoying thing about being an ILXor in this country.

jesus christ lady you woke us just to tell us THAT?

Haha :) Actually I wanted to commen on this from way back at the start:

English (in particular) notoriously obsessed/associated with mocking, belittling, cynical humour.

This is curious to me because, I would have agreed with it, but then I experienced the clash between UK and australian senses of humour. I had a bf from England at one point, and he was often very upset/offended by things people here said; he said we are all rude and sarcastic and aggressive, but it was the larrikin aussie humour* that he was getting cross at. Casual lighthearted dry humour, somewhat rude nicknames, that sort of thing. Australians can be relentlessly ...almost bullying, maybe? with thier humour at times.

*ugh kill me for using that phrase

Then again maybe he was just a humourless twat.

Sorry, Trayce. It was Tracer Hand's quote.

Heh yeah I suspected it might be. 'shappened before, all good.

wrt to that English type of humour, Trayce, just wanted to say I'm not at all certain about it! Feel it's a thing that is said, a lot, but wd want to look a lot more closely before saying that sort of humour wasn't a class thing.

Did want to put it forward as a counterweight to the idea that we... ah fuck this phone, I've gotta get up and write this now?

This whole thread turned v v weird for me, the initial idea was interesting but the extension into people using humor in their real lives as a net negative is just baffling. Note: I am pretty much happy and kinda O_O at how holy shit awesome the world (mostly) is 90% of the time so humor/levity seem kinda inextricable from my world view? Idk.

otm

So, continuing from above: ...counterweight to the idea that this is something new, or getting worse in some way.

wrt NV's Tyranny of Humour in 'public discourse', the first thing I thought of was punning headlines. They're not quite symbolic of the subject because they've become such a thing in themself, but they are representative of a continual, unfunny noise of non-seriousness. (Honorable exceptions like Foot Heads Arms Body/Book Lack in Ongar/Caley Thistle etc aside). This sort of thing has become pernicious beyond headlines, puns that aren't puns, non-directional irony or cynicism, whatever it is Brooker does where he says (thing) is like (absurd something else), we might as well (absurd action).

Where it's become more noticeably pernicious is in, say, politicians' speeches. Cameron and Osborne's funnies in their speeches have been extraordinarily ill-advised and have generated headlines as a consequence. But clearly they feel the need to do it.

Where public starts affecting private is in the concept of 'banter' I think. Top Gear blokey jokiness. That sort of humour (read 'general non-serious, gurning tone guess that must be FUNNY right?') seems to me very prevalent just generally as a thing you hear around the place. It seems to me horrible because it co-opts the listener into a moral view - the implicit message being, you're not laughing because you don't understand 'fun', rather than because you object to their capering imbecilities.

The worst of this is with colleagues you don't like and bosses. You can't not laugh/smile, unless you are a bastard of steel (I occasionally go as far as a thin smile, or just wait for the forced hilarity to die down and carry on with whatever was being talked about in a normal tone of voice). And so you are once again co-opted.

As for comedy, well generally the stuff that makes me laugh is stuff that occurs spontaneously in conversation/during the day/in my head. It is not related to the mechanics of performed humour generally. I guess I like the mechanics of how to create laughter when it comes off, but the number of things I find funny in performance comedy is so generally miniscule that I'm happy going with lex on this one and saying I hate comedy, especially stand-up.

There's just so much 'low-level funny' around that I find not at all funny, that yes, I do find there's a tyranny, both in the media and public discourse, but also in general talk around the place.

God, just rambling really, but Tyranny of Humour definitely strikes a chord, although yes, hard cultural differences wrt this as i think lex said upthread.

I thnk this whole thread's premise is quite thought provoking! For me anyway. The idea that humour really is in everything we enjoy is interesting bcz I immediately started racking my brains trying to think of anything i've enjoyed (movie, book etc) that was relentlessly humorless, or dark, or similar. I'm sure there have been such things. But of course, one comes away from such experiences feeling rather stained and exhausted or mentally violated or whatever ("Salo" might be a good example?). So does that mean it is not worth experiencing? Not saying anyone's suggested this, just thinking aloud.

FWIW I did not "enjoy" Salo one bit, in fact I never want to see it again and kind of wish I never had.

I really hate non-directional cynicism, you see it everywhere, it barely even registers as humour but it's become all pervasive, you see it in dreadfully written Metro intros, useless G2 recurring features like Pass Notes. The idea that everything is basically shit and scoffing at it should be the default mode of expression unless proven otherwise.

When I think of the tyranny of humour I also think of Alexis Petridis's Guardian album reviews, where he spends 2/3rd of the review laughing at his own jokes and the remaining third talking about the album. He used to restrict his stand-up routine to the first paragraph but it's expanded and expanded over the years.

it is broadly correct tho